Journey To A New Pentecost

Glen Beck’s looney comments that Christians should leave churches that preach “social justice” have certainly riled Catholics in the blogosphere world  – and rightly so.

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

Over at America Magazine, Jesuit priest, Father James Martin, gives us a must read crash course on the social teachings of the Catholic Church.  Meanwhile, Joe Carter, at the First Thoughts blog writes that Glen Beck’s comments has ”anti-Catholic” undertones.

Politics Daily has the audio.

The above, first two images (starting from the left) is the front and back of a relic of Father Linus Lynch, a Franciscan priest of the Third Order Regular, that my mom (God, be good to her) had tucked away in the top drawer of the nightstand in her bedroom. My mom always had this drawer filled up with sacramentals such as old rosary beads, prayer cards, small crucifixes, medals and scapulars.  At any rate, the last picture is the prayer for the intercession of Father Linus Lynch, T.O.R.  It reads:

“Father Linus, servant of God, intercede for me thru the Holy Wounds and Precious Blood of Jesus, and I in turn will make known this FAVOR to your earthly Superiors and, if posible, I promise to visit your grave.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph help me thru the intercession of Father Linus.

Mother of Perpetual Help, obtain for me this FAVOR thru the Holy Wounds and Precious Blood of your Divine Son, Jesus.

(Our Father and Hail Mary five times for the Poor Souls In Purgatory)

**********************************************************************************************

If any favor be granted thru the intercession of Father Linus Lynch, T.O.R., kindly notify the Very Rev. Prior of St. Francis Monastery, Loretto, Penn.”

My mother received this relic from her uncle, Father Robert E. Embury, who was also a Franciscan priest of the Third Order Regular. 

When my mom was a child she became bedridden with a bad infection in one of her legs that doctors did not know how to cure at the time.  My grandmother wrote a letter to her brother-in-law priest to request prayers for my mom.  My great-uncle priest delivered the relic to my grandmother and instructed her to place the relic on my mom’s infected leg while saying the intercessary prayer to Father Linus Lynch.  My grandmother spent a few hours each day at her daughter’s bedside praying for a cure through the interecession of Father Linus Lynch, T.O.R.   A month later my mother’s leg was healed.

Over at his blog, Gotta Sing Gotta Pray, Dr. Jerry Galipeau, Associate Publisher at World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Company, discusses some of the mixed reactions he received while explaining the new Roman Missal translations to a large group of parishioners.  (hat tip: Pray Tell blog)

Speaking of training parishioners on the new translations, be sure to read about Karl Keating’s new project at Catholic Answers .  Keating is estimating that he “ will need to raise at least $65,000 to begin the first phase of this battle against those who, from within the Church itself, want to subvert the new translation of the Mass.”   If you donate $35.00 or more, then Catholic Answers will send you five copies of  “The Mass Is Changing—How And Why”, a new publication that Keating wants inserted in every Catholic parish bulletin.  (hat tip: Catholic Sensibility)

Meanwhile, the Pray Tell blog is reporting that we may have to wait a bit longer for the Holy See to approve the use of the new English missal.  And Catholic scholar, Father Joseph S. O’Leary, just posted, “A Murky Moment in Eucharistic Prayer III.”   Be sure to read, Father O’Leary’s response to Bishop Arthur Serratelli’s essay , “Welcoming the Roman Missal.” that was published in the March 1st edition of America.

Diana Williams of WABC-TV interviews Archbishop Dolan on her popular Sunday morning “Up Close” program.  The topics range from denying Catholic pro-abortion politicians Holy Communion and the admission of gay men to seminaries.  

All I can say is that the Pope must elevate this guy to Cardinal soon!

Hat tip: Father James Martin

The Archdiocese of Boston started an initiative for Lent 2010 to encourage more Catholics to return to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Every Catholic church and chapel in the Archdiocese of Boston will open each Wednesday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. during the Lenten season so that Catholics can receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I thought I’d share with you this short video documentary that includes an interview with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who explains why he started, ‘The Light Is On For You.”  By the way, I discovered the video while reading Cardinal Sean’s blog.  I think the Cardinal has the best blog of all our Catholic bishops.  The Catholic faithful of the Boston Archdiocese are very lucky to have him as their Archbishop.

“What If We Just Said Wait,”  the grassroots petition that is opposing the new Roman Missal translations, recently past the 17,000 mark. As of this morning, approximately 198 Catholic faithful from the Diocese of Rochester have signed this petition.  Of course, it’s going to take a lot more than 17,000 signatures to raise any eyebrows at the Vatican. At any rate, the counter-petition, “We’ve Waited Long Enough,” those who are in favor of the new translations, has 4,734 signatures. 

Over at the National Catholic Reporter, Father Richard McBrien, just published his new column,”The New Roman Missal,” for his weekly, “Essays in Theology.”  Can you guess which side Fr. McBrien is on?

 Father Prentice Dean, a first former Episcopal priest and father of two children, became the first married Roman Catholic priest in the Nashville diocese on Monday.  Read more about it here.

The above photograph is from the story, “Lockport Catholics wary as The Chapel moves in,” that was published in The Buffalo News yesterday.  The people you see in the news photo above are members of a growing mega-evangelical church in Western New York, The Chapel at Crosspoint, who, after just converting a former post office and old theater into a satellite campus in Lockport, New York, are getting ready for their grand opening on Easter Sunday.  

Here is a chunk from the Buffalo News story yesterday:

At least one Catholic priest views the move as an effort to scoop up disenfranchised Catholics in the community, and he’s warned his parishioners about it.

“They practice a very heavy-handed form of proselytizing and have targeted mostly Catholic Lockport at a time when people are still upset about the Journey in Faith and Grace,” the Rev. James Waite, pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, commented in a recent church bulletin.

The Chapel Pastor Jerry Gillis maintains the Amherst church is searching for people who aren’t regular churchgoers, not worshippers actively involved in a parish community.

“Our target is people who have no faith connection. We don’t desire to trade sheep with anybody,” he said. “At St. John’s, they have done a lot of wonderful work, and they’re to be commended for it.”

The exchange underscores the subtle tension between the region’s growing evangelical movement and the Catholic community, which has been shrinking but remains by far the area’s largest faith group.

“I know that they’re saying they’re only going after the unchurched, but their definition of unchurched includes a lot of people who are marginal Catholics and marginal Protestants,” said Lorie Duquin, who coordinates an evangelization program for the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

The diocese has spent the past three years closing churches and merging parishes. At the same time, The Chapel and some other evangelical churches have been in an aggressive growth mode. In 2005, The Chapel opened a mammoth $19 million worship center in Amherst, with 2,400 stadium-style seats.

Church leaders said they already need more space, and they’re planning a new $4 million, 25,000-square-foot multipurpose building on the campus in CrossPoint Business Park. The Chapel also “planted” a new church in Buffalo, initially holding services inside a movie theater, before purchasing a former Catholic church on Hertel Avenue that had been closed in the diocesan restructuring. In addition, the Amherst megachurch has fostered affiliations and partnerships with 200 like-minded churches and organizations in Western New York.

Eastern Hills Wesleyan, a Clarence megachurch, planted an offshoot church in Lancaster in 2005 and plans to do others, as well. And The Tabernacle in Orchard Park has long been active in forming new evangelical churches in Western New York.

Waite said he wrote the bulletin item after seeing a video of The Chapel’s announcement of its plans, in which Gillis made reference to “substantial need” in Lockport for a larger evangelical presence.

“Ninety plus percent of the folks there are unconnected to what we would call a Bible-teaching kind of church of whatever affiliation or denomination,” Gillis said in the video, taped during a January worship service. “We want to do something about that.”

Waite questioned where The Chapel got its statistics, considering that the Buffalo diocese still counts nearly 5,000 households — an estimated 15,000 parishioners — in three churches in the City of Lockport. The greater Lockport area has about 49,000 residents.

“What it says is we don’t count as a Bible-teaching church. That’s what bothered me,” said Waite.

In Lockport, the diocese moved in 2008 to merge five parishes into two. One of the parishes, St. Mary, continues to resist the mergers and has appealed to the Vatican to keep open its church building.

“I think there still are a lot of hard feelings,” Waite said of the mergers.

He also referred to Lockport as “one of the more unsettled places” in the diocese, which shut down more than 70 worship sites in eight counties as part of the restructuring known as Journey in Faith and Grace.

Read the entire story here.

Here is an excerpt from Bishop Matthew Clark’s down-to-earth Lenten message:

“In the classic practice of the church we prepare ourselves to listen and to respond to God’s Lenten call by the triple discipline of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Through these exercises we dispose ourselves to be in right relationship with God, neighbor and ourselves. These practices are not ends in themselves. They are reminders of our need for internal conversion and a change of heart. They symbolize our desire to forget ourselves so that we might find God.

I know that you live a very busy life. But I do encourage you during this holy season to incorporate into your daily living some generous but reasonable expression of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

You might pray at the long red light or while waiting in line at the supermarket. How about passing on a latte each day and sending the money to Haiti relief or Operation Rice Bowl? Would you think of a letter to someone you know to be very lonely? And isn’t it about time to break the icy silence that has existed for too long between you and you-know-who? Do you have a moment and some energy to offer in your parish’s outreach activities? Is there a caregiver for whom you might provide a break? Have you said the rosary in a while? Or would you like to learn how to pray it?

There are so many small, ordinary ways in which we can remember and contemplate deep in our hearts the wonders of God’s compassionate and enduring love for every one of us. The disciplines of Lent are not an exercise of spiritual muscle flexing. They are our way of opening our hearts anew to the wonders of God’s love. Rejoicing in all of that turns our hearts toward and prepares us to renew our baptismal promises at Easter.

I hope that those of us who have already been baptized in the Lord can pray for one another during Lent that the Easter feast will find us excited about the life we enjoy and ready to share it with others.”

So, Bishop Clark thinks that “the disciplines of Lent are not an excercise of spiritual muscle flexing.” Well, I have news for Bishop Matt. The one Lenten exercise he recommends and calls “reasonable,” is not doable – at least not in the immediate future – because right now I don’t have the spiritual fortitude to forgive certain members of my immediate family and beg them for their forgiveness as well.

The “you-know-who“ in my life are two brothers and a sister-in-law who I have neither spoken to nor seen since the death of my mother three years ago.  And to make matters worse, I have a one year old niece that I’ve never met before.  I wasn’t invited to my sister-in-law’s baby shower two years ago and I wasn’t invited to my niece’s baptismal celebration last summer.

Yeah, I know.  The sacramental ashes I received on my forehead last Wednesday were to remind me that NOW is the time to rend my heart and return to the Lord. And this “rending” of the heart, as “The Anchoress“ pointed out to me last week, is to “ let the poisons that have hardened it or fouled its workings drain out. Make room for God, who will replace our stony hearts with flesh, and renew our spirits.”  But, Pope Benedict XVI, offered these insiteful words during his Ash Wednesday homily:

“ [The penitential sign of the ashes, which are imposed on the head of those who begin with good will the Lenten journey] is essentially a gesture of humility, which means: I recognize myself for what I am, a frail creature, made of earth and destined to the earth, but also made in the image of God and destined to him. Dust, yes, but loved, molded by love, animated by his vital breath, capable of recognizing his voice and of responding to him; free and, because of this, also capable of disobeying him, yielding to the temptation of pride and self-sufficiency. This is sin, the mortal sickness that soon entered to contaminate the blessed earth that is the human being. Created in the image of the Holy and Righteous One, man lost his own innocence and he can now return to be righteous only thanks to the righteousness of God, the righteousness of love that — as St. Paul writes –  was manifested “through faith in Jesus Christ” (Romans 3:22)

….. The first act of righteousness, therefore, is to recognize one’s own iniquity, it is to recognize that it is rooted in the “heart,” in the very center of the human person. “Fasting,” “weeping”, “mourning” (cf. Joel 2:12) and every penitential expression has value in the eyes of God only if it is the sign of truly repentant hearts. Also the Gospel, taken from the “Sermon on the Mount,” insists on the need to practice proper “righteousness” — almsgiving, prayer and fasting — not before men but only in the eyes of God, who “sees in secret” (cf Matthew 6:1-6.16-18). The true “recompense” is not others’ admiration, but friendship with God and the grace that derives from it, a grace that gives strength to do good, to love also the one who does not deserve it, to forgive those who have offended us.”

What I had planned to remind myself that I’ve joined Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days did not include draining my persistent feelings of resentment toward family members.  

And so Lent 2010 is off to a shaky start. 

It only took the Anchoress, Bishop Clark and Pope Benedict to help me realize it.

I thought about giving up on my plans for Lent, but the “devil in the dessert” would like nothing better than for me to do just that!  Rather, I will continue my battle with the tempter and ask for your prayers.  I will pray for you too!

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album made the Holy See’s top ten albums “to take to a desert island.”  Here is an excerpt from the CNA story:

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the Vatican paper continues, is a “masterpiece of the king of pop,” precisely because Jackson added his innovative style to the previously-stereotyped “black music