Being Catholic is ALWAYS Fun

“Five years ago, I would have been afraid of saying anything like what the pope said in his [recent] interview,” the Rev. Tom Reese told Sally Quin . “I’m ecstatic. I haven’t been this hopeful about the church in decades....” “It’s fun to be a religion reporter again. For a while it felt like being on the crime beat. It’s fun to be Catholic again.” George Weigel has raised the question of whether or not Fr. Tom has been paying attention throughout the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Among his findings on the legacies of Pope Francis' predecessors:

Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J.

millions of adults have been baptized as or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church.
new forms of campus ministry in the mold of JPII's "New Evangelization" have developed across the United States.
Catholic-studies programs have bloomed on genuinely Catholic campuses across the U.S.
the Church has produced the most compelling televisual tool for the New Evangelization available in the world: Father Robert Barron’s Catholicism series.
Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation (Nashville) built a new novitiate to house candidates for their growing community of religious sisters.
The Pontifical North American College, the U.S. Church’s seminary in Rome, has more students than at any time since the mid-1960s.
Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., is full; Mundelein Seminary in Chicago is now increasing, due to the leadership of the Father Barron, and is founding new models of training in evangelization and defense of the Faith.
the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious has been formed to help support the work of the orders of religious sisters that are actually attracting young women.
Bishops of the United States are challenging the United States government’s efforts to chip away at religious freedom — to the benefit of all Americans, and these U.S. bishops are increasingly about to “put out into the deep” of the New Evangelization of Pope St. John Paul II.
The liturgical inane season has nearly ended, as the reform of the reform of the liturgy according to the Second Vatican Council has been accelerated, though much remains to be done.
Catholic-sponsored crisis-pregnancies centers have served tens of thousands of women in crisis pregnancies and their children.
And so on....

For dear Fr. Tom to say that he is “ecstatic” and more “hopeful” about the Church than he has been “in decades” because of Pope Francis' America interview is tantamount in my view to being guilty of inattention to what has been happening in the Catholic Church in the United States. Perhaps Fr. has accepted the stereotyping of Catholics that is one of the last acceptable prejudices in America, supposedly triggered by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Certainly in his time as editor of the Jesuit magazine America Fr. Tom has given no evidence of being a happy warrior in the culture wars, preferring to ape a Chamberlainesque negotiation with the culture, ceding territory repeatedly. Possessing these attitudes would hardly make for genuine happiness….

Comments

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

The 21st Century Must Come Into the Church

Continued from September 14.... T hrough the Church’s teachings, God has also revealed his truth on how humanity can live happily. What is so little understood by Catholics and Christians is that doctrinal revelations that come through the Church come out of God’s very Self. They are not tied to culturally constructed norms! Read Vatican II’s Dei Verbum : “by divine revelation God wished to manifest and communicate both himself and the eternal decrees of his will concerning the salvation of humankind.” Our Lord’s Church derives its basic vision not from mere human speculation, which would be tentative and uncertain, but from God’s own testimony—from a historically given divine revelation. Thus Catholics believe that just as God himself is immutable, so, too, are His teachings as revealed through the Church because they come from him. As I discuss in my book, although the Church does not change its central teachings, we do see the theological principle of “devel...

Nuns' Story Dominican Style

In my book I quoted the late Fr. Benedict Groescel as follows: A surprising and welcome development at the present time is the emergence of a whole wave of young men and women interested in authentic religious life. They provide proof of the ongoing presence of God’s grace…. These young people surprise us by their willingness to join even communities beset by obvious theological confusion and little observance of their traditional rule. If they manage to survive for twenty years, the appearance of the sinking communities may change. In some communities there is an absurd phenomenon similar to a theological sandwich: The youngest and the oldest, who are in agreement, are like slices of bread. The age group in the middle reminds us of mayonnaise. Something in human nature has been calling people to religious life for thousands of years—and gospel teaching and church tradition have aimed this human hunger at a strong form of Christian dedication. We should have le...

Sr. Cecilia. Ora pro nobis

Who smiles like this at the moment of death? Sister Cecilia, of the Carmel of Santa Fe in Argentina, witnessed to her love for Christ in her struggle with lung cancer Aleteia June 25, 2016 Facebook 4k 12 Death is a tragedy for mortal man, and yet with faith in eternity and anticipation of the embrace of our heavenly Father, death becomes radiant. We share today the news of the death of Sister Cecilia, a Carmelite of Santa Fe in Argentina, who suffered from lung cancer. She astonished those who surrounded her in her agony, as her face was transformed by a tender smile as she closed her eyes to this world. As you can see in the photograph, she looks like a lover who has arrived to the encounter she has long been yearning for. The Carmel of Santa Fe announced the death of Sister Cecilia to their brothers and sisters and friends of the Carmel, with a brief, but profound, note. Dear brothers, sisters and friends: Jesus! Just...

To Fighting Irish, Francis Spikes the Ball... For the Bishops

I have been commenting here on the recent Rolling Stone article on the Holy Father, who recently hosted the big cheeses from our premier "Catholic" University... Speaking of premier, h ere is the premier blogger on this very topic!

Ode to Freddi: Be Careful When You Write Papa

Last fall, militant Italaian atheist Piergeorgio Oddifreddi wrote Dear Pope, I'm Writing to You. O difreddi later said he was particularly surprised that Benedict read his book from cover to cover and wanted to discuss it, as it had been billed as a “luciferian introduction to atheism.” He should not have been so surprised, had he known his man. Odifreddi's book was a critique of certain arguments and lines of thought found in Benedict’s theological writings, beginning with his 1967 volume Introduction to Christianity , and including his book Jesus of Nazareth , which he wrote as pope, both of which I have profited from enormously. “My opinion about your book is, as a whole, rather mixed,” B16 said. “I profited from some parts, which I read with enjoyment, but in other parts I was astonished at a certain aggressiveness and thoughtless argumentation.” He noted that, several times, Odifreddi refers to theology as science fiction, and he...

MTD and Thee?

Fr. Longenecker Father Longenecker has has observed a contemporary phenomenon which presents a target-rich environment for the New Evangelization-- M oralistic T herapeutic D eism: “MTD” is deadly because it eventually kills off true religion. Because “MTD” mimics true religion people think it is true religion, but then they draw the obvious conclusion: if religion is only about therapy and making the world a better place, then why do you need God? If the Deist God is sitting on the other side of a cloud doing nothing then why bother going to church to worship him?The reason why the Catholic faith is shutting down in so much of Europe and North America is because millions of Catholics are infected with “MTD.” They have had no direct experience of the living God in their lives and believe he is an old grandfather who resides in heaven never being involved in this world. They have assumed that religion is no more than just another self help method and that being a ...

A Bishop Bishops!

It is in the person of the bishop that Our Lord is present in the midst of the Church community, wherein through his service Christ preaches the Word of God, administers the sacraments, incorporates new members into His Body and guides the faithful to their eternal destiny, the Beatific vision. The bishops have no less than the responsibility of taking “the place of Christ Himself, teacher, shepherd, priest and to act as his representatives ( in eius persona ).... Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Wisconsin in response to Federal Judge's Ruling on Marriage: First, it bears repeating that, we must respect, love, and care for every individual we encounter, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or how they define themselves. This will never change. It is at the core of who we are as members of Christ’s Church. Christ, Himself, invites each individual to know and love Him and live a life in response to His love. His love and mercy can heal all divisions th...

What Sex is For

Sex, God has revealed, is for 1) procreation, and 2) uniting, with the natural joy and pleasure which results, husband and wife until death. The Catechism explains: The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation. he spouses' union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple's spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family. Yet this is just what the sexual revolution has done—Separate just what God never intended to be separated. But because we have been given a fre...

Libido Redux: "Sex it up"

"....If one is worldly and hedonistic, Satan enters with temptations of the flesh. One hears often that the “liberation” of the human libido began in earnest in the United States in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Americans, troubled over repressive attitudes toward human sexuality, hoped for a revolution that would free them from outdated moral and social constraints. It resulted not in liberation but in license and a host of societal sexual crises. Since the onset of the sexual revolution, we have had to face an ever-increasing array of sexual problems. One has only to think of the tremendous increase in the number of post-1960s illegitimate births and abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, opposition to censorship of pornography (especially on the Internet), and the resulting sexual addiction (in some extreme instances resulting in murder). Consider too the tremendous blows to marriage and the family done by adultery, the battle over the homosexual lifestyle in th...

Search This Blog