Inspiring story of 90 year Lucious Newsom who is a retired Baptist minister-turned-Catholic who dedicates himself to serving the poor.
Reverend Louis V. Iasiello, OFM, PhD, has officially assumed the presidency of the Washington Theological Union, a Roman Catholic Graduate School of Theology and Ministry.
Last month, Fr. Iasiello retired from the Navy after 25 years of service. Retiring at the rank of rear admiral, he served most recently as Chief of Navy Chaplains, the community leader for almost 2500 chaplains and enlisted personnel serving the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard in the Department of Defense and Homeland Security.
Fr. Iasiello is a member of the Order of Friars Minor, commonly referred to as the Franciscans. He entered the Franciscans in 1973 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1978. Fr. Iasiello is an alumnus of the Washington Theological Union having received his master of divinity degree from the Union in 1978. “I’m indebted to the Union for empowering me for ministry,” he said.
But Fr. Iasiello acknowledged that the education he received in the 70s is quite different from the education that ministers – lay and religious – need today. “Things have changed since my graduation three decades ago. Students are now trained to preach, to celebrate and to do theology in an integrative way. And for that, I thank God.” He speaks passionately about the need for students not only to receive “a superior orientation in theology” and have “a lifelong thirst for knowledge and a true love of theology,” but also to be “well-prepared to preach, celebrate the sacraments, and to lead a congregation.
“I am humbled and honored to have been selected to serve as President of this great institution – one that prepared me so well for positions of pastoral ministry and leadership in the Church and in the government. I can think of no task more critical for the Church than to prepare its clerical and lay students for 21st Century ministry. I look forward now to working with the great staff and faculty of the Washington Theological Union, and assisting them in that critical task.”
A hapless church burglar – the second on Long Island in as many days – was busted after dropping his identification in an Oceanside church.
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Eyewitness News has learned in the case of the Oceanside robbery, police nabbed the would-be robber after he dropped his identity at the scene.
Police say 23-year-old Elvi Rodriguez, of 26 Kenneth Place, lingered inside St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church at Anchor Avenue in Oceanside after a 2 p.m. Mass on Sunday.
After the church cleared out, Rodriguez tried to pocket cash from the collection boxes but there was no money in the boxes. So Rodriguez allegedly checked the private church sacristy. In doing so, he dropped his identification.
He was subsequently arrested and charged with third-degree burglary.
ANYONE, who after being confirmed in the Catholic Church leaves it to join another, is a deserter, Emmanuel Cardinal Wamala said on Saturday, reports Carol Natukunda.
“The sacraments of baptism, eucharist and confirmation are meant to make you a soldier – to witness for Christ. It’s like an army. And the greatest crime in the army, as a soldier, is to become a deserter. In the same way, if you are confirmed in the Catholic Church and then decide to change and go to another church, you are a deserter,” Wamala said.
“We hear of adults who have deserted the church. And why is a deserter so dangerous? You don’t know why he went, where he has gone and what he is planning to do next. Soldiers should be able to stand on,” he added.
Wamala was preaching at the School Day celebrations for Uganda Martyrs S.S Namugongo.
NEW YORK Most syndicated cartoonists seeking the widest possible audience rarely mention the exact religion of their comic characters. But readers now know that the title character in "Agnes" is Catholic.
In a recent issue of "Our Sunday Visitor," a national Catholic publication, cartoonist Tony Cochran discusses the Catholicism of himself and his comic character.
"I was born Catholic, raised Catholic, and will live and die my whole life as Catholic," said Cochran, of Creators Syndicate. "I always intended Agnes to be Catholic, but tried to keep her in the closet about it to make her more universal and likable." He added jokingly: "I realized, though, that I wasn’t universal or always likable, so why should I give her that advantage?"
"Our Sunday Visitor" noted that Agnes goes to Mass, not just church; and that she hears a priest give a sermon, not a preacher preach. There have also been mentions of saints and rosaries.
Cochran concluded: "I’ve had letters from Catholic priests, Episcopalian priests, nuns, Baptist ministers, existentialists, and even atheists. I’ve never had anyone take issue with the Catholicism."
What caught my eye was the articles title "Agnes Cartoon Character Now Openly Catholic". I guess that goes with the artists comment about keeping her faith in the closet. Though maybe catacombs would be a more apt comparison.
You can read the strip here.
MADISON — If all goes as planned a year from now, Bruce M. Siket will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. It will be a gift from Anastasia Siket, whose spirit will be present at the ceremony.
Siket, a 1972 graduate of Madison Area Memorial High School, was ordained as a deacon by Bishop Richard Malone earlier this month in Portland. He is on summer assignment at St. Louis Parish in Fort Kent, and has one more year at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass.
All of this happened, Siket said, because of a conversation he had with his dying wife.
He and Anastasia were living in Millinocket, both involved with St. Peter’s Church in East Millinocket and both employed at Great Northern Paper Co.
Just prior to a second, unsuccessful surgery on her brain tumor, the couple talked frankly about what he would do when she was gone.
"Her comment was that she thought I would become a priest," Siket said recently from the Madison home of his mother, Irene Siket. "She had a vision that I would become a priest, after she passed. After that, I couldn’t help but think about it."
Anastasia Siket died in October 2001.
At her funeral, which also marked the couple’s 20th wedding anniversary, Father Robert Vaillancourt, who had not even talked to Siket’s wife about her vision, provided Siket with another profound moment.
"He pointed to his Roman Catholic collar, and he looked at me and he said, ‘when are you going to get one of these?’ I’m not making this up."
Driven, Siket approached the Catholic Diocese of Portland about a priestly vocation. He was advised to allow a year for the grieving process.
Times were tough all-around. Siket had a good job as an engineer at Great Northern, but the paper mill was going through bankruptcy and about to close.
"I tried to stay busy," Siket said. "I was out of work and on unemployment. The down time was tough."
Siket decided, as he put it, that it was "time to go for it."
He was accepted for a master’s program designed for second-career vocations at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass. He already had a degree in physics from the University of Maine.
The first year back in academics was "a little scary," Siket admitted. He wondered if he could take the rigorous course, live with 60 other men in a big dormitory and face a life of celibacy.
"After you come to grips with that, you move closer to God, hopefully," he said.
Siket did hospital ministries, and will serve as a deacon at local parishes until he becomes a priest.
"My mission in life is to try to get closer to God every day, and to get other people closer to God," he said.
JEFFERSON — Jonah Lynch had no intention of becoming a priest. From about age 15, he wanted nothing to do with churches at all.
God, however, had a different plan.
So on Saturday, the Turner boy who grew up singing hymns in Jefferson’s St. Thomas Catholic Church was back — this time as the newly
ordained Father Jonah.
“This is where I grew up,” said Lynch, who celebrated Mass on Saturday for more than 100 friends and family, a brief visit before he returns to Rome. “These are the people who accompanied me in prayer the last six years of seminary.”
They’re also the people, Lynch said, who knew the teenager who first questioned, then rejected, a God who could allow an evil world. Their prayers, he said, sustained his family and even himself, though he didn’t know it at the time.
Lynch grew up in Turner, the oldest son of Stephen and Elise Lynch. He graduated in 1996 from Cascade High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics four years later at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
The sciences, Lynch believed, would teach him the truth about humanity. But he took a few philosophy courses along the way and was deeply impressed by one of his professors.
The professor, a Catholic, talked with him about his questions. He didn’t provide answers, Lynch said, but he listened — listened in such a way that Lynch began to see his questions differently.
Then Lynch met a priest from Siberia who had come to Montreal to raise money for an orphanage he was building there. The priest spoke Italian, which was translated into French for his presentation.
Lynch spoke neither, but he responded to the intensity and purity of purpose he could see shining in the priest’s eyes.
“I turned to the guy next to me and said, ‘I want to live like that,’” Lynch recalled.
Even then, Lynch was wary of the church. He had a girlfriend he believed he would marry, with whom he wanted to raise a family.
But when the friend sitting next to him put him in touch with a priest, Lynch agreed to a visit. And another. And as his friendship with the priests of the church began to grow, he began to feel a distance in his relationship with his girlfriend and a growing awareness that a life in the church was what he needed to be happy.
It wasn’t an easy choice, he noted, just an inevitable one; as inescapable as the fate of his namesake, who also once refused God.
“My name is Jonah,” he said with a wry grin. “I don’t know if you know the story of Jonah, but it fits.”
Well at least he didn’t have to take up temporary residence in a whale first.
Interestingly listening to Tim Staples on Catholic Answers via their podcast I heard an Amy from Little Rock tell Tim that she had read on a Catholic blog about Katharine Jefferts Schori and her reference to Mother Jesus and how a commenter had referred to St. Julian of Norwich basically saying the same thing. Guessing from the large amounts of comments on that subject that happened on this post I assume that she was referring to my blog. Tim’s answer was pretty good in differentiating between describing mother-like attributes to God and to referring to God as mother. You can listen to this episode of Catholic Answers here via mp3 and the question occurs about 28 minutes in.
Previously I had posted on identical twins Gary and Todd Koenigsknecht who are entering St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. Via The World .. IMHO is a story about James and Joseph Cambell who are identical twins and were ordained together as priests on Jun 23rd.
Deacons James and Joseph Campbell—twin brothers who will be ordained at St. Peter Cathedral in Erie along with their classmate, Deacon Marc Solomon, on Friday, June 23—hope to be up to the challenge. “We have to enkindle the fire of Christ’s love in the hearts of his people,” says James. The youngest in a family of 13 children, the brothers credit their family life for their priestly vocations. “My parents gave us an unwavering witness of selfless, self-sacrificing love and fidelity,” says Joseph. “They inspired us to be holy by the witness of their lives and through their instruction in the faith.” FAITH magazine is pleased to introduce readers to the Campbells after an in-depth conversation which has been taking place throughout the last year of their preparation for the priesthood. An interview with Deacon Marc Solomon follows the story.
Meet Deacon Marc Solomon
“I asked God to help me get
closer to him…”
Deacon Marc Solomon remembers a few moments from his childhood when the idea of becoming a priest crossed his mind. Someone suggested it to him once when he was in elementary school. In middle school, the Scripture passages in which Jesus calls the apostles intrigued him. While he was in high school, his godfather told him he’d make a good priest.
Deacon Marc Solomon, left, and Deacon James Campbell, right, assist Bishop Donald Trautman during the ordination of Bill Barron and Justin Pino, who became transitional deacons for the Erie Diocese on April 29.
But it wasn’t until he was in college that Marc began to seriously consider that he might have a calling to the priesthood. “One day in my junior year, I really started reflecting on the purpose of my life,” he says. “I asked God to help me get closer to him and to understand what he was expecting of me. That was the beginning of my real discernment.” He considered religious life as a Franciscan brother or priest after graduation, but spent the next three years as a substitute teacher. It was during this time he had the opportunity to experience the sacrament of reconciliation with Bishop Trautman, who was visiting his home parish of St. Francis in Clearfield. “I was really looking for signs at that point, and after confession Bishop Trautman asked me if I had ever considered the priesthood,” he says with a smile. “He told me if I was being called, the thought would never leave my mind, and that has been the case.”
After a year and a half of classes at Gannon, Marc has spent the last four years of study at St. Mary Seminary and University in Baltimore. Summers have been spent in parishes in Curwensville and Grampian. Marc has experienced tremendous love and acceptance from his family and from members of the parishes in which he has served. His advice to young men and women who think they may have a calling to the priesthood or religious life? “Honestly, they need to begin to talk to Jesus Christ who is so present in their lives,” he advises. “They need that relationship in order to hear his voice. I think the number one way is silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.”
The twins’ parents, John and Dolores Campbell, don’t consider the way they reared their 13 children to be anything out of the ordinary. “We raised our children the way we were brought up,” says John, the lingering trace of a brogue from his native Scotland still evident in his words. That included attending Mass each morning and saying the rosary together each evening. “Once the children got involved in sports, sometimes they would have to finish their rosary on the way to practice,” says Dolores. “But we’d start it out together. I think that has really blessed our marriage and family life.” The entire family lived together under one roof for the first 11 years of the twins’ lives. “We had seven kids sleeping in one room at one time,” remembers James. “Let’s just say we didn’t get much sleep during those years.” (Apparently brothers Paul and Andrew had quite the reputation for their comedy routines.) But the close-knit clan wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Christmas was bedlam, absolute bedlam!” John recalls. “But it was so memorable. The children’s friends all wanted to come and be with us on Christmas Eve because the atmosphere was so much fun.” It was the kind of atmosphere in which guests were a regular part of the dinnertime routine, in which a grandfather was lovingly cared for during the last ten years of his life and in which a young, single mom unrelated to the family found the help she needed raising her child until she managed to get through high school. “When you’re cooking for so many, what’s an extra person?” Dolores asks
Some may also be aware that the twin sons of Catholic apologist Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio have also entered the seminary this year.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Italy, a longtime aide to Pope Benedict XVI and the first major church official to speak out against ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ was appointed Thursday as secretary of state, the Vatican’s No. 2 official.
The pope also accepted the retirement of American Cardinal Edmund Szoka, 78, as governor of Vatican City and named Italian archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, 71, the Vatican’s foreign minister, to succeed him.
Szoka is a former archbishop of Detroit.
The appointments nearly fill Benedict’s team, which the German pontiff has been slowly assembling since assuming the papacy 14 months ago.
The Vatican said Benedict accepted the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, an Italian who has held the post of secretary of state for 15 years and at 78 is three years past the normal Vatican retirement age. The announcement said Sodano would remain in the post until Sept. 15.
Bertone, 71, worked closely for years with Benedict when he headed the powerful Congregation for the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog. Pope John Paul II appointed him archbishop of Genoa in 2002.
I think the AP story though has the picture of the wrong man the picture above I got from his diocese and here is the one accompanying the story.
