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Sunday, January 3, 2010
Ven. Pius XII Defender of the Jews
If anything, Pius XII did too much for the Jews. This video made by a high-school student demonstrates the facts that big-name publications like New York Times keep getting wrong; but it was a Communist inspired disinformation campaign in the first place, thats well documented.
In repayment for his courage and generosity of spirit, many Jews have chosen to defame his name with their usual allies in print and broadcast media. It is truly a testament to their true spiritual bretheren Cane, Esau and the elder brothers of Joseph, that modern Jews persecute the only organization that stood by them in the Second World War.
In repayment for his courage and generosity of spirit, many Jews have chosen to defame his name with their usual allies in print and broadcast media. It is truly a testament to their true spiritual bretheren Cane, Esau and the elder brothers of Joseph, that modern Jews persecute the only organization that stood by them in the Second World War.
We remain the Church of Tradition - Catholic Herald
In case you missed it: Following their exchange in October, author Moyra Doorly and theologian Aidan Nichols discuss what true fidelity to Tradition consists of
We remain the Church of Tradition - Catholic Herald
h/t to: Against the Grain
We remain the Church of Tradition - Catholic Herald
h/t to: Against the Grain
Umberto Eco Laments the Ignorance of Catholic Religion
This article bemoans as enthusiastically as the decadent Southern European soul can, the gap in the education of young Italians toward understanding the patrimony of what enlightened people everywhere who flock to museums on Sunday's instead of Church call "great" masterpieces, created by a disinterest in religious subjects; never mind the actual cause, professore. Three of these students he finds to his discouragement, don't know who the Three Kings are.
It demonstrates something that is painfully apparent that religious faith might be an important part of history and worthwhile in order to understand the great souls who were forced for need of bread to depict those scenes on canvas, but believing in it, that's another story.
It brings to mind Paul VI's fashionable Milanese meetings he held which drew large crowds and spawned a famous book, a dialogue between he and Umberto Eco, called Belief and Unbelief. It is a kind of model for the engagement of the Church with the modern world, often well-attended, attracting even people who would otherwise not attend Church at all. For all of the talking, which approaches the kind of chatter of inter religious dialogue and neo-ecumenism today, it's hard to say what it has done for Intellectuals like Eco.
Well, in this recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, he seems to be very much the same. Advocating for the kinds of things one of the post-religious heroes his novels might have advocated, a kind of areligious, religious humanism. He really shouldn't lament it too much, it's a situation men like him have encouraged and helped to create.
His half-hearted attempt to keep himself out of the camp of Catholic (even non-believing) partizans by encouraging the study of world religions is almost doctrinaire neo-Marxism. Bravo professore!
New York Times
by Umberto Eco
Almost by chance I recently happened to witness two similar scenes: a 15-year-old girl who was engrossed in a book of art reproductions, and two 15-year-old boys who were enthralled to be visiting the Louvre.
The parents of all three were nonbelievers and the teens were raised in secular countries; that lack of religious background clearly affected their ability to appreciate the art they were viewing.
The teenagers could understand that the hapless individuals in Theodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” had just escaped a shipwreck. And they could recognize that the characters portrayed by Francesco Hayez in “The Kiss” were lovers.
Link to original...
h/t: Against the Grain
It demonstrates something that is painfully apparent that religious faith might be an important part of history and worthwhile in order to understand the great souls who were forced for need of bread to depict those scenes on canvas, but believing in it, that's another story.
It brings to mind Paul VI's fashionable Milanese meetings he held which drew large crowds and spawned a famous book, a dialogue between he and Umberto Eco, called Belief and Unbelief. It is a kind of model for the engagement of the Church with the modern world, often well-attended, attracting even people who would otherwise not attend Church at all. For all of the talking, which approaches the kind of chatter of inter religious dialogue and neo-ecumenism today, it's hard to say what it has done for Intellectuals like Eco.
Well, in this recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, he seems to be very much the same. Advocating for the kinds of things one of the post-religious heroes his novels might have advocated, a kind of areligious, religious humanism. He really shouldn't lament it too much, it's a situation men like him have encouraged and helped to create.
His half-hearted attempt to keep himself out of the camp of Catholic (even non-believing) partizans by encouraging the study of world religions is almost doctrinaire neo-Marxism. Bravo professore!
New York Times
by Umberto Eco
Almost by chance I recently happened to witness two similar scenes: a 15-year-old girl who was engrossed in a book of art reproductions, and two 15-year-old boys who were enthralled to be visiting the Louvre.
The parents of all three were nonbelievers and the teens were raised in secular countries; that lack of religious background clearly affected their ability to appreciate the art they were viewing.
The teenagers could understand that the hapless individuals in Theodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” had just escaped a shipwreck. And they could recognize that the characters portrayed by Francesco Hayez in “The Kiss” were lovers.
Link to original...
h/t: Against the Grain
Saturday, January 2, 2010
A Catholic Manhattan Declaration
We'll take Manhattan. The Declaration has a kind of exiting flavor to it when you name it after Manhattan.
Christopher Ferrara
(Posted 12/31/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Two months after World War I began, with Christmas approaching, Pope Benedict XV, in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (1914), echoed the judgment of both of his immediate predecessors on the state of what the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has rather mordantly described as “the new world of human liberty.” And Pope Benedict wanted to be clear that “it was not the present sanguinary strife alone” that had prompted him to continue in the line of papal pessimism about political modernity. “There is another evil raging in the very inmost heart of human society,” he wrote, “a source of dread to all who really think, inasmuch as it has already brought, and will bring, many misfortunes upon nations, and may rightly be considered to be the root cause of the present awful war.”
Read the article here...
Christopher Ferrara
(Posted 12/31/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Two months after World War I began, with Christmas approaching, Pope Benedict XV, in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (1914), echoed the judgment of both of his immediate predecessors on the state of what the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has rather mordantly described as “the new world of human liberty.” And Pope Benedict wanted to be clear that “it was not the present sanguinary strife alone” that had prompted him to continue in the line of papal pessimism about political modernity. “There is another evil raging in the very inmost heart of human society,” he wrote, “a source of dread to all who really think, inasmuch as it has already brought, and will bring, many misfortunes upon nations, and may rightly be considered to be the root cause of the present awful war.”
Read the article here...
Turkey wants St Nick back [To put in a museum]
It's very clear that while the Turkish Government might understand tourism and museums, they have no concept of the sacramental character of St. Nicholas' relics, which have been venerated for centuries where they are in Bari. Furthermore, if they had been left in Bari, considering the record of Turkish governments of the past with regard to the frequent persecutions of Catholics, it's unlikely these relics would have seen the 21st Century in their Myrna.
Turkey wants St Nick back
ANKARA - TURKEY will ask for the return of the bones of Saint Nicholas, who Father Christmas is modelled on, from their display in Italy, local media reported on Friday.
Saint Nicholas, from the modern-day town of Demre on southern Turkey's Mediterranean coast, is, according to tradition, the ancestor of Father Christmas, but his remains were stolen by Italian pirates in the 11th century.
'These bones should be exposed here and not in a town of pirates' in Bari, said Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay, quoted in the newspaper Milliyet. 'If we build a museum in this town (Demre), naturally the first thing we will ask for are the remains of Father Christmas.'
Turkey wants St Nick back
ANKARA - TURKEY will ask for the return of the bones of Saint Nicholas, who Father Christmas is modelled on, from their display in Italy, local media reported on Friday.
Saint Nicholas, from the modern-day town of Demre on southern Turkey's Mediterranean coast, is, according to tradition, the ancestor of Father Christmas, but his remains were stolen by Italian pirates in the 11th century.
'These bones should be exposed here and not in a town of pirates' in Bari, said Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay, quoted in the newspaper Milliyet. 'If we build a museum in this town (Demre), naturally the first thing we will ask for are the remains of Father Christmas.'
Whithering Beatnik Nuns Devoted to Environmentalism not Vocations
The following article actually mentions something key that:
It's not a question of going into obsolescence, but it's a question of auto-leisionism, or self-destruction. These gnostico-pantheists ought to be sorted out, given severance packages and sent packing. These Religious orders are becoming irrelevant because no one believes they are anything more than social workers.
The loyalty of these Massachusets Sisters rests more with Marxist pet causes like environmentalism than it is to their founding principles and their interest in things like this will be inversely related to the numbers of vocations they receive, which is a fairly good indicator of success.
Shrinking religious orders take up land conservation [Surely, it couldn't be as important as teaching Catechism to the poor or making altar breads]
Looking over the wooded parcel her Catholic order sold in 1992, Sister Chris Loughlin stood with arms folded, the regret on her face plain to see.
But Loughlin and her fellow Dominican sisters in Plainville, Mass., about 30 miles southwest of Boston, have more than made up for the loss of 10 acres from the former orchard that was bequeathed to the order in 1949.
Gesturing to surrounding fields and forests, Loughlin explained: "Now we have these 42 acres, and 32 of them are in a conservation restriction. So no matter what happens at this point, at least the land is preserved."
The old orchard is now home to the Crystal Springs Earth Learning Center, and the rambling farmhouse is the unassuming headquarters of a remarkable land conservation initiative, the Religious Lands Conservancy.
Launched by Loughlin in 2002 with the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, the Religious Lands Conservancy has been instrumental in placing hundreds of acres owned by religious communities into conservation. With a faith-based mission to protect the Earth, Loughlin has approached congregations throughout the Northeast to broach the spiritual value of conservation.
It's not just a feel-good spiritual mission. During the past 40 years, the number of Catholic nuns has plummeted 66 percent, and the number of Catholic brothers by 60 percent. The financial strain of dwindling membership has resulted in lucrative -- and often attractive -- offers to sell the orders' land to developers.
Loughlin said that although religious orders are fading, their land could yet be a lasting legacy.
She is among a growing network of Catholic sisters who have reexamined their connection to the Earth in the context of their faith. Mary Evelyn Tucker, a professor of environmental and religious studies at Yale University, said the increasing involvement of religious groups in preservation is not simply a trend but also "the rediscovery of ancient traditions." [Wow]
"All the rituals of world religions are very much nature-based," she said.
The green-sister revolution is rooted in the teachings of the Rev. Thomas Berry, who before his death in June fostered the idea that the environmental crisis must also be understood as a spiritual crisis. Sister Miriam MacGillis, a Dominican nun who has been at the forefront of the movement, said Berry's perspective shifted her work "quite radically" to encompass a respect for all life on Earth.
Ever since MacGillis helped found the 226-acre Genesis Farm and its Earth studies center in Blairstown, N.J., in 1980, Catholic sisters across the United States and Canada have woven environmental justice and community-supported agriculture into their religious vocation.
Living in Massachusetts -- the nation's third-most densely populated state -- the Dominican sisters of Plainville are helping to save a critical habitat, said Bob Wilber, director of land protection for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and their foresight has helped spark conversations with other orders.
Read further...
As religious orders took root across the United States in the 19th century, they built networks of schools, hospitals and orphanages to provide services to the poor and marginalized. The rise of government and private programs, however, made many of these institutions obsolete.
It's not a question of going into obsolescence, but it's a question of auto-leisionism, or self-destruction. These gnostico-pantheists ought to be sorted out, given severance packages and sent packing. These Religious orders are becoming irrelevant because no one believes they are anything more than social workers.
The loyalty of these Massachusets Sisters rests more with Marxist pet causes like environmentalism than it is to their founding principles and their interest in things like this will be inversely related to the numbers of vocations they receive, which is a fairly good indicator of success.
Shrinking religious orders take up land conservation [Surely, it couldn't be as important as teaching Catechism to the poor or making altar breads]
Looking over the wooded parcel her Catholic order sold in 1992, Sister Chris Loughlin stood with arms folded, the regret on her face plain to see.
But Loughlin and her fellow Dominican sisters in Plainville, Mass., about 30 miles southwest of Boston, have more than made up for the loss of 10 acres from the former orchard that was bequeathed to the order in 1949.
Gesturing to surrounding fields and forests, Loughlin explained: "Now we have these 42 acres, and 32 of them are in a conservation restriction. So no matter what happens at this point, at least the land is preserved."
The old orchard is now home to the Crystal Springs Earth Learning Center, and the rambling farmhouse is the unassuming headquarters of a remarkable land conservation initiative, the Religious Lands Conservancy.
Launched by Loughlin in 2002 with the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, the Religious Lands Conservancy has been instrumental in placing hundreds of acres owned by religious communities into conservation. With a faith-based mission to protect the Earth, Loughlin has approached congregations throughout the Northeast to broach the spiritual value of conservation.
It's not just a feel-good spiritual mission. During the past 40 years, the number of Catholic nuns has plummeted 66 percent, and the number of Catholic brothers by 60 percent. The financial strain of dwindling membership has resulted in lucrative -- and often attractive -- offers to sell the orders' land to developers.
Loughlin said that although religious orders are fading, their land could yet be a lasting legacy.
She is among a growing network of Catholic sisters who have reexamined their connection to the Earth in the context of their faith. Mary Evelyn Tucker, a professor of environmental and religious studies at Yale University, said the increasing involvement of religious groups in preservation is not simply a trend but also "the rediscovery of ancient traditions." [Wow]
"All the rituals of world religions are very much nature-based," she said.
The green-sister revolution is rooted in the teachings of the Rev. Thomas Berry, who before his death in June fostered the idea that the environmental crisis must also be understood as a spiritual crisis. Sister Miriam MacGillis, a Dominican nun who has been at the forefront of the movement, said Berry's perspective shifted her work "quite radically" to encompass a respect for all life on Earth.
Ever since MacGillis helped found the 226-acre Genesis Farm and its Earth studies center in Blairstown, N.J., in 1980, Catholic sisters across the United States and Canada have woven environmental justice and community-supported agriculture into their religious vocation.
Living in Massachusetts -- the nation's third-most densely populated state -- the Dominican sisters of Plainville are helping to save a critical habitat, said Bob Wilber, director of land protection for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and their foresight has helped spark conversations with other orders.
Read further...
Laicization is the Heroin of Ecclesiastical Life
Lay involvement is like spiritual heroin for Catholic communities. It may address the pain, but not the disease and ultimately it impedes the recovery of the patient. We might point out which the following article also mentions that before Vatican II and the "Active Lay Participation" it called for, or was called for in its name, there was no vocations crisis. We almost had more priests in the early sixties than was good for us, and many of them fled (or in many cases, thrown out) in the cultural haze of the 60s to find sustainance where they could. You might say they were Aggionamentized (Bl. John XXIIIs word to describe what he was doing to the Church in 1963)
Lay involvement in Church life has been an increasing factor in the last few hundred years anyway, what with laymen getting positions teaching in Catholic Theology faculties and ultimately, taking over the running of Church-related businesses like the making of altar breads (once made exclusively by priests chanting the Psalms) presses and newspapers in the United States during the 30s, much, we might add, to the detriment of the latter.
While attending the New Mass, or seeing it on television, it's common to see a rather well-dressed layman or laywoman, doing the readings, approaching the tabernacle and handling the Sacred Species with an air of self-importance that's hard not to generally notice. Like a Nun working at an abortuary, they seem to understand that they don't belong their; but rebellion is in the air, even for the elderly as is often the case. They are generally indifferent to their surroundings and the importance of the things they're handling or of what they represent. This Ecclesistical Dictatorship of the Proletariat is conceived and impelled to demean the sacredness of holy places and events; there is a pedestrian feel to the whole thing, like going to listen to a sales meeting by Monks, getting married at the post-office or to purchase a new car in a church as Huysman's reports:
Laicization poses as a solution and is really part of the problem. Parishes which do not have these kinds of pseudo-clerical ministries, by the way, not only produce more vocations, but produce more children as well.
But we can't expect an author, educated no doubt, by a secular faculty with all kinds of false notions about philosophy and religion, to do anything else than perpetuate the propaganda now being levelled at the Irish Church by a bevy of vindictive journalists, washed up rock stars and laity, eagerly and so bravely joining in on the kicking of one who has momentarily fallen.
By 2015 Catholics will be familiar with lay people in priestly roles. [But the laity generally always have been familiar with those roles, which is why they were generally unwilling to usurp them, even at great need]
PATSY McGARRY
ANALYSIS: In the second of our series looking at what things might be like five years hence, we consider the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, where ordinations have collapsed along with its moral authority [Is this wishful thinking or a guilty conscience?]
THERE WAS a poignancy in the air at the ordination of three men as Redemptorist priests in St Joseph’s Church, Dundalk, on Sunday December 6th. In the front pew a female relative of one of the men wept copiously as the ceremony progressed.
It was conducted by the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, who was clearly still reeling from the findings of the Murphy report, published on November 26th, while also attending to his duties. He seemed exhausted. In a momentary lapse he forgot the name of one of the young men. Then, remembering, he commented it was “Seán, the same name as my own”. There was a laugh from the congregation.
The three men made up the largest number to be ordained at once for the Redemptorist congregation in more than 10 years. They were Brian Nolan (31) from Limerick, Tony Rice (31) from Belfast, and Seán Duggan (30) from Galway.
They are no starry-eyed neophytes. Brian Nolan, a former electronics student at Limerick Institute of Technology, admitted that when he told people that he was in the religious life, “it can be a conversation stopper”. But still, he didn’t “feel the need to hold back from telling people what I’m doing”.
Tony Rice worked in a bank for four years. He said the difficulties in the church were symptomatic of a general lack of leadership in a number of areas in our society. “People have reason to be disappointed with several institutions right now – banks, politicians, the church and so many others . . . We need strong, just and accountable leadership to renew our vision and our hope in humanity,” he said.
Seán Duggan gave up corporate law to become a priest. “The choices I have made are not knee-jerk reactions. They have been thought about and talked about over a period of eight years’ training,” he said. “The questions that people throw to me such as celibacy, inept church leadership, married priests and more, are all questions that I’ve thought about myself. It’s not as if I live in a bubble cut off from reality,” he said.
On Sunday November 15th Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said his archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes. “We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes,” he said.
Last April he said there were now 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40 in Dublin. It also emerged at the time that the number of priests in Tuam’s Catholic archdiocese will fall by 30 per cent over the next four years, leaving most parishes there with just one resident priest.
Meanwhile, writing in the Furrow magazine last June, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest at St Muredach’s Cathedral, in Ballina, Co Mayo, said of his own Killala diocese that “in 20 years’ time there will be around eight priests instead of the present 34, with probably two or three under 60 years of age”.
He continued “the difficult truth is that priests will have effectively disappeared in Ireland in two to three decades”.
For people of a certain age the very idea of an Ireland without Catholic priests is, truly, beyond imagination. This is not hard to understand. Speaking to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin on November 13th the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, recalled that of the 50 students in his Leaving Cert class of 1952, 20 went on for the priesthood. Vocations were so high then that between a third and a half of Irish priests went on the missions. [Then came the Vatican Council II]
But, almost 50 years later, all has changed. The number of priests in Ireland is in serious decline. The average age of the Irish Catholic priest today is put at 63. For those who are members of religious congregations the average age is in the early 70s.
Each priest must retire at 75. As the Americans say, you do the math!
At the end of September last there were 77 men training for the priesthood at Maynooth. Of that number, 36 entered this year, an increase of 12 on the 24 who entered in 2008.
It is believed to be a blip which won’t alter the downward trend. Meanwhile, for every 10 men who begin training for the priesthood, at Maynooth five or six become priests.
All of which means that the coming decade will see profound change in Catholic Church structures and practices on this island. It will also see the end of the clerical caste which has dominated Irish Catholicism since Victorian times. They will give way, of necessity, to a more lay-directed institution with fewer-but-bigger parishes in fewer-but-bigger dioceses.
An indication of what is to come was illustrated in the Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore last June. That month saw the first ordination to the Catholic priesthood there in eight years when Fr Michael Toomey (39) became a priest.
That same month in that same diocese sacristan Ken Hackett conducted a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion instead of daily Mass at Ardfinnan parish in Co Tipperary. The priest, Fr Robert Power, was away. Mr Hackett is a minister of the Eucharist and a minister of the word and may do as he did according to Vatican norms published in the early 1970s. Women may also conduct such liturgies. [This is a symptom of a bigger problem with entitlement and feminism] The response to him from parishioners was “very, very good”, he told The Irish Times.
Catholic Ireland is embarking on a path others have already taken.
In one diocese in northern France there is only one priest to serve 27 parishes. It means the priest drops by on occasion in each parish to offer Mass and consecrate hosts. The rest of the time parishioners run their own church.
In 2001 the diocese of Nice had to reduce its 265 parishes to 47. The recently created parish there of Nôtre Dame de l’Espérance has five churches.
It had five priests; now there is one. Each church has an appointed lay person, the relais locale, whose duty is to run both church and parish, and perform almost all functions of a priest except celebrating the Eucharist and administering sacraments only a priest can.
A principal function of the relais is to conduct a Sunday Communion service in the absence of the priest, a “Mass” without the consecration. There is frequently no priest at funerals there any more.
Writing about this in The Irish Times on July 8th, former Dominican priest and author David Rice recalled how, at the Église Sacré Coeur in Beaulieu “I attended one such funeral, conducted by the relais locale for the church. She received the coffin. There were words of welcome, the singing of hymns, a short eulogy of the deceased, readings from scripture, a brief reflection by the relais, the lighting of candles beside the coffin, a blessing of the coffin with holy water, and prayers for the deceased. It lasted about half an hour. There was no Mass, as there was no priest.”
He spoke to a woman appointed there as general manager of the parish with its five churches. While her official title was économe, her job was more about administration than money. Unpaid herself, she managed a payroll for nine people, including cleaners, organists and two parish secretaries.
Other lay people – men and women – were active in priestly roles: parish visitation; counselling; pre-marriage instruction; attending the sick; chaplaincies to hospitals and retirement homes; to scout and youth groups. And it is lay people who, almost exclusively, impart the faith to children.
In 10 years, this way of things is likely to be very familiar to Ireland’s Catholic faithful. And that is believed to be likely even if both the mandatory celibacy rule is dropped and women are allowed become Catholic priests.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
Lay involvement in Church life has been an increasing factor in the last few hundred years anyway, what with laymen getting positions teaching in Catholic Theology faculties and ultimately, taking over the running of Church-related businesses like the making of altar breads (once made exclusively by priests chanting the Psalms) presses and newspapers in the United States during the 30s, much, we might add, to the detriment of the latter.
While attending the New Mass, or seeing it on television, it's common to see a rather well-dressed layman or laywoman, doing the readings, approaching the tabernacle and handling the Sacred Species with an air of self-importance that's hard not to generally notice. Like a Nun working at an abortuary, they seem to understand that they don't belong their; but rebellion is in the air, even for the elderly as is often the case. They are generally indifferent to their surroundings and the importance of the things they're handling or of what they represent. This Ecclesistical Dictatorship of the Proletariat is conceived and impelled to demean the sacredness of holy places and events; there is a pedestrian feel to the whole thing, like going to listen to a sales meeting by Monks, getting married at the post-office or to purchase a new car in a church as Huysman's reports:
Ah! far off was the time when Radegonda, Queen of France, had with her own hands prepared the bread destined for the altars, or the time when, after the customs of Cluny, three priests or deacons, fasting and garbed in alb and amice, washed their faces and hands and then picked out the wheat, grain by grain, grinding it under millstone, kneading the paste in a cold and pure water and themselves baking it under a clear fire, while chanting psalms.
Laicization poses as a solution and is really part of the problem. Parishes which do not have these kinds of pseudo-clerical ministries, by the way, not only produce more vocations, but produce more children as well.
But we can't expect an author, educated no doubt, by a secular faculty with all kinds of false notions about philosophy and religion, to do anything else than perpetuate the propaganda now being levelled at the Irish Church by a bevy of vindictive journalists, washed up rock stars and laity, eagerly and so bravely joining in on the kicking of one who has momentarily fallen.
By 2015 Catholics will be familiar with lay people in priestly roles. [But the laity generally always have been familiar with those roles, which is why they were generally unwilling to usurp them, even at great need]
PATSY McGARRY
ANALYSIS: In the second of our series looking at what things might be like five years hence, we consider the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, where ordinations have collapsed along with its moral authority [Is this wishful thinking or a guilty conscience?]
THERE WAS a poignancy in the air at the ordination of three men as Redemptorist priests in St Joseph’s Church, Dundalk, on Sunday December 6th. In the front pew a female relative of one of the men wept copiously as the ceremony progressed.
It was conducted by the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, who was clearly still reeling from the findings of the Murphy report, published on November 26th, while also attending to his duties. He seemed exhausted. In a momentary lapse he forgot the name of one of the young men. Then, remembering, he commented it was “Seán, the same name as my own”. There was a laugh from the congregation.
The three men made up the largest number to be ordained at once for the Redemptorist congregation in more than 10 years. They were Brian Nolan (31) from Limerick, Tony Rice (31) from Belfast, and Seán Duggan (30) from Galway.
They are no starry-eyed neophytes. Brian Nolan, a former electronics student at Limerick Institute of Technology, admitted that when he told people that he was in the religious life, “it can be a conversation stopper”. But still, he didn’t “feel the need to hold back from telling people what I’m doing”.
Tony Rice worked in a bank for four years. He said the difficulties in the church were symptomatic of a general lack of leadership in a number of areas in our society. “People have reason to be disappointed with several institutions right now – banks, politicians, the church and so many others . . . We need strong, just and accountable leadership to renew our vision and our hope in humanity,” he said.
Seán Duggan gave up corporate law to become a priest. “The choices I have made are not knee-jerk reactions. They have been thought about and talked about over a period of eight years’ training,” he said. “The questions that people throw to me such as celibacy, inept church leadership, married priests and more, are all questions that I’ve thought about myself. It’s not as if I live in a bubble cut off from reality,” he said.
On Sunday November 15th Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said his archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes. “We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes,” he said.
Last April he said there were now 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40 in Dublin. It also emerged at the time that the number of priests in Tuam’s Catholic archdiocese will fall by 30 per cent over the next four years, leaving most parishes there with just one resident priest.
Meanwhile, writing in the Furrow magazine last June, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest at St Muredach’s Cathedral, in Ballina, Co Mayo, said of his own Killala diocese that “in 20 years’ time there will be around eight priests instead of the present 34, with probably two or three under 60 years of age”.
He continued “the difficult truth is that priests will have effectively disappeared in Ireland in two to three decades”.
For people of a certain age the very idea of an Ireland without Catholic priests is, truly, beyond imagination. This is not hard to understand. Speaking to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin on November 13th the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, recalled that of the 50 students in his Leaving Cert class of 1952, 20 went on for the priesthood. Vocations were so high then that between a third and a half of Irish priests went on the missions. [Then came the Vatican Council II]
But, almost 50 years later, all has changed. The number of priests in Ireland is in serious decline. The average age of the Irish Catholic priest today is put at 63. For those who are members of religious congregations the average age is in the early 70s.
Each priest must retire at 75. As the Americans say, you do the math!
At the end of September last there were 77 men training for the priesthood at Maynooth. Of that number, 36 entered this year, an increase of 12 on the 24 who entered in 2008.
It is believed to be a blip which won’t alter the downward trend. Meanwhile, for every 10 men who begin training for the priesthood, at Maynooth five or six become priests.
All of which means that the coming decade will see profound change in Catholic Church structures and practices on this island. It will also see the end of the clerical caste which has dominated Irish Catholicism since Victorian times. They will give way, of necessity, to a more lay-directed institution with fewer-but-bigger parishes in fewer-but-bigger dioceses.
An indication of what is to come was illustrated in the Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore last June. That month saw the first ordination to the Catholic priesthood there in eight years when Fr Michael Toomey (39) became a priest.
That same month in that same diocese sacristan Ken Hackett conducted a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion instead of daily Mass at Ardfinnan parish in Co Tipperary. The priest, Fr Robert Power, was away. Mr Hackett is a minister of the Eucharist and a minister of the word and may do as he did according to Vatican norms published in the early 1970s. Women may also conduct such liturgies. [This is a symptom of a bigger problem with entitlement and feminism] The response to him from parishioners was “very, very good”, he told The Irish Times.
Catholic Ireland is embarking on a path others have already taken.
In one diocese in northern France there is only one priest to serve 27 parishes. It means the priest drops by on occasion in each parish to offer Mass and consecrate hosts. The rest of the time parishioners run their own church.
In 2001 the diocese of Nice had to reduce its 265 parishes to 47. The recently created parish there of Nôtre Dame de l’Espérance has five churches.
It had five priests; now there is one. Each church has an appointed lay person, the relais locale, whose duty is to run both church and parish, and perform almost all functions of a priest except celebrating the Eucharist and administering sacraments only a priest can.
A principal function of the relais is to conduct a Sunday Communion service in the absence of the priest, a “Mass” without the consecration. There is frequently no priest at funerals there any more.
Writing about this in The Irish Times on July 8th, former Dominican priest and author David Rice recalled how, at the Église Sacré Coeur in Beaulieu “I attended one such funeral, conducted by the relais locale for the church. She received the coffin. There were words of welcome, the singing of hymns, a short eulogy of the deceased, readings from scripture, a brief reflection by the relais, the lighting of candles beside the coffin, a blessing of the coffin with holy water, and prayers for the deceased. It lasted about half an hour. There was no Mass, as there was no priest.”
He spoke to a woman appointed there as general manager of the parish with its five churches. While her official title was économe, her job was more about administration than money. Unpaid herself, she managed a payroll for nine people, including cleaners, organists and two parish secretaries.
Other lay people – men and women – were active in priestly roles: parish visitation; counselling; pre-marriage instruction; attending the sick; chaplaincies to hospitals and retirement homes; to scout and youth groups. And it is lay people who, almost exclusively, impart the faith to children.
In 10 years, this way of things is likely to be very familiar to Ireland’s Catholic faithful. And that is believed to be likely even if both the mandatory celibacy rule is dropped and women are allowed become Catholic priests.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
English Conservatives Lament that they have No Rush Limbaugh
One of the respondents to an Op-Ed piece, commenting with relief that Rush Limbaugh was recovering from his operation, in the Telegraph today focused on the lack of any conservative voice at all in the British Media. Despite a few writers on the staff at the Telegraph like Gerald Warner, the Media is completely dominated by Liberals there. It should remind Americans that they are fortunate to have at least one media segment not slavishly devoted to the party line. At the very least it should keep alive the fiction of free-speech.
Link to original...
And don't forget that the Left owned and operated USCCB was lobbying to have Rush investigated for some strange reason. If Soros isn't pulling the strings, then very likely it is someone controlled by him.
Well, where is our Rush Limbaugh? What media outlet in the UK caters to conservatives? I cannot find it, if there is one. The BBC (British State Television) is blatant propaganda, but the same ideas are retailed on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky – Sky is majoring on environmental issues at the moment. The newspapers are uniformly left-wing, including the Daily Telegraph, which makes a point of including some genuinely conservative content but ultimately always backing the centrist line of the likes of Cameron. What about those who want to withdraw from the EU? stop all immigration? End the global warming, health and safety and race relations nonsenses and their associated bureaucracies? Abolish income tax? Abolish the welfare state? The DT leader writers would have a heart attack. Even on these blogs it is noticeable that nearly all blogwriters are well to the left of their audience (Delingpole, Gerald Warner and a few others are exceptions for which I am indeed grateful!) YOu seem to be socialists and supporters of a big state who are trying to straddle a divide and keep the real conservatives on board somehow, although the main DT editorial line cannot be described as conservative. The Daily Mail? The same story – some support for conservatism while careful not to overstep the multiculti establishment’s red lines. Where is our press?
Link to original...
And don't forget that the Left owned and operated USCCB was lobbying to have Rush investigated for some strange reason. If Soros isn't pulling the strings, then very likely it is someone controlled by him.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Sandro Magister on Holland
Holland was once called the showcase of the Church and now, after almost half a century of the Vatican Council, the deleterious effects of the Jesuits and liberals within the Church, the Dutch Church is almost completely dead. Nothing underscores this more than the recent death of the Dominican, Fr. Schilebeeckx.
In Holland, There's No More Room for the Child Jesus. Or Then Again, There Is
ROME, December 30, 2009 – Until half a century ago, Dutch and Flemish Catholicism seemed to be in solid shape, strong in its traditions, active in mission. One of its symbols was Fr. Jozef Damiaan de Veuster (1840-1889), an apostle to the lepers on an island in the Pacific, who was proclaimed a saint by Benedict XVI last October 11.
A few days ago, just before Christmas, another great symbol of this Catholicism died at the age of 95 in Nijmegen, Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, Flemish by birth, Dutch by choice.
However, this is a symbol not of the flourishing but of the astonishing deterioration that the Church of Flanders and of Holland has experienced over the past half century.
Schillebeeckx reflected this metamorphosis in his own life as a theologian. In the years of Vatican Council II and of the period immediately after the council, he was a star of worldwide impact, a champion of the new theology in step with the dominant culture. But then he was almost forgotten, even by the Catholics who had acclaimed him.
The disregard that fell over him went hand in hand with what was happening in the meantime in Dutch Catholicism, increasingly more forgetful of itself, increasingly secularized, increasingly in danger of disappearing.
The survey reproduced below is a snapshot of the current profile of the Catholic Church in Holland. A country in which today 41 percent of the population say that they have no religious faith, and 58 percent no longer know what Christmas is. A Church in which there are Dominicans and Jesuits who are theorizing and practicing Masses without priesthood or Christian sacrament, in which those present "consecrate" collectively, around a "table that is also open to people of different religious traditions."
All of this while at the same time, a city like Rotterdam has been thoroughly Islamized, as www.chiesa showed in a shocking article a few months ago.
The survey that follows is by Marina Corradi, and was published on December 23 in "Avvenire," the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops' conference. Its epicenter is Amsterdam.
The reportage is accompanied by an interview with Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, archbishop emeritus of Utrecht.
_________
Read the remainder of the article with an interview by a Liberal Prelate at the end.
In Holland, There's No More Room for the Child Jesus. Or Then Again, There Is
ROME, December 30, 2009 – Until half a century ago, Dutch and Flemish Catholicism seemed to be in solid shape, strong in its traditions, active in mission. One of its symbols was Fr. Jozef Damiaan de Veuster (1840-1889), an apostle to the lepers on an island in the Pacific, who was proclaimed a saint by Benedict XVI last October 11.
A few days ago, just before Christmas, another great symbol of this Catholicism died at the age of 95 in Nijmegen, Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, Flemish by birth, Dutch by choice.
However, this is a symbol not of the flourishing but of the astonishing deterioration that the Church of Flanders and of Holland has experienced over the past half century.
Schillebeeckx reflected this metamorphosis in his own life as a theologian. In the years of Vatican Council II and of the period immediately after the council, he was a star of worldwide impact, a champion of the new theology in step with the dominant culture. But then he was almost forgotten, even by the Catholics who had acclaimed him.
The disregard that fell over him went hand in hand with what was happening in the meantime in Dutch Catholicism, increasingly more forgetful of itself, increasingly secularized, increasingly in danger of disappearing.
The survey reproduced below is a snapshot of the current profile of the Catholic Church in Holland. A country in which today 41 percent of the population say that they have no religious faith, and 58 percent no longer know what Christmas is. A Church in which there are Dominicans and Jesuits who are theorizing and practicing Masses without priesthood or Christian sacrament, in which those present "consecrate" collectively, around a "table that is also open to people of different religious traditions."
All of this while at the same time, a city like Rotterdam has been thoroughly Islamized, as www.chiesa showed in a shocking article a few months ago.
The survey that follows is by Marina Corradi, and was published on December 23 in "Avvenire," the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops' conference. Its epicenter is Amsterdam.
The reportage is accompanied by an interview with Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, archbishop emeritus of Utrecht.
_________
Read the remainder of the article with an interview by a Liberal Prelate at the end.
The New Irish Blasphemy Laws will Displease Everyone
Even the atheists are right about this one. These laws will restrict even good intolerant speech about false religions and make it even harder for the Catholic Church in Ireland to do its job. This is yet another reason why the Irish Republic was a bad idea when it was first conceived and remains a bad idea today, but so much worse for its execution. It must make laws to appease the invisible authocracy of "consensus" but only does so in the name of a non-existent popular sovereignty.
Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.
The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).
It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".
Link to remainder of Guardian article...
Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.
The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).
It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".
Link to remainder of Guardian article...
Berkeley Communist Criticizes Vatican Visitation
Does this look like a Nun to you?
Some "Catholic" Religious Don't Look the Part
The National Catholic Reporter has been harping on the issue of the Vatican Investigation of US Women Religious for some time now. Now they're enabling this dysfunctional religious family, giving air to their delusions and presenting a Catholicism that is counterfeit; that's what the NCR does.
Sister Sandy herself teaches Scripture, the kind of scripture scholar who tried to tell you that the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes wasn't a real miracle, at the Jesuit School of Theololgy at Berkeley California, and attempts to derail the Visitation by suggesting that the problems facing women religious in the Unitied States isn't really a problem. If American religious were alchoholics, we might say that they were self-deceived.
CR Editor Tom Fox interviewed Schneiders, asking her about the purpose and timing of her five-part essay.
NCR: Why did you write this article, why now?
Schneiders: To begin with “why now,” because the Vatican investigation of U.S. women religious has created what the Chinese ideogram for “crisis” means, namely, a situation of danger and opportunity. Religious and their life are in danger from three directions.
•First, they do not know what the Vatican plans to do with whatever information it collects and, if those who suspect that the conclusions were reached before the investigation began are correct this danger is not illusory.[Note how she condescendingly refers to the more traditional young women who are no enthused by the religious life. The more conservative orders are the ones who are getting the vocations, not the liberal ones that this Berkeley radical envisions]
•Second, there is the danger that some religious will become so disgusted, discouraged, disheartened, even justifiably angered by this implied questioning of the integrity of their lives and the authenticity of their ministries, and by the clear signals that they are expected, if they want ecclesiastical approval, to get back “in the box” that defined their pre-conciliar lives, that they will simply give up, either on religious life itself or on their own vocations to it, or on a church which seems to be defined by a narrow, rigid, exclusively institutional ecclesiology. [This isn't such a bad thing. If you don't like being a Catholic religious, hit the road and become something else. Many of these religious are actually destroying the Church and their attempts to deny either that or that they are somehow coherent with Catholic thought, are becoming increasingly hard for them to deny.]
•Third, there is the danger that generous younger women who are intelligent, courageous, motivated not by medieval romanticism or elitism but by love of the world for which Christ died, and who feel called to the following of Jesus in ministerial religious life will decide that they do not want to spend their lives and energy struggling with a patriarchal institution which denies their full human and Christian personhood.
Read the article...
Link to US Women Religious: Dysfunctional Family Values...
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Persecution Against Christians Continues in Iraq
Mosul (AsiaNews) - Attacks continue against Christians to push them to flee from Iraq. Yesterday afternoon Zhaki Homo Bashir, a Christian deacon, was hit by gunfire from a group of unknown criminals. The man had just entered his shop located in the district of al Jadida. Seriously injured, he was transported to hospital. AsiaNews published the news yesterday of the kidnapping a college student from an Islamic group.
Asia News...
Asia News...
Cardinal Schönborn is Spying on Medjugorje
Catholic Culture is going to set us straight, but we heard that the Cardinal was bringing his clown makeup and some paintings by recently deceased Hrdlicka for altar settings.
Conflicting interpretations of Cardinal Schönborn's 'private' visit to Medjugorje
December 31, 2009
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna has been in Medjugorje this week, on a visit to the site where the Virgin Mary has allegedly been appearing regularly since 1981. The cardinal met with some of the “seers” who claim to receive regular messages from the Virgin, and celebrated Mass at the Medjugorje parish church.
The Austrian cardinal has been careful to emphasize that he is making a “private” visit, not endorsing the authenticity of the reported apparitions nor violating the official Church policy that discourages pilgrimages to Medjugorje. Nevertheless Cardinal Schönborn’s visit has been viewed by supporters of the Medjugorje “seers” as a tacit endorsement—particularly when the cardinal said that it is impossible to deny the “good fruits” of the Medjugorje phenomenon and observed that some events defy a natural explanation.
It is possible to put an entirely different construction on the cardinal’s visit, however. Cardinal Schönborn is a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is reportedly studying the Medjugorje phenomenon, and may be collecting information to help form a definitive Vatican stand regarding the reported apparitions. Cardinal Schönborn has unquestioned influence at the Vatican; [source?] he is a former student and close ally of Pope Benedict, who chaired the editorial committee that prepared the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Link to original...
Milwaukee Sex Abuse Archbishop Has Center Named after Him
Sex Abuse Archbishop is retired but his legacy lives on in Milwaukee as professional Victims Make Demands of new Archbishop..
MILWAUKEE -- A local sex abuse survivors group is challenging Milwaukee's archbishop designate to make major changes during his first three months in the archdiocese.
The "Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests," or SNAP, said they want Bishop Jerome Listecki to chart a new course in the diocese.
The group is calling for the resignation or firing of auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba.
Snap said Sklba was instrumental in covering up several sex abuse cases in the Milwaukee diocese.
They also want bishop Listecki to rename the Weakland Center at the cathedral.
The building is named after former archbishop Rembert Weakland, who admitted to a homosexual affair several years ago.
"We're here today to say to Archbishop Listecki, 'take your first 100 days and do a couple things to get this Weakland-Sklba era behind us,'" said SNAP's Peter Isley.
Link to original...
His proclivities are not only connected with sexual abuse, but with vandalism as this Seattle Catholic report from several years ago indicates....
MILWAUKEE -- A local sex abuse survivors group is challenging Milwaukee's archbishop designate to make major changes during his first three months in the archdiocese.
The "Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests," or SNAP, said they want Bishop Jerome Listecki to chart a new course in the diocese.
The group is calling for the resignation or firing of auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba.
Snap said Sklba was instrumental in covering up several sex abuse cases in the Milwaukee diocese.
They also want bishop Listecki to rename the Weakland Center at the cathedral.
The building is named after former archbishop Rembert Weakland, who admitted to a homosexual affair several years ago.
"We're here today to say to Archbishop Listecki, 'take your first 100 days and do a couple things to get this Weakland-Sklba era behind us,'" said SNAP's Peter Isley.
Link to original...
His proclivities are not only connected with sexual abuse, but with vandalism as this Seattle Catholic report from several years ago indicates....
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