News

From an article about
Sister Marie Clare Klein who became a nun at 17.

When did you realize you wanted to be a nun?

I fell in love with Jesus. When this happened, everything changed, and I wanted my whole life to be about Jesus. I am not saying that at that moment I became perfect! It’s just that at a certain point, I realized that nothing matters without Him. … There is no meaning, no purpose in life without God. …

I discovered that Jesus was calling me to offer my life in a way that many people (including myself, at the time) do not understand.

What attracted you to the Felician Franciscan Sisters? I saw their love for Jesus in the Eucharist, their dedication to service of the church, their devotion to the Blessed Mother, the centrality of Scripture, and the fact that the religious habit is still a reality in the community. As a young person of the current generation, signs and symbols are a necessity to me. I need to know and see the difference between one lifestyle and another, and I understand the importance of a visible witness.

...What special gifts do you feel you bring to your job?

I have an insatiable love for Jesus and a deep desire for the truth! This, combined with an unquenchable curiosity, a bit of enthusiasm, a touch of discipline, and the desire to develop inquisitive minds is part of who I am. … I hope and pray that my students will benefit from what I have to give them.

SAN BRUNO, Calif. – A woman who used a butcher knife to beat a Jehovah’s Witness who knocked on her door on Christmas Day was sentenced to three months in jail.

Cathy Infusino, 52, was also ordered Thursday to spend three months in a work program and serve three years of probation. She pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon.

Infusino was paranoid and was being harassed by neighbors at the time of the attack, said her lawyer LeRue Grim.

"She wasn’t mentally well enough to understand the situation," Grim said. "She thought someone was trying to harm her or hurt her."

The Jehovah’s Witness had shown up at Infusino’s apartment by mistake and was looking for a neighbor who was interested in the religion. She apologized for the error and tried to leave, but Infusino grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into the apartment.

Grim said Infusino is taking medication now and seeing a psychiatrist regularly. [Souce]

In a trend consistent with the buttons I linked to earlier.

MADEIRA – Dan and Jennifer Giroux are hoping you don’t have a happy "holiday season."

And if anyone tries to greet the Madeira couple with that well-wishing, they’re likely to get angry.

As devout Catholics, the Girouxs are part of a growing religious movement that is upset by what they believe is the secularization of the Christmas holiday.

The couple has created a nationwide sensation by selling green and red rubber bracelets inscribed with the saying, "Just Say ‘Merry Christmas,’" through their Madeira store, the Catholic Shop.

The bracelets are designed as a statement against the increased use of the generic phrase "happy holidays.” Jennifer Giroux described the trend as "political correctness run amok."

Since the Girouxs began selling the bracelets two weeks ago, they have been inundated with orders through the Internet and shipped the items to 43 states. Besides individual sales, the shop has gotten orders from churches, youth groups and civic clubs. [Source]

(ANSA) – Vatican City, November 29 – The Catholic Church appears set to definitively drop the concept of limbo, the place where it has traditionally said children’s souls go if they die before being baptised .
Limbo has been part of Catholic teaching since the 13th century and is depicted in paintings by artists such as Giotto and in important works of literature such as Dante’s Divine Comedy.

But an international commission of Catholic theologians is meeting in the Vatican this week to draw up a new report for Pope Benedict XVI on thequestion. The report is widely expected to advise dropping it from Catholic teaching.
The pope made known his doubts about limbo in an interview published in 1984, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department .

"
Limbo has never been a defined truth of faith," he said. "Personally, speaking as a theologian and not as head of the Congregation, I would drop something that has always been only a theological hypothesis." According to Italian Vatican watchers, the reluctance of theologians to even use the word limbo was clear in the way the Vatican referred in its official statement to the question up for discussion. [Source][Via Zadok]

I guess the theological speculation of Limbo is now in Limbo. The question now is where do theological speculations go when they die?

A German brothel owner is planning to build his own multi-denominational church.

Bert Wollersheim, 54, who has over 50 prostitutes working for him, plans to preach from the pulpit himself.

Wollersheim, one of Germany’s best known pimps, wants to speak out against fanaticism.

He said: "I want it to be a place for Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and every other religion. That is my biggest dream."

He added he had no problem reconciling the sex industry with religion and often threw charity events in his brothel.

"You can work as whatever you want. What is important is to be honest and fair," he said. [Via CletusHuckleberry.com]

Proving that there is not anything new under the sun. Paganism with temple prostitution already went down that road and their treatment of women helped many women to see the truth in Christianity at the time. Though this might work as a method to get more men to go to church it would obviously be counter-productive with the possibility of going to Hell while going to church.

A school has been attacked for offering pregnancy tests to girls as young as 11 – without telling their parents it was setting up the scheme.

The initiative is intended to reduce teenage pregnancies in the surrounding area, which has one of the highest rates in Britain. [Source][Via Jay Anderson]

Has a time machine recently been invented?

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI expressed his hopes that a new English translation of the Mass prayers would be completed soon.

Writing to members of the Vox Clara Committee, a Vatican-appointed commission of English-speaking bishops, the pope said the new translation from Latin will allow the English-speaking faithful around the world to "benefit from the use of liturgical texts accurately rendered."

Seven of the 12 bishops on the Vox Clara Committee met Nov. 8-10 at the Vatican. The committee was established in 2001 to help the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments evaluate English translations of liturgical texts submitted to the Vatican for approval.

The pope said he was confident that with Vox Clara’s assistance "the translation of the ‘Missale Romanum’ (the Roman Missal) into English will succeed in transmitting the treasures of the faith and the liturgical tradition in the specific context of a devout and reverent eucharistic celebration." [Source]

BRIDGEPORT — For months, parishioners of Holy Trinity Church prayed they were beating the odds. They held potluck suppers. They hosted bazaars and tag sales.

In short, they raised lots of money — enough, they hoped, to keep their struggling Black Rock parish alive.

But worshipers at what is believed to be the oldest Hungarian Byzantine parish on the East Coast said they were devastated by the announcement last Sunday that the church was closing. But what happened next, they said, was unconscionable.

Moments after the announcement was made, armed guards emerged from the sacristies to escort worshipers from their spiritual home.

When she saw the guards, "I felt like I was in a Communist country," said JoAnn Manzo, one of the startled parishioners. [Source]

How in the world can you think that this would be a good idea?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict slipped out of the Vatican unannounced for the first time in his papacy on Saturday, travelling to the same spot his predecessor did exactly 27 years ago to pray after being elected.

The Pontiff visited the shrine to the Virgin Mary at Mentorella, in the mountains about 55 km (34 miles) northeast of Vatican City, where Pope John Paul II went on Oct. 29, 1978.

John Paul had said that travelling to Mentorella, in what was the first the many pilgrimages outside Rome of his pontificate, had helped him to pray.

John Paul’s trip, however, was an official visit that drew thousands of pilgrims. There were only dozens present for Benedict’s surprise visit.

The Vatican did not offer many details, saying only that the German Pope had made a "private pilgrimage" to Mentorella and celebrated a mass in honour of the Madonna. The statement was released only after he returned to the Vatican.

"Nobody expected him to come. It was completely spontaneous," said a man answering the telephone at Mentorella, who described himself as a "pilgrim" and declined to be named.

The funniest thing about this story was the headline
Pope slips out of the Vatican for sneak trip. It makes it sound like the Pope had to give the Swiss Guard the slip to escape the Vatican. It must have been pretty cool for the people at the shrine to see the Pope there in an unannounced trip.

A rare medieval wooden sculpture of the Madonna miraculously discovered among the burning thatch as a fire gutted the Cosy Thatch pub at Kilmeaden, is to go on permanent display at Waterford Museum of Treasures.

The statue, which is thirty-one inches in height and dates back to the 15th century, has been donated to the museum by the proprietor of the Cosy Thatch, Martin Doyle.

Hidden possibly for centuries in the thatch of the Cosy Thatch public house, the beautifully sculpted hardwood statue was discovered at midnight on the 12th August 1996 when firemen trying to control a fire at the premises pulled down the burning thatch thus exposing the statue.

The discovery of this extremely rare object of Roman Catholic religious devotion is almost miraculous, as only seven medieval statues of the Madonna have survived in Ireland.

The Director of Waterford Museum of Treasures Eamonn McEneaney described the donation as a remarkable act of generosity – of all of the objects donated to the museum since opening in 1999 this sculpture is beyond doubt the finest and rarest. [Source]