Category Archives: News

News, Women's Communities

EWTN’s Home Monastery is 50!

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On May 20, 2012, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration marked the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Mother Angelica’s Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Alabama. The monastery was dedicated on May 20, 1962.

By the early 70’s the sisters were duplicating Mother’s talks and printing “mini” books to explain the basics of the Faith. And in 1981, Mother launched Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in the monastery garage and the rest as they say is history.

I remember visiting EWTN in the late 90’s and attending one of Mother’s Live shows. She wandered around the set before the show began greeting people as if she didn’t have a care in the world and sat down with only seconds to spare. Everything came from a heart prepared by and with prayer. I had a message to give to her from a mutual friend that day and felt somewhat awkward doing it just minutes before she was to go on the air but she gave me her full attention and spent sometime talking with me. I was very impressed.

I thank God for EWTN which gave my housebound relatives a participation in the life of the Church and great consolation in the weeks before their deaths. May EWTN flourish and grow to the ends of the earth in all the languages of the human race.

For the full article in the National Catholic Register and many reflections on the 50 years of history, click here.

News, Women's Communities

Hold Back Nothing of Yourselves

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Our local seminary’s magazine (The Bridge – excellent by the way) has an article this issue about a new community of young women in Chicago called the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist. Why are they in a seminary magazine? Because part of their charism is to develop a strong relationship with diocesan priests and they are in fact studying there to earn a Masters Degree in Divinity.

Led by Fr. Bob Lombardo, CFR, the sisters take to heart St. Francis’ admonition: Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He, who gives Himself totally to you, may receive you totally. They live in a desperate neighborhood of Chicago and they strive to help the local families with food and household goods and the children by keeping them out of gangs and off drugs. One of their goals is to have perpetual Eucharistic adoration in the newly renovated Church. After their theological training, they will teach religion in Catholic schools.

Please pray for them and the violent streets of Chicago that the Lord’s peace may come to dwell in all hearts.

News, Women's Communities

When Reverend Mothers Cease Being Motherly

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Tim Drake, writing in the National Catholic Register, has an excellent article which summarizes my frustration over the misleading, inaccurate and totally secular portrayal of the LCWR doctrinal assessment in the press.

One would think that every nun, sister and woman in America is up in arms and angry at the Vatican. Hardly the case.

Tim mentions a Washington Post article in which the female author writes:  “For more than a thousand years, women like Mary have entered religious life hoping to find a safe place where they might receive an education and protection from the oppression of marriage and the dangers of child-bearing.” She goes on to say that the Church’s contemporary view of women is that “they are equal, but inferior.”

Eh? Who besides Jesus, the Son of God, is considered more blessed in the Church than a woman – the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Tim goes on to say: “Would Mary, like Dominican Sister Laurie Brink, say that she was “moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus?”

I agree with Tim when he says that too many religious women have been betrayed by their leadership. They are the White Martyrs of our time. Tim calls it a generational hijacking. “How many dying religious orders continue to hang on to the property and money obtained through previous social capital while betraying the charism of their founders?”

Check out the whole article here.

News, Women's Communities

Fortnight for Freedom

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The bishops of the United States of America have issued a call to action to defend religious liberty and to protect the First Freedom of the Bill of Rights.

The bishops have asked that the fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, be dedicated to the theme of a “Fortnight for Freedom.”

This period will be a special time of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action that will emphasize the double heritage of Christian and American liberty.

“As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we address an urgent summons to our fellow Catholics and fellow Americans to be on guard, for religious liberty is under attack, both at home and abroad,” they declared.

In support of this effort, the Handmaids of the Precious Blood (www.nunsforpriests.org) in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, have asked that anyone interested in supporting this effort send their petitions for the nation and for our leaders to Cor Jesu Monastery, PO Box 90, Jemez Springs, NM, 87025. The petitions will be placed under the high altar throughout the nun’s Corpus Christi novena (May 30th – June 7th), included in their Mass intentions and will remain at the altar until July 4th.

The Handmaids of the Precious Blood, an IRL Affiliate Community, are cloistered nuns offering their lives for the sanctification of priests in Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration.

News

Oldest Monastery in Europe Found?

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Bulgarian archaeologists have uncovered what they believe is the oldest Christian monastery in Europe. It is hard to verify and others make a similar claim (Candida Casa monastery, c.371 AD, Galloway, Scotland & St. Martin monastery, Pyrénées-Orientales, France, c. 373 AD) however no one can doubt its antiquity. It is believed to have been founded by St. Athanasius himself c. 344 AD.  Studies at the Vatican have confirmed that St. Athanasius was present at the Church Council in Serdica (modern Sofia, Bulgaria) in 343 AD.

St. Athanasius was the Bishop of Alexandria and is a Doctor of the Church He was born c. 296 and died May 2, 373. Known as the “greatest champion of Catholic belief on the subject of the Incarnation”, during his lifetime he was known as the “Father of Orthodoxy.”  St. Athanasius, pray for us today!

 

News, Women's Communities

The Attractiveness of Truth

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When Pope Benedict XVI visited Great Britain in 2010, the Press had their pens poised to write stories about the dismal failure of his trip. You didn’t read any stores of the kind because guess what, it was a big success. The crowds were big (even in Protestant Scotland over 100,000 people lined the streets to wish him well) and the critics seemed to disappear in light of the outpouring of love for the Holy Father.

Now comes an article in The Times of London which indicates that the number of women entering religious orders has almost tripled since the Holy Father’s visit.

Laura Adshead, the former girlfriend of the current Prime Minister David Cameron,  entered Regina Laudis Abbey in the USA. A congregation in York, after years of no activity, has six solid inquiries. In another order, three women are entering their novitiate in the fall. Still another has had no novices for twelve years but now has one with two more coming.

Father Christopher Jamison, National Office for Vocation, said, “In the last few years, the number of people applying to seminaries has been gradually increasing and, in more recent years, just in the last couple of years, ever since the Papal visit, the number of women approaching women’s congregations has also been increasing.”

Also, 1 in 5 new vocations are converts. The Lord calls. And women are responding.

News, Saints

Tomb of St. Philip the Apostle Found

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On May 2, Zenit conducted an interview with Professor Francesco D’Andria, director of the archaeological mission that located the tomb of St. Philip in Hierapolis, Phrygia (Turkey) in 2010/2011. The search was based upon a letter that Polycrates, the bishop of Ephesus, wrote to Pope Victor I (c. 190) stating that Philip “was one of the twelve Apostles and died in Hierapolis, as did two of his daughters who grew old in virginity.”

The discovery was the culmination of 50 years worth of archaeological work and strangely enough was confirmed by a bronze seal located in a museum in Richmond, Virginia which showed the complex of buildings then existing around St. Philip’s tomb. On the border of the seal is a phrase in Greek: Agios o Theos, agios ischyros, agios athanatos, eleison imas (Holy God, strong Holy One, immortal Holy One, have mercy on us).

It is very touching to see the evidence of the devotion of the pilgrims. The surface of a marble staircase leading to and from the tomb was “completely consumed by the steps of thousands upon thousands of people. Hence, the tomb received an extraordinary tribute of veneration.”

Read all the exciting details in the Zenit article.

Men's communities, News

Where Would We be Without EWTN?

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I once told a priest from Germany that I thought that EWTN had saved Catholicism in America. He looked surprised and startled at my pronouncement.  But where on the TV waves was (and is)  authentic Catholicism being taught? How many Catholic and non-Catholic lives have been transformed through the network?

Congratulations to EWTN which celebrated its 25th anniversary on May 2, 2012.

“There is significance that Mother Angelica started EWTN to defend Jesus Christ, and we were founded on the feast of St. Athanasius, a doctor of the Church, defender of the divinity of Jesus Christ and the ‘Father of Orthodoxy,’” said Father Joseph Wolfe, MFVA, the first priest ordained for the new Public Clerical Association of the Faithful in 1993. “Mother Angelica wanted us to be a spiritual support for the television network.”  He uses the analogy that their cloistered nuns are to be the heart of the mission and the friars and EWTN are to be the voice of the mission.

Today, there are 17 Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word (MFVA) friars who are priests or brothers. Twelve are in perpetual profession. On June 2, two men will be ordained to the transitional deaconate and two to the priesthood, increasing MFVA priests’ numbers to seven.

May the friars continue to be true to the their motto: The lost I will seek out; the strays I will bring back  (Ezekiel 34:16).

News

Catholic Chaplains

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Did you know that four Catholic chaplains have been awarded the US Medal of Honor? The one pictured to the right was  Fr.  Joseph T. O’Callahan, USNR, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism on board the USS Franklin (CV-13), off Japan on March 19, 1945. Seventy Catholic chaplains died during World War II.

I bring this up because Kansas politicians are petitioning to award of Fr. Emil Kapaun, a US Army Chaplain who died in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Korean War, a posthumous Congressional Medal of  Honor. On the Father Kapaun website it states: 

In the seven months in prison, Father Kapaun spent himself in heroic service to his fellow prisoners without regard for race, color or creed.  To this there is testimony of men of all faiths.  Ignoring his own ill health, he nursed the sick and wounded until a blood clot in his leg prevented his daily rounds.  Moved to a so-called hospital, but denied medical assistance, his death soon followed on May 23, 1951. 

The Diocese of Wichita officially opened the cause for his beatification on June 29, 2008.

 

 



 

News

Recruiting More Chaplains!

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I have two nephews in the navy who have both been deployed to the Middle East and and now a nephew-in-law back in the same arena. In one case, they did not see a Catholic priest for 9 months!

Please pray for more priests who serve our young men and women in the military. It is a very  fertile vineyard for vocations. This prayer comes from  Bishop Richard Moth, Catholic Bishop of the Forces in the United Kingdom.

 

O Lord Jesus Christ, instill in the hearts of priests

the desire to dedicate their lives to you as chaplains to our Armed Services.

Give them wisdom and strength, to hear your call.

Give courage and compassion to those who serve you as Forces Chaplains.

May their hearts be filled with zeal and love of you so that your name may be better known and loved,

for you live and reign for ever and ever.

Amen