1 Year Anniversary of Beatification of Pope John Paul II

John Paul detail.jpegToday marks the first anniversary of the historic beatification of the iconic pope, John Paul II.

For many around the world, and for a long time, it is very true to say that the newly Blessed John Paul “has accompanied me through these years.” Indeed he has.
The Church prays this prayer at Mass on the feast day of Blessed John Paul II, October 22:
O God, who are rich in mercy and who willed that the Blessed John Paul II should preside as Pope over your universal Church, grant, we pray, that instructed by his teaching, we may open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ, the sole Redeemer of mankind.

Rome Reports has a recap.
Blessed Pope John Paul II, pray for us.

Adé Béthune

Adé Bethune.jpeg

Among the many things we can recall today, one of them for me is Adé Béthune who died on this date in 2002. As I mentioned in a Communio blog post a few years ago, Adé was an Oblate of Saint Benedict of Portsmouth Abbey (Portsmouth, RI) and a liturgical artist, thinker and musician.
I find it sobering to pray for those who gone marked with the sign of faith, not only because it is a noble and holy Catholic tradition, but the practice affords me the opportunity to truly remember the person. Adé Béthune allows me this possibility today because of her Benedictine and liturgical connections but most of all she was a grand person.

A past post on Adé can be read here and her obit is posted here.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary and All Benedictine Saints and Blesseds watch over Adé Béthune.

Father Julián Carrón to receive honorary doctorate from CUA

Julian Carron of CL.jpg

Father Julián Carrón will be receiving an honorary degree from the Catholic University of America on Saturday, May 12, 2012.  It is the 123rd commencement for CUA. This is a wonderful sign of esteem both for Fr. Carrón and for lay ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation here in the US. It ought to be noted that a number of US bishops would have had to have voted to grant him such an honor. 

 

For those who would like and are within close enough range, there will be an open assembly with Father Carrón on the School of Community text, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and on the “Page One” of the recent issue Traces, “Self-Awareness: the Reawakening Point.”  It will take place that same day, Saturday, May 12th, 2012 at 3:00pm in a place to be announced in Washington, DC. 


His Eminence, Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, PhD will receive the President’s Medal and address the graduates.


Also among those receiving honorary degrees from CUA are Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University’s Sterling Professor of Humanities for Italian literature, the philanthropist Carmen Ana Casal de Unanue and her husband and former head of Goya Foods Joseph A. Unanue.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Saint Catherine of Siena

St Catherine.jpgToday is the transferred feast of the great Dominican saint, Catherine of Siena.

Since her feast day is April 29th, and this year the 29th was Good Shepherd Sunday, and the Sunday celebration is rarely trumped by a saint, the feast moved to the next available day.
Being that I work at a Dominican church, we celebrated Catherine’s gift to the Church with great solemnity. Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Sister Elaine Goodell, PBVM were honored with the “Saint Catherine of Siena Award” and Brother Ignatius Perkins, OP was inaugurated with the new chair of Catholic Ethics at the Dominican House of Studies. Brother Ignatius is currently a professor of Nursing at Aquinas College, Nashville.
Here for the celebration were the Dominican Friars, a secular priest, a Jesuit priest, with several congregation of sisters including the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, the Hawthorne Dominicans, the Dominicans of Nashville, the Sparkhill Dominicans, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Sisters of Life.
“Set the world ablaze”

For you and for many… the Pope reflects

In the days following the Easter celebrations Pope Benedict XVI took time to reflect on through the form of a letter, the liturgical use of the phrase “For you and for many” that is used at Mass. With the third edition of the Roman Missal this phrase has been restored and it is has caused some people to wonder why the change after so many years; the priest had been saying “for all.” The Pope’s teaching is clear to why our liturgical praxis needs to be coherent with sacred Scripture, coherent with the Lord’s own teaching.

Vatican Radio ran a piece on this issue here.

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort

Montfort detail.tifThe Church gives us an inspired, perhaps even truly brilliant preacher, as a model of grace. Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort was ordained a priest in 1700; proficient in the thinking of the Church Fathers on the Virgin Mary, Montfort’s mission was to preach on Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, in a period of time of great theological error in France. He’s famous for preaching on the Rosary and he created a series of meditations that led to a Consecration to the Blessed Mother. His preaching of Mary was really a work of preaching on the Paschal Mystery. The collect for the Mass tells us that Louis-Marie ‘walked the way of salvation and the love of Christ” by “meditating on the mysteries [God’s] love” which led to “the building up of [God’s] Church.”

Montfort was a Third Order Dominican and held a papally given title Missionary Apostolic. He was also a founder of three congregations, one of men and two of women. For some time now there’s been movement to have Louis-Marie to named a Doctor of the Church.
We are more aware of Montfort through John Paul’s adoption of one of Montfort’s phrases, Totus Tuus (totally yours).

Sisters throw Jesus under bus

The world of medical care is always under the gun due to costs. It is has changed so radically in the last 40 years that it would make your head spin. The Church has for 2000+ years been at the center of healthcare around the world. I can think of the hospices at the cathedrals, monasteries, parish churches, roadside stations. Historically, no cathedral church would be without facilities to welcome the stranger, care for the ill person or instruct the ignorant. The Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy were always and without reservation kept fresh in our daily activities and living the Gospel. In Connecticut we are blessed to have several hospital centers that were founded by religious sisters following the example of the Lord and then the Apostles in healing the sick and caring for those in need of certain medical attention in body, mind or spirit.

In today’s New Haven Register (26 April 2012) I read the article about the merging of Yale New Haven Hospital with Saint Raphael’s Hospital, a ministry of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth (Convent Station, NJ) with great interest because I wanted to know what was being done about the Catholic nature of Saint Raphael’s. I got my answer. The article reported,
“The first thing we wrestled with was the question of Catholicity, and the sisters were incredibly engaged and courageous and made this decision [to merge with the secular hospital] that it was more important to meet the mission in New Haven than to retain official Catholicity.”
What exactly does it mean say that a Catholic hospital should be able “to meet the mission in New Haven” and divorce itself from the Catholicism? With a Catholic hospital is there a mission without the gospel of Jesus Christ? How can the Sisters of Charity abort their mission to heal based on the charism of their order to easily?
Without a doubt the merger seems to be a good thing, though I am skeptical as to why an alternative like working with a Catholic healthcare organization could not be worked out. Clearly the Sisters of Charity and the CEO Christopher O’Connor are being opportunistic for the bottom line and not too respectful of Christ’s mission through the Church. The Catholicity of any organization in the Church is not lipstick on a pig. The Catholicity is the heart and mind of what we do, why we do it, and how we do it in light of following Christ. 
The Sisters of Charity aided by Christopher O’Connor care little, it seems, for the sacramentality of medical care and the care of the whole person as passed down to us by Christ, the Apostles, the Archdiocese of Hartford and Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.
AND we wonder why the Church wants to reform the Leadership Conference Women Religious. If you throw Christ under the bus, there is no reason why we need groups like the LCWR. They are as one may think, not following Christ and the Church too closely, not thinking with the Church.

Saint Mark

St Mark and Christ.jpgShout for joy! with cries of gladness
Gather those who were dispersed.
Here the blind are given vision;
Here the comfortless find mirth.

In his faith, blind Bartimaeus
Shouted out his need to see—
Jesus, Light from Light, restored him,
Gave him sight, and set him free.

Each of us, in our baptism,
Has received the gift of sight
Through the Christ, our High Priest Jesus: Filled with joy, we seek God’s light!


Hymn text by J. M. Thompson

Possible Olivetan abbot general?

a budding OSB Oliv.jpgThis young man may be elected the abbot general and the Abbot of the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore of the Olivetan Benedictines at some point. The abbot general is also appointed by the pope as the territorial abbot of this monastery, hence the magenta skull cap.

The Benedictine monks of Mount Olivet in Tuscany function as a congregation more than in a “traditional” Benedictine manner in that there’s a major religious superior who can move monks from one monastery to another, among other things that make the Olivetans.

As you see, the symbol of the abbot general’s office fits the boy well enough. A budding Benedictine!

Saint Benedict and Saint Bernard Tolomei, pray for us.
Enhanced by Zemanta