This image popped up on my Facebook feed this morning: Brooklyn’s Fr. Carlos Velasquez celebrating his first All Souls Mass as a priest this weekend at St. Sebastian’s in Woodside. This seems to be a growing trend in the U.S, though I have to admit I’ve never seen it personally; we don’t have any black vestments at my parish. A couple years back, Fr. Ryan Erlanbush argued in favor of a return to basic black: Traditionally, black is used at all... Read more
Details: The head of the Catholic church in England and the Archbishop of Canterbury will both have roles in the reinterment of King Richard III at Leicester Cathedral, it has been revealed. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic faith in this country, will lead a requiem mass at Holy Cross church, in Wellington Street, on Monday, March 23. A choir from St Barnabas’ Cathedral, in Nottingham, are due to sing during the service. Cardinal Nichols, Archbishop of... Read more
Many of you may remember something Msgr. Funaro used to say when he was celebrating Mass at this altar. During the Eucharistic Prayer, he always made a point of praying for those in purgatory—and he never failed to ask us to pray for those who had no one else to pray for them. I cannot think of All Souls Day, the feast we mark today, without thinking of that. Because that, in essence, is what we are called upon to... Read more
I’ve preached about them in the past, but for today’s celebration of the All Saints, here’s more about the beautiful tapestries hanging in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. They are the creation of artist John Nava, and they remain, I think, among the most striking and inspiring works of church art in modern times. From the cathedral website: The tapestries created by artist John Nava for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels are... Read more
It’s the family, stupid. Details: The holy grail for helping youth remain religiously active as young adults has been at home all along: parents. Mothers and fathers who practice what they preach and preach what they practice are far and away the major influence related to adolescents keeping the faith into their 20s, according to new findings from a landmark study of youth and religion. Just 1 percent of teens ages 15 to 17 raised by parents who attached little... Read more
A beautiful idea, from The Houston Chronicle: At first glance, there was nothing extraordinary about the hands at the Houston Hospice blessing service. They were hands, calloused perhaps, with five fingers each. But these, those gathered at the center’s Cockrell Chapel insisted, were very special. They were hands in service to God, helping the terminally ill ease into a peaceful death. The Interfaith Blessing of Hands – the second year of the event – was simple. A double line of... Read more
Details: Several universities have recently admonished their students not to wear a variety of costumes for Halloween that could potentially offend people, frighten people, or reinforce stereotypes. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, some students were warned against donning a Hannibal Lecter-inspired straightjacket costume because it’s offensive to people who struggle with a mental illness. At the University of Southern Maine, two students wearing Ebola suits to a party prompted massive outrage, and even had the cops called on them. And... Read more
The Washington Post has just printed (and posted the video) of Quinn Bradlee, speaking at his father Ben Bradlee’s funeral yesterday at the National Cathedral. Quinn, 32, has learning disabilities and also has velo-cardial-facial syndrome. But the words he spoke at the funeral are deeply felt, eloquent, and profoundly personal. An excerpt: A lot of people have been talking about my father as a legend, and a lion and a giant. And I have to agree. He was a huge, huge... Read more
His column in this week’s Catholic New York, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of New York, sets the tone, without getting into specifics: Let me be candid: there will soon be a real sense of grief at some of our parishes as we get set to announce publicly what we’ve been preparing for the last five years, namely, the merging of some of our beloved parishes. In a few places, there might even be a feeling that something has died. Perhaps... Read more
That’s the assessment of religion writer Andrew Brown in The Guardian: Until this weekend, I had largely believed in the liberal narrative which holds that Pope Francis’s reforms of the Catholic church are unstoppable. But the conservative backlash has been so fierce and so far-reaching that for the first time a split looks a real, if distant, possibility. One leading conservative, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, published over the weekend a homily he had prepared for the traditional Latin mass at which he started ruminating... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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