Being a mature Christian in the face of difficulty from within

Benedict’s abdication has opened the door for lots of interesting thinking these days. Some are taking the opportunity to complain about how bad they think the Church is, some taking the time to pause, evaluate, and to pray for the Pilgrim People of God. The Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, warts and all, it is beautiful, but it can be ugly at times due to the immature Christian faith of some people. Paul Elie’s article in the Times causes to me think many things; I neither disagree with him completely, nor do I agree. He raises interesting things to consider but there are parts of the article that annoy me. But that’s not to be discussed here. But I have to ask: To whom do we belong, Jesus Christ or an ideology? Is the Church leading you to salvation in Christ? Do we assess the needs, pray and work for change where needed and where possible with prudence? Or, do we whine and walk away like teenagers? How mature is our Christian following?

The Provost of the Brooklyn Oratory, The Very Reverend Father Dennis Corrado, CO, writes in response to Elie’s article in the Times. The Oratorians are good shepherds to their people. 

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I read Paul Elie’s NY Times piece “Give up your Pew for Lent” in Friday’s Op. Ed. page early this morning. To say it is thought provoking is an understatement .

I am hopeful most people reading his words can appreciate how we priests serving this wounded Church feel while reading it.

I am grateful that the Brooklyn Oratory [Church of Saint Boniface] is described so positively.

This weekend, I will begin to preach a parish retreat in what Fr. Anthony of the Brooklyn Oratory tells me is one of the largest parishes in the Archdiocese of New York.

I’ll preach at 5 Masses and then have sessions each day for three days. The theme is forgiveness…forgiving each other and forgiving ourselves…asking God to forgive us for the stupid, sinful things we do.. as the path to wellness and joy.

During that time I will quote Carlo Carretto’s now famous reflection which begins :How much I must criticize you, my Church.

My favorite line being: Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face, (my Church) and yet each night I pray I might die in your sure, safe arms

Carretto’s list of anger and regret and pain about the Church members’ duplicity and hypocrisy ends with the conviction that those failures are all our failures and that we are one with them as we are one with the holiness we practice.

I will remind myself and my retreat attendees that our faith is in the Person of the Church who is Jesus Christ and not in the personnel who are not…pews and pulpit alike.

And I will once again remind myself and them that my experience of four decades of public ministry has taught me that nobody changes the Church from without… only from within.

Not a single one of my priest friends who have left the Church have helped change the institution they so wanted to be better and truthful and modern and humane.

Perhaps that is why we feel the Oratory makes a difference . And it is certainly why I can never separate myself from the Eucharistic Body of Christ as some kind of protest against our Church’s failures… no matter how often they occur.

Did Theresa of Avila or Francis of Assisi or Catherine of Siena or Philip Neri vacate the corrupted Church of their ages?

As a son of Vatican II I have never stopped preaching that the Church is the People of God,: flawed, foolish, sinful, brilliant, graced. holy and even saintly that is, all of us …. not just the Chanceries nor the Curias.

We do make a difference and I am reminded of Woody Allen’s remark that 80 percent of success is showing up.

I know wherever each of us will find ourselves this weekend, in whatever equally flawed and holy place as ours, we will still be one with each other, baptized as we are into the eternal Body of Christ.

And while I feel the painful reality of each of our diasporas, I pray any kind of suggested Lenten “abstinence” brings us back to our sede vacante.

As they say in Rome: con affetto,

F. Dennis, c.o.

Provost

The Brooklyn Oratory

New patriarch for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church

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One head of Church leaves his ministry, another picks up a new call to serve God’s people on the same day. Abune Mathias, 71, was elected to lead Ethiopia’s 50 million Orthodox Christians, majority of the population. He is the sixth patriarch having received 500 of the 806 possible votes. His predecessor, Abune Paulos, was the head of the church since 1992 and died six months ago.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has had its own patriarch since 1959 when Pope Cyril VI allowed for the Ethiopian Church to move from the Coptic Orthodox Church and be self-ruling. The Ethiopian Church has apostolic origins.

The new patriarch was ordained to the Order of Deacon in 1948, and a priest-monk in 1955. Since 1971 a bishop. Abune Mathias has been serving as archbishop of the Church in Jerusalem and has lived outside of Ethiopia for more than 30 years.

Abune Mathias will be enthroned in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Addis Ababa, on Sunday, 3 March.

Ethiopia has some of the word’s oldest churches, sometimes called “cave churches,” rock-hewn, which are a World Heritage Site, in Lalibella in northern Ethiopia. They’d remind of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Papal apartments, Lateran Basilica sealed

Camerlengo sealing apt.jpgAt 8pm Rome time on 28 February 2013, the Chair of Saint Peter went empty. The period of time is called sede vacante, the empty see; that is, the Holy Roman Church has no visible head on earth. There is no pope.

Until the time the cardinal electors gather for the Conclave to elect the next bishop of Rome, the head of the Apostolic Chamber, the Carmerllengo (chamberlain), Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, SDB, will lead a small group of people in closing the papal apartments, and the private elevator. 
Prayers were prayed, and tasks identified. Doors were locked and a ribbon with wax seal secured the papal area.
The Camerlengo is the acting head of state and is the Church’s administrator of the material holdings of the Church. This office is in distinction to the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, who cares for the spiritual well-being of the cardinals and chairs the meetings prior to the conclave.

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The Vatican embassies also received communication  at 8pm saying that any diplomatic necessity ought to be addressed to Archbishop Giovanni Becciu and to the Dean of the College of Cardinals.
Today, at 12:30pm Rome time, Archbishop PierLuigi Celate, the vice-Camerlengo, sealed off the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. The basilica is the cathedral for the bishop of Rome.

Rome Reports has a good visual on the sealing of the papal apartments.
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What Benedict XVI will be reading?

vB Post Critical Bib Inter.pngI can’t verify this information personally but Salt and Light TV heard the news bite, and it sounds right, that one of the books Benedict XVI will be reading in his retirement is W.T. Dickens’ Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-Critical Biblical Interpretation (UND Press, 2003).

Dr. Dickens also published a journal article in The Heythrop Journal, “The Liturgical Shaping of Biblical Interpretation” (March 2012; Vol. 53, Is 2;  pp. 191-203).

W.T. Dickens earned his doctorate at Yale, was a visiting professor at Cornell University and is now the Chair of Religious Studies at Siena College.

The Pope’s prayer intentions for March 2013

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Even though the Chair of Saint Peter is temporary empty, the ministry of the bishop of Rome, the Roman Pontiff, is not abolished. The work of the Church of Christ continues: the proclamation of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments and interceding on behalf of other before the Throne of Grace continues. As the Roman Pontiff emeritus said, 


“I would like to invite everyone to renew firm trust in the Lord. I would like that we all, entrust ourselves as children to the arms of God, and rest assured that those arms support us and us to walk every day, even in times of struggle. I would like everyone to feel loved by the God who gave His Son for us and showed us His boundless love.”

The general intention

That respect for nature may grow with the awareness that all creation is God’s work entrusted to human responsibility.

The missionary intention

That bishops, priests, and deacons may be tireless messengers of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Apologetics for Teens sponsored by Envoy Institute

Apologetics Camp.pngThe 4th Annual Catholic Apologetics Camp is planned for the summer of 2013, August 8-14. The Envoy Institute under the direction of Patrick Madrid, is doing the programing.

Knowing your faith, knowing the person at the center of your faith, Jesus Christ, is SO VERY crucial at every stage of life, including the time you spend at college. We need to form and inform the next generation of Catholics to propose the truth and beauty of the Faith! Make a suggestion to a senior in high school to participate in Apologetics Camp.

Jennifer Fulwiler’s article on the camp can be read here.
Have a spare $50.00, why not make a donation to the Apologetics Camp???? Any thing you can spare is greatly appreciated!

Benedict XVI’s final address: to the College of Cardinals: “I vow unconditional reverence and obedience to the future Pope”

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I welcome you all with great joy and cordially greet each one of you. I thank Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who as always, has been able to convey the sentiments of the College, Cor ad cor loquitur. Thank you, Your Eminence, from my heart.

And referring to the disciples of Emmaus, I would like to say to you all that it has also been a joy for me to walk with you over the years in light of the presence of the Risen Lord. As I said yesterday, in front of thousands of people who filled St. Peter’s Square, your closeness, your advice, have been a great help to me in my ministry. In these 8 years we have experienced in faith beautiful moments of radiant light in the Churches’ journey along with times when clouds have darkened the sky. We have tried to serve Christ and his Church with deep and total love which is the soul of our ministry. We have gifted hope that comes from Christ alone, and which alone can illuminate our path. Together we can thank the Lord who has helped us grow in communion, to pray to together, to help you to continue to grow in this deep unity so that the College of Cardinals is like an orchestra, where diversity, an expression of the universal Church, always contributes to a superior harmony of concord. I would like to leave you with a simple thought that is close to my heart, a thought on the Church, Her mystery, which is for all of us, we can say, the reason and the passion of our lives. I am helped by an expression of Romano Guardini‘s, written in the year in which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the Constitution Lumen Gentium, his last with a personal dedication to me, so the words of this book are particularly dear to me .

Continue reading Benedict XVI’s final address: to the College of Cardinals: “I vow unconditional reverence and obedience to the future Pope”

Contemplatives asked to pray for the Church and Pope

Vatican City, 25 February 2013 (VIS) – Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone SDB, sent a letter to the monasteries devoted to contemplative life around the world, inviting them to intensify their prayers at this special moment in the life of the Church. Following is the entire text of the message that is dated 21 February.

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“I write to you as the whole Church anxiously follows the final days of the luminous pontificate of His Holiness Benedict XVI and awaits the arrival of the successor whom the Cardinals gathered in conclave and guided by the Holy Spirit will choose, after discerning together the signs of the times of the Church and the world.

“His Holiness Benedict XVI has asked all the faithful to accompany him with their prayers as he commends the Petrine ministry into the Lord’s hands, and to await with trust the arrival of the new Pope. In a particularly urgent way this appeal is addressed to those chosen members of the Church who are contemplatives. The Holy Father is certain that you, in your monasteries and convents throughout the world, will provide the precious resource of that prayerful faith which down the centuries has accompanied and sustained the Church along her pilgrim path. The coming conclave will thus depend in a special way on the transparent purity of your prayer and worship.

“The most significant example of this spiritual elevation which manifests the most authentic and profound dimension of every ecclesial action, the presence of the Holy Spirit who guides the Church, is offered to us by His Holiness Benedict XVI who, after having steered the barque of Peter amid the waves of history, has chosen to devote himself above all to prayer, contemplation and reflection.

“The Holy Father, with whom I shared the contents of this letter, was deeply appreciative, and asked me to thank you and to assure you of his immense love and esteem.

“With affection in Christ I send you greetings, united with you in prayer.”