Synod update: Cassocks optional

Last updated on: October 7, 2019 at 1:30 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Innovation at #SinodoAmazonico: Cardinal Baldisseri announces that beginning with this afternoon’s session, members of the synod may wear clerical suits rather than their cassocks/soutanes. Applause follows. pic.twitter.com/YEyK3wv7wR — Cindy Wooden (@Cindy_Wooden) October 7, 2019 Anthony Ruff has this take on the development: Suit coats rather than cassocks for clergy reads more egalitarian, slightly less distinct from lay people, less elegant, less sacral, an understanding of ministry less monasticized (I support habits for monks, btw, but don’t think monks are the... Read more

Ordination update: 4 new deacons for Detroit

Last updated on: October 7, 2019 at 11:51 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

They were ordained Saturday by Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. About the men: Fred Billotto, Alfredo Guardiola Jr., Aaron Poyer and J. Michael Van Dyke have completed years of discernment, study and prayer at Sacred Heart Major Seminary and are in the final phases of preparation to be servants of the Mass and proclaimers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The four men come from a variety of backgrounds, but all have answered the Lord’s... Read more

Synod on married priests, women in ministry: ‘It will be necessary to define new paths for the future’

Last updated on: October 7, 2019 at 2:55 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

“Whether celibacy is kept or not will not matter a whit to whether the Church remains Catholic.” From John Allen in Crux: Not wasting any time, the chairman of Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops on the Amazon kicked things off Monday morning by putting the hotly contested issues of married priests and the role of woman squarely on the assembly’s table. “Another issue consists in the lack of priests at the service of local communities in the area, with a... Read more

‘Serve one another’: my parish’s stewardship video

Last updated on: October 6, 2019 at 5:46 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

We screened this video at all the Masses this weekend at my parish. Kudos to the team behind this, led by Roger Aguinaldo and Israel Nava. It’s really well done. Take a look. Read more

At opening of Amazon Synod, Pope Francis prays for ‘daring prudence’

Last updated on: October 6, 2019 at 9:12 am By Deacon Greg Kandra

“We received a gift so that we might become a gift. Gifts are not bought, traded or sold; they are received and given away.” Via CNA: At the opening Mass for the Amazon synod Sunday, Pope Francis prayed that the Holy Spirit would give the bishops prudence, wisdom, and discernment to help the Church in the Pan-Amazonian region be renewed by the fire of faith. “Prudence is not indecision; it is not a defensive attitude,” he said in St. Peter’s... Read more

Do the red thing: Francis and Benedict send a message of loyalty to new cardinals

Last updated on: October 5, 2019 at 3:19 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

I sense a theme here. From Pope Francis’s homily at the Mass for the creation of new cardinals: Do we have a lively awareness of this compassion that God feels for us? It is not something optional, or a kind of “evangelical counsel”. No, it is essential. Unless I feel that I am the object of God’s compassion, I cannot understand his love. This is not a reality that can be explained. Either I feel it or I don’t. If... Read more

Message to new deacons in Rome: Follow the example of Francis of Assisi

Last updated on: October 5, 2019 at 1:33 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

On October 3, the day before the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Bishop Robert P. Deeley of Portland ordained 32 young men from the Pontifical North American College in Rome as deacons — and he used the saint as the centerpiece of his homily. It’s a message we all need to hear: “The world is a different place” than when St. Francis lived in the 1200s, Deeley said, “but the kinds of problems Francis encountered are still the same... Read more

Homily for Respect Life Sunday: ‘Every life bears the thumbprints of the Creator’

Last updated on: October 5, 2019 at 7:49 am By Deacon Greg Kandra

This weekend, we mark Respect Life Sunday. Here’s part of my homily for this Sunday from 2012: On this Respect Life Sunday, we cannot overlook the ways in which our culture does not respect life—and, in fact, dismisses it or even discards it. It happens at abortion mills, like the one down the road on Austin Street. It happens in nursing homes, where the old and the frail are ignored or warehoused or so often treated as burdens. It happens in schools,... Read more

An atheist gets his dying wish: to be baptized

Last updated on: October 4, 2019 at 4:42 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

“Thomas, you never thought you would preach a sermon in your life; but you preached today.” Beautiful: Thomas Roberts, dying of lung cancer, wheelchair-bound and unable to breathe without oxygen tubes, had a final request in life. He had been an atheist for most of his life, as UAB News reported, and in early September, he decided he wanted to be baptized: fully submerged in water. Corey Agricola, a chaplain at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, assembled a team to make it... Read more

SCOTUS to hear first abortion case since Trump appointments

Last updated on: October 4, 2019 at 10:00 am By Deacon Greg Kandra

Details: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear its first abortion case since President Trump’s appointments of two justices. The court’s ruling, expected in June as the 2020 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, could reshape the constitutional principles governing abortion rights. The case concerns a Louisiana law that its opponents say would leave the state with only one doctor in a single clinic authorized to provide abortions. And it is very likely to yield an unusually telling decision... Read more