Click here to view the embedded video.

The press release takes note:

Their occupations are widely different but they share a unifying commitment to their faith. Fourteen men – including an internationally recognized surgeon, a civic lawyer, a banker, a mail carrier, and an auto mechanic – will be ordained at St. Michael’s Cathedral at 10 a.m. on May 26 as permanent deacons for the Archdiocese of Toronto. The Mass and ordination ceremony will be presided over by Bishop Vincent Nguyen, Auxiliary Bishop of Toronto and Vicar for Deacons.

Permanent deacons serve the Church by assisting the archbishop and priests of the diocese. Their roles may be linked to charitable work in the community (i.e., hospital or jail chaplaincy), ministering in parishes and schools, and serving directly on the altar – they have the liturgical authority to baptize children, witness marriages and preside at funerals.

In 1967, following the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church reintroduced the permanent diaconate program. Unlike transitional deacons, permanent deacons are not studying to become priests – once ordained, they remain deacons for the rest of their lives. Since 1972, St. Augustine’s Seminary in Scarborough has provided the formation program for diaconal candidates and their wives. The program currently involves one year of prayer and discernment and four years of formation and theological study. Including the current candidates, 120 deacons now serve throughout the Archdiocese of Toronto.

Read more about all the men ordained at the link.

Congratulations, eh!  Ad multos annos!

Click here to view the embedded video.

A  translation of the Latin verses:

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest,
and in our hearts take up Thy rest;
come with Thy grace and heav’nly aid,
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

O Comforter, to Thee we cry,
Thou heav’nly gift of God most high,
Thou Fount of life, and Fire of love,
and sweet anointing from above.

O Finger of the hand divine,
the sevenfold gifts of grace are thine;
true promise of the Father thou,
who dost the tongue with power endow.

Thy light to every sense impart,
and shed thy love in every heart;
thine own unfailing might supply
to strengthen our infirmity.

Drive far away our ghostly foe,
and thine abiding peace bestow;
if thou be our preventing Guide,
no evil can our steps betide.

Praise we the Father and the Son
and Holy Spirit with them One;
and may the Son on us bestow
the gifts that from the Spirit flow.

After this story hit, the jail has decided to change its policy.

Details:

A temporary policy allowing the use of sacramental wine in Catholic Mass at the Cannon Detention Center is now the jail’s permanent policy.

A flareup this week over the use of wine during the celebration of Mass at the jail led to the replacement of a chaplain, Monsignor Ed Lofton.

Lofton won’t be back at the jail, but Sheriff Al Cannon said Thursday that he would allow priests to drink wine at Mass on a temporary basis.

On Friday Cannon said that after concurring with the Diocese of Charleston, he decided to confirm that policy.

In a statement, diocese officials said they are satisfied with the policy and are “pleased this matter has been amicably resolved.”

They added, “It is unfortunate that this matter was not resolved privately.” The diocese “has always enjoyed a positive relationship with federal, state and local correctional and detention facilities in its prison ministry which includes the celebration of Mass for inmates. In that celebration, the presence of wine is essential,” the statement said.

Read the rest.

Behold, the 17 new Catholic deacons—soon to be priests—who were once Anglican priests in the UK.

They were ordained today for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Ad multos annos!

UPDATE: This item crackled across the wire yesterday, with news about the ordinariate in the United States:

A former Episcopal priest, Matthew Venuti of Mobile, Alabama, will make history when he becomes the first priest ordained for the Catholic Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. The U.S.-based ordinariate was created by Pope Benedict XVI to welcome Anglican groups and clergy seeking to become Catholic while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage. It is equivalent to a diocese, but national in scope.

Mobile Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi will ordain Venuti a priest on Saturday, June 2, 10 a.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, 2 South Claiborne Street, Mobile, AL 36602, along with four priests for the Archdiocese of Mobile.

Venuti’s ordination will be followed by 29 more ordinations of former Anglican priests across the United States this summer. They include hospital executive Jon Chalmers on June 3 in Greenville, South Carolina, followed by a father and son in Fort Worth, Texas; an editor of a major Catholic website in Virginia; military chaplains; and former Anglican priests in Arizona, California, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states.

There’s more at the link.

We’ve had wedding processions go viral, and “Thriller” dances at weddings become worldwide phenomena.   Sometimes, entire cities have gotten into the act.

Now another entry in the “Can you top this for sheer video exhibitionism?” sweepstakes: a marriage proposal that includes everything—tossed flower petals, dancing Jews, a same-sex kiss, a marching band, and over 60 friends and family members willing to stage something outrageously over-the-top for online posterity.

Some will love it.  Some will hate it.  (Me, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff.) But decades hence, it will stand—along with all those other examples above—as a video snapshot of our times.

In 2012, it seems, you haven’t really done anything until you’ve done it with dozens of other goofy people, set it to music, and uploaded it to the Internet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Catholic priest removed from the ministry ten years ago for sexually abusing young girls has found another job — with the TSA.

Thomas Harkins, once a priest at churches throughout South Jersey, now works as a TSA supervisor at the Philadelphia International Airport, CBS Philly reports.

He was forced to leave the church in 2002, when the Diocese of Camden found him guilty of sexually abusing two young girls.

Now, a third alleged victim has come forward, according to the station.

In a new lawsuit, Harkins is accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl as many as 15 times between 1980 and 1981. One of the alleged incidents occurred in Harkins’ bedroom at the rectory of Saint Anthony of Padua parish in Hammonton, N.J, where Harkins worked at the time.

CBS Philly tracked Harkins down at the airport to ask if the public should be concerned about his past.

“No, they should not be worried,” Harkins said. “I have nothing to say.”

But Karen Polesir, a spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) isn’t so tight-lipped.

“They should know who they are hiring,” Polesir told CBS Philly.

“As the public, we are screened to our underwear getting on a plane, and yet they hire a man like that.”

Read more.

That’s the bitter assessment of one Ruthenian Catholic priest, and it provoked an interesting essay in First Things on a subject we in the Latin Rite don’t hear about very much:

Gathered for their ad limina, Eastern Catholic bishops from the U.S. were addressed last week by Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Leonardo Cardinal Sandri. His injunction—made not about abortion, the HHS mandate, war, wealth redistribution, or gay marriage—could have a critical influence on the Christian response to all of the above.

Among the Cardinal’s remarks was a tersely reiterated expectation of celibacy for priests serving the Eastern Catholic Churches in diaspora—in this case the U.S. The message may not have been carried directly from the hand of Benedict but the effect has been unpleasant to say the least.

Enter Thomas Loya, a Ruthenian Catholic priest of the Parma Ohio Eparchy, writing his eparch in response:

In addition to being chillingly reminiscent of the demeaning attitude of the Latin Rite bishops toward the Eastern Catholic Churches during the beginning of the last century in America, the Cardinal’s remarks about celibacy seem to confirm what so many Eastern Catholics in America have suspected for too long: Rome and the Latin Rite see the Eastern Catholic Churches in America as essentially inconsequential, perhaps even in the way of ecumenism between Rome and the Orthodox Churches.

The chilling reminiscence refers, in part, to an exercise in aberrant ecclesiology—more a power play—engineered by Archbishop John Ireland that resulted in an entire body of U.S. Eastern Catholics breaking communion with Rome.

I’m not about to jump into the trenches on the issue of celibacy (I would rather the comments box not turn into a Mixed Martial Arts cage). I’ll simply repeat the known fact that celibacy it is not a dogma of the Church but a discipline, and that its normative status in the Latin Church is not of ancient provenance. Moreover, Loya’s point is not about celibacy per se but ecclesial integrity and mutual respect.

What moves us onto this more sensitive landscape is his suggestion that Rome views the Eastern Catholic churches as “in the way” of relations between itself and the Orthodox Churches. I can certainly see why it would occur to him and he’s not the first to say it. For centuries, the existence of the so-called Uniate Churches has been a vexed point in those relations.

But I wonder how much help he can realistically expect from the Eastern hierarchs. Too many Eastern Catholic bishops behave as though their mandate actually is to allow their Churches to die a slow, palliated death.

Read more.

She delivered the controversial commencement speech at Boston College today.

Details: