Christine at The World IMHO has some photos from the Eucharistic Congress in Charlotte. I especially enjoyed the story behind the picture of the man next to his wheelchair.
Listening tot the Gospel today at Mass of Mark 10:2-16 I was reminded me of the same juxtaposition that I had been reading in Matthew 19 recently. Where Jesus teaches about marriage and then transitions immediately to Jesus rebuking the Disciples for not letting the children come to him. This transition brought to me the sin of contraception where deliberately children are prevented from coming to him.
Today at Mass our Deacon did the homily and he brought out the same point in a very good homily. It was great to hear an elegant explanation of the Church’s teaching on both contraception and marriage. He even touched on why there can be no such thing same-sex marriage. I really wish I could remember in detail his homily since it had so much red meat in it it would make a vegetarian faint. Homilies of this sort are not rare in my parish, I just thought this one was especially forthright on these subjects.
A new blog- Brother Christosananda, Sinner – has an very interesting post on Why the Muslim World Can’t Think Straight.
For some reasons this picture just make me think of the Pope singing with his three backup singers all in a choreographed movement.
Amy Welborn thought the "Pope tries to win hearts and minds by saving souls of unbaptised babies" was the worst headline ever. Well I think I have found a contender for that title in an AP story.
Woman Turns Down Sex for Jesus
Though the article itself is a nice one on a consecrated virgin.
She stood at the altar in a white gown and veil, but she was there for no earthly man. Lori Rose Cannizzaro was dedicating her virginity to Jesus.
Saturday’s rare Catholic ceremony, one her own pastor didn’t know existed, turned the 42-year-old into a ‘consecrated virgin.’ Fewer than 200 women in the United States and 2,000 worldwide have declared their perpetual virginity this way, according to U.S. Association of Consecrated Virgins.
‘There are people who think I’m nuts,’ Cannizzaro said.
The ceremony was a revival of one of the church’s oldest rituals.
The rite is available only to virgins, who agree to abstain from sex so they can dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ in what the association describes as a mystical marriage and a profound spiritual blessing. Each woman wears a band on her left ring finger as a symbol, much like a wedding band.
Cannizzaro, who is not a nun, will continue to live on her own and work as a cook at Christ the King Seminary in a Buffalo suburb.
She said she has plenty of support from family and friends.
‘It is a good and holy thing to want to be in a virginal state,’ she said.
Here is an interesting article on Phil Visher the creator of Veggie tales and his new project. The article includes the following:
One of the keys to his personal turnaround came when he read about the life of Mother Teresa.
“She fed the poor one at a time. She didn’t try to franchise her system for feeding the hungry. She didn’t try to become the Ray Kroc of world hunger. At first, that didn’t make sense to me. That’s not very efficient. Read some business books! Be more efficient! But then I realized she was doing what God called her to do, and that’s all that matters.”
Seem like he found out for himself this quote of Blessed Mother Teresa "God does not ask me to be successful, but to be faithful."
The Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods have received word from Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana Department of Transportation that a section of U.S. 150 adjacent to the motherhouse grounds will be known as Saint Mother Theodore Guerin Memorial Highway.
Gov. Daniels is expected to make the formal announcement at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Church of the Immaculate Conception at St. Mary-of-the-Woods.
Guerin will be canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church on Oct. 15 at the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI will preside. She came to the United States in 1840 and founded the Sisters of Providence.
There are 150 Psalms so U.S. 150 is a good choice to commemorate a saint.
If you have ever donated money to any Catholic organization you are sure to get tons of mail from religious orders soliciting donations. Often included in these letters are religious medals, address stamps, and sometimes Rosaries or even statues. When we get these my wife will ask me to check them out to see if they are worth supporting. Normally the answer turns out be be no. Today I received one from a order of Dominican sisters. The letter had the picture of two nuns in their habit at the top of the letterhead along with a nice graphic of St. Joseph.
I found their web site and was not surprised to find that not one of the pictures of the sisters showed them wearing a Dominican habit. I found one of the women from the letterhead, though she was also sans habit. The pictures of them at Mass showed the same thing. A review of the website revealed no religious art and St. Joseph was nowhere to be found. The links of course did not include the Vatican and were mainly to questionable retreat houses. The pending social justice issue of the day appears to be genetically engineered crops.
I have found many of these fund raising letters to be highly deceptive They promote themselves as looking like a traditional Catholic order in their letters. A religious bait and switch. They send traditional devotional items and prayers, but these groups themselves practice devotions more suited for new agers. When religious orders present a lie to gain donations, they have certainly jumped the shark. We have unfortunately come quite use to deceptive advertisement, it is a sad day when religious orders resort to the same.
One of Amy Welborn’s commenters had a very interesting post on liturgical music and some of the history involved. Bad liturgical music is nothing new or the fact that composers have been influenced by the secular music around them and have attempted using it for liturgical music. Reform of secular influenced liturgical music has happened in the past and will no doubt continue into the future. I don’t think that this problem is uniquely an American problem and the situation is Europe is less rosy than what I think the commenter intends.
Last month there was an article in a Scotland newspaper Composer damns happy-clappy din that called the music at Mass "cultural vandalism." The same article could easily have been written in response to the music at most Catholic churhes in the U.S.
I have been meaning to write a review of Blessed Columba Marmion’s Christ the Life of the Soul. His feast day was on Oct 3rd and Father Stephanos, O.S.B wrote a short post where he said this book "deserves to be on every Catholic’s reading list."
I received this book as a review copy from Zacchues Press. The few books I have received from them have all been wondrous. Christ the Life of the Soul is no exception. I wish I could write the review this book deserves, but I will write as I can.
Blessed Marmion was someone I had never heard of and he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry yet. He was a Benedictine and the third abbot of Maredsous Abbey in Belgium and a noted spiritual author and retreat master. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 3, 2000.
The book is almost 500 pages of a packed and powerful Christology. The book is like the Tardis in Dr. Who in that the book is larger on the inside than the outside. The majority of the book is on the doctrine of divine adoption and gives a thorough account on this subject. This is not an aspect I had put much thought into before and I am glad this book put an end to that error. This subject has just so much fruit of which to nourish contemplation. The appendix of the book mentions that some think he should be made a Doctor of the Church based on his theology of adoption and I certainly concur with that.
The translation into English I believe does not diminish the writing of Blessed Marmion. I say that based just on the the fact that I can hardly imagine the thoughts expressed being more powerful. The translator provides many helpful footnotes on the translation and in cases where what Marmion wrote needed some clarity.
The book is divided into two segments the first is What God has designed: The Divine Designs which mainly focuses on divine adoption. Book 2 is Life for God which focuses on the Christian life. The chapters on the Eucharist, Mary, Prayer, and the sacraments are also spiritually packed and make you see many things anew. This book is a spiritual retreat all on its own. I probably absorbed only about .01 percent of what Blessed Marmion has to teach, but even that was potent indeed. This is a book that I will re-read and re-read to gleam more of its treasures. The book came out of a talks on the retreats he gave and you can certainly see why he was such a popular retreat master. Being a master in talking on these subject also makes the book tightly focused.
As Father Stephanos said this book needs to be on every Catholic’s reading list and in fact should be bumped up tot the top of their reading queue.
