The bishops up north are implementing changes in posture at certain points in the liturgy — and even giving very explicit instructions on how to receive communion, right down to which hand to use and how to open your mouth: On Sunday, Nov. 27, Roman Catholic parishes across the United States and much of the English-speaking world officially began using the newest translation of the Roman Missal — the sacred text for the Mass. In Alaska, those linguistic modifications were... Read more
A British writer just back from a monastic retreat shares some insight into welfare and charity that he learned from the world of monks: It occurred to me while on my retreat that the modern welfare system could learn a lot from the abbeys. Until the Reformation, the monastery offered alms to the poor and somewhere for people fleeing tyranny to hide. Post Reformation, the safety net was undone and people threw themselves on the charity of the local lay... Read more
Another sign of the times, from Pittsburgh: warehouses for used tabernacles, statues and religious items: As a seminarian, the Rev. Joseph McCaffrey knelt before a tabernacle in the chapel at Mercy Hospital, where his mother was being treated for a brain tumor, and prayed for her recovery. Later, when he was named pastor of Ss. John and Paul Church in Marshall, he noticed that same tabernacle — an ornamental cabinet used to store the Blessed Sacrament — at his new... Read more
It’s not everybody’s favorite gospel, particularly in the world of professional sports, but it’s got a lot of people talking and thinking — including Frank Bruni in the New York Times: He genuflects so publicly and frequently that to drop to one knee in the precise way he does has been given its own word, along with its own Web site, where you can see photographs of people Tebowing inside St. Peter’s, in front of the Taj Mahal, on sand,... Read more
A woman in my parish dropped me a line today: I’d like your advice. The other day a young man, still a boy, told me he was thinking about becoming a priest. I was very touched by the fact that he shared this with me. I’ll pray that God guides him until he reaches a decision. For Christmas, I’d like to give him a book that tells the story about a man going through the process of discernment, if there... Read more
Here’s a different take on religion and American culture from someone who professes no faith, but is still searching: For a nation of talkers and self-confessors, we are terrible when it comes to talking about God. The discourse has been co-opted by the True Believers, on one hand, and Angry Atheists on the other. What about the rest of us? The rest of us, it turns out, constitute the nation’s fastest-growing religious demographic. We are the Nones, the roughly 12... Read more
The mayor of San Juan, Jorge Santini, is sending the card pictured above to some of his friends. (Mine must have gotten lost in the mail…but it’s popped up in the interwebs). This story in a San Juan paper explains (via Google translator): According to El Nuevo Dia, the image is one of five that were taken at the Wildlife Museum of the municipality to distribute them as Christmas cards. There is another in which the [the] Santini-Garriga [family] appears... Read more
It happened recently at our parish mission, and it was something I’ll never forget. The mission had an extraordinary turnout: what started with a couple hundred stalwart souls on Monday grew night after night, until the closing liturgy had a packed church of, I’d guess, close to a thousand people. But the most memorable of the four nights, for me, was a penance service on the third night. The presiding priest, who gave the mission, explained it simply. There were... Read more
While dioceses in the United States are climbing aboard the “Catholics Come Home” bandwagon, at least one bishop in Ireland is saying “Go ahead. Leave. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Details: The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has urged the country’s lapsed Catholics to have the maturity to leave the church. Over the past two decades, rising numbers of ‘a la carte’ Catholics simply turn up at the altar for the sacraments like baptism,... Read more
[Click here for the readings] This weekend in Sacramento, they inducted several people into the California Hall of Fame – including, the Beach Boys, Magic Johnson and now, for the first time, a Catholic priest. His name is Fr. Gregory Boyle. Fr. Greg grew up in Los Angeles. In 1984, he was ordained a Jesuit and a few years later became pastor of an inner city parish. Not long after, he had to confront a reality of life in the... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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