A Treasure To Be Shared

[ 6 minute read ] Our hands may be 'Marthas', but our hearts are 'Marys'. cf. Saint Luke 10:38-42 We at Saint John Henry Newman Catholic Church, Victoria, BC, a community of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, are blessed with devoted altar servers who, thanks to ongoing formation provided by our priests and by consulting vital approved liturgical resources, understand the need to pray their roles in the Liturgy. Divine Worship, the Mass of the Ordinariate, makes it easy to enter into prayerful service by virtue of its sheer beauty and goodness. Our clergy are excellent preachers and modellers of the Faith. They, like so many of us at Saint John Henry's, are converts from elsewhere: Anglicanism, continuing Anglicanism, the Traditional Anglican Church/ACCC, Methodism; Protestant evangelical and pentecostal communities; Lutheranism; atheism; and so on. Many lifelong Catholics attend; among them are reverts to the Faith. A few Byzantine Catholics regu...

Cantius/NLM [ 4 min read ] Some communicants make things interesting (...tricky, delicate, awkward, awesome...) at The Communion. Now don't get the wrong idea. Spoofing one's brothers' and sisters' behaviour is not meant to be proof of one's own moral or spiritual superiority. There's always a need to keep in mind the heart of another when lampooning (or celebrating) the externals, as curious or as laudable as those externals might be. The Moving Target: either the head or the tongue is moving a mile a minute. A good patener knows how to tame the fidget. See also #18: The Rubberneck. The Obstacle Course: fingertips touching the chin or mouth making it difficult for the patener to place the paten beneath the chin. The Curtain: face is completely covered with a veil. The NOFB (Not Open For Business): closed eyes, closed mouth; despite the need for a gentle prompt, typically a deeply reverent person. The Taker: wants to steal the Host from the priest. Note to commu...

[ 11 min. read ] UPDATE : 26may2024  https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2024/05/vatican-reverses-dismissal-of-nun-in-fort-worth-diocese The latest news has hit the airwaves. The nuns of the Most Holy Trinity Monastery in Arlington, Texas, issued a defiant three-page statement Wednesday (see below) in which they said that Bishop Olson does not have the authority to close off their monastery and that their chapel remains open to the public. - NCRegister https://www.ncregister.com/cna/texas-carmelites-defy-bishop-s-order-to-close-their-doors-to-the-faithful Oh dear. The monastery is open to the lay faithful; not so much to the Bishop. Bishop Olson may have forgotten that it is never a wise course to go up against a group of nuns, especially Texas nuns. Just sayin'. The nuns' statement, with interjections. http://www.carmelnuns.com/ STATEMENT BY THE REVEREND MOTHER PRIORESS AND CHAPTER MONASTERY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY DISCALCED CARMELITE NUNS  5801 MT. CARMEL DRIVE  ARL...

TNIE | Burning Cardinals in Effigy [ Read time: 6 minutes ] Not pretending to understand all the intricacies of a major dispute in an ancient Easter Rite Catholic Church, i.e., the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, what does seem clear to this blogger is that there is much to be learned from a controversy in terms of how change for the sake of change can create tremendous upheaval and how well-intentioned "solutions" are then crushed beneath an entrenched ignorance. The Syro-Malabar Church, a suri iuris Church in the Catholic communion, is experiencing liturgical upheaval. suri iuris : a juridically distinct community of the faithful with its own hierarchy; suri iurus churches retain their patrimonial autonomous nature within the Catholic Church By contrast, the Malankara communion seems to be enjoying liturgical peace. The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church celebrates Mass, the Holy Qurbana, ad orientem . The Syro-Malankara Church "employs the West Syriac Rite Divine Liturgy...

Köln | Hohe Domkirche St. Petrus Gargoyles and grotesques are carved figures and faces that are found on churches and other structures.  The term gargoyle is often used to refer to both gargoyles and grotesques. A gargoyle is a decorated waterspout that extends from a roof and directs rainfall away from a building's walls, protecting them from harm. The name comes from the Old French word  gargouille , meaning ‘throat’. A grotesque is a decorative carving with no drainage function. The great age for gargoyle and grotesques was really the later-medieval period, the later Gothic. - cf. Alex Woodcock, cathedral stonemason and author of Gargoyles and Grotesques (Bloomsbury). There is no shortage of humour among designers and carvers. Ely Cathedral Paisley Abbey | Nice to see contemporary beasts finding a home. Tony Blair? Washington Cathedral | The Reverend Vader presides. Canadian Parliament A legend arose around St. Romanus (7th Century AD), the former chancellor of the Merovin...

[ 12 minute read ] A well mannered priest assaults a security guard. Really? Benefit of the doubt? Some of you will remember a couple of years back when accusations were made against Father George Rutler. It was alleged that he assaulted Ashley Gonzalez, 22 at the time, a female security guard. Father Rutler then suffered a horrendous trial by Twitter and much mudslinging in the media. The feeding frenzy that ensued exposed a number of higher profile Catholics as less than reasonable with only bullets for brains. Bullies tend to attack those who remind them that they lack the very virtue with which their targets are imbued. Attacks on virtuous priests and others confirm that members of the mob are merely attempting to mask their own inadequacies. Father Rutler writes with such a clever turn of phrase and such intellectual clarity that one finds oneself often re-reading him not just because his priestly wisdom and intelligent commentary is so edifying but because in our “soundbite” cult...