Under another thread an idea for a WDTPRS was raised. Please choose your answer and give your reasons in the combox, below.
Because this can be a delicate topic, I ask that you DO NOT ENGAGE each other in the combox. Just state your own position without commenting on the comments of others in any way. Pretend the other comments do not exist.
And just because someone will fail to pay attention to this, I’ll repeat: Pretend the other comments do not exist.
From the Daily Telegraph:
Burglar overpowered by three Catholic priests
The burglar was no match for the three – all in their 60s – and led by a former rugby playing clergyman who launched a flying tackle to bring the intruder to the floor.
Two of the priests, Father Jimmy Shiel, 67, and Father Kieran Magovern, 66, had both undergone triple heart bypass operations in the past.
But along with Indian born Father Chacko Panathara, 61, they didn’t think twice about tackling the burglar who was in his 20s.
Not only that, but just hours later the three parish priests were going about their church duties with early morning mass, baptisms and meetings with parents of children preparing for their first communions.
“He was no match for the three of us,” said Father Magovern. He added “The chap was trying to break free and escape but with the three of us on top of him he was going no where”.
It was around 2am in the early hours of Sunday morning when the burglar climbed up a drain pipe to a first floor window at the presbytery in the grounds of St Mary’s Church in West Street, Dunstable, Beds.
He’d spotted a window open and after gaining access to St Mary’s Parish House began creeping along the upstairs corridor.
Father Magovern said “He entered Jimmy’s bedroom and Jimmy woke to see this guy in his room. The burglar ran and Jimmy jumped out of bed and ran after him. As he did he hammered on Father Panathara door.
“Jimmy has played a lot of rugby when he was younger and it was in the corridor that he floored him. It was a rugby tackle and the chap was taken to the floor.”
As the burglar struggled to break free Father Shiel got him in a vice like grip and held on as best he could to stop him escaping.
By now Father Panathara had arrived on the scene to help the other priest.
Seconds later Father Magovern joined in to prevent him making off.
[…]
Read the rest there.
He is lucky he didn’t break into my place. Very very lucky.
On the site of First Things there is a good article about SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests) by Russell E. Saltzman, mission development pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Gothenburg, Nebraska.
Saltzman writes with my emphases:
I no longer believe the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is in any way primarily an advocacy organization for sexual abuse victims. Instead, I think it is more a noisy little group that hates the Roman Catholic Church and has discovered a way of making a living off the victimization others have suffered. My poor opinion of SNAP was formed some time ago, but the organization returned to my attention as I’ve followed the most recent scandal unfolding in the Kansas City–St. Joseph diocese.
As regular readers know, I am a Lutheran with no axe to grind against the Roman Catholic Church, not even on the subject of priestly sex abuse involving adolescent boys. We Lutherans have our own sex scandals though they rarely make the press because they usually involve a male pastor and a female parishioner. Ho-hum, some might say. Even the rare incidents involving young boys get passed over because headlines about Lutheran pastors aren’t nearly as invitingly lurid as “pedophile priests.”
[…]
SNAP has never to my knowledge examined scandals among mental health professionals. It never says anything of public school districts, where reports say children are at far greater risk of abuse. Nor has it said anything of volunteer youth organizations. The simple fact is SNAP targets Roman Catholics. If SNAP routinely seeks “donations” from settlements, well, Catholic pockets are easier to reach, for a lot of reasons starting with media bias.
Whatever genuine aid SNAP may provide victims of priestly sex abuse is well matched by the harm SNAP does by mounting little less than an anti-Catholic smear campaign and wantonly portraying every priest as a sexual predator waiting to happen and every bishop an enabler.
[…]
There are resource links at the end of the article. Go there to find the links but here are the names:
Read the whole article over there. It is well worth it. Interesting things about SNAP’s finances, too.
From a reader:
Thank you for your reminders about confession. It’s appreciated.
My question is, what recourse does a layperson have for the forgivness of a mortal sin in the absence of sacramental confession?
Some of us live in very rural areas that don’t get the regualr
services of a priest, let alone a confessional. What is the best
cource of action when one finds himself in a state of moral sin
without a priest available?
God does not ask us to do what is impossible. If it is truly impossible for a person to confess to a priest confessor, he can make a sincere act of contrition.
However, if you are mobile, I would sometime soon make a little field trip to a place where you know ahead of time confessions will be heard. This would be worth your time and effort.
Another point, sometimes absolution is given by priests without have heard the confessions of the penitents in what is called “General Absolution”. This is not your situation, dear questioner, but I include it here anyway. It is important for people to know that “General Absolution” is to be given only in an emergency situation. Of course emergencies cannot be scheduled ahead of time, can they? But that is, in fact, what some priests do: they schedule “General Absolution” in their parishes year after year usually during Advent and Lent.
DO NOT GO TO THESE “GENERAL ABSOLUTION” SERVICES!
You cannot validly receive absolution without a confession of sins twice in a row unless you are in danger of death. When a person receives “general” absolution, without having confessed all mortals sins in kind and number because of an emergency (e.g., the airplane is going to crash, there was an earthquake and people are trapped in rubble, battle is about to begin, a missionary finds 5000 people waiting, paramedics and first responders are working on people, etc….), people must, as soon as possible afterward, make a regular, “auricular” confession of all sins. Again, you cannot validly receive absolution repeatedly without confession.
So, there are three forms for receiving the sacrament of penance.
1. Regular, inidividual, auricular confession.
2. Communal penance service with individual confession.
3. General absolution without confession in an emergency.
Don’t confuse “General Absolution” services with penance services which have a liturgical dimension followed by individual confessions.
From The Catholic League:
JEFFRESS SAYS SATAN RULES CATHOLICISM
Last Friday, Rev. Robert Jeffress, the Dallas pastor who introduced Gov. Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit, spoke derisively about the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney, making the case that “Mormonism is a cult.” Two days later, he chided Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism as “false religions.”
Last year, Rev. Jeffress said the Roman Catholic Church was the outgrowth of a “corruption” called the “Babylonian mystery.” He continued, “Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s word. It comes from that cult-like pagan religion. Isn’t that the genius of Satan?”
Catholic League president Bill Donohue offered these remarks today:
Where did they find this guy? When theological differences are demonized by the faithful of any religion—never mind by a clergyman—it makes a mockery of their own religion. Rev. Jeffress is a poster boy for hatred, not Christianity.
Nice!
From a reader:
What say you on the subject of a healthy middle-aged priest sitting
out the distribution of Communion to the faithful? When asked why, the priest said he didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the extra (sixth)
EMHC who arrived late to distribute Communion.
What do I say? I think the priest made a bad decision.
This seems a good example of how some priests think they have to give their role to a lay person in order to make them feel as if they are “involved”. This is the worst form of clericalism.
In many cases all Extraordinary Ministers of Communion are “extra” and should not be employed.
But to sit while lay people distribute? Perhaps if the priest is injured, crippled, elderly. Healthy? No way.
It seems to me that the priest ought to rethink his approach to EMHCs.
On a recent visit to Westminster Cathedral I found some publications available to the public.
I decided I better have a look.
Not that I want to influence anyone…. you decide.
Oh… by the way… click the image, above.
In the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald, we pick up on comments by Card. Wuerl of Washington DC that soon in the USA some form of the Ordinariate foreseen in Anglicanorum coetibus will be established.
Here is a bit of the article with my emphases.
An ordinariate is close to being established in America, Cardinal Donald Wuerl said during his visit to Scotland last week.
As Vatican delegate for the US ordinariate Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, said he had been watching developments in Britain with great interest and was confident that the establishment of the US ordinariate was imminent this autumn.
The cardinal also said that discussions with the Episcopal Church had included plans for the transfer of property.
He was speaking before he received a US Episcopalian parish into the Catholic Church yesterday in anticipation of the ordinariate being established there.
The cardinal was visiting Stirling to address the National Conference of Priests and Permanent Deacons of Scotland.
He told the Scottish Catholic Observer:?“I am hoping that it will happen in this calendar year that an ordinariate will be announced.”
“There will be a time lag between the Holy See announcing that it intends to establish an ordinariate and the actual date of its implementation but I am still hopeful that before this year is out an US ordinariate will be established,” he said.
“We are moving forward with the examination of the cases of at least 100 clergy and several thousand Anglicans who want to come into the Catholic Church as groups. In two weeks’ time I will be receiving an entire parish into the Church and confirming around 120 people. This is being done in anticipation of the ordinariate.”
[…]
He went on to talk about some other issues, which you can read about over there.
Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.
It is amazing how bad the reporting in larger liberal secular newspapers and services can be when it comes to Catholic issues. Consider this abysmally deficient blurb from WaPo by someone whose name suggests he ought to be better informed, one Francis X. Rocca.
My emphases and comments.
Schismatics discuss Vatican demands, but future unclear
By Francis X. Rocca| Religion News Service, Published: October 10
VATICAN CITY — Leaders of an ultra-traditionalist group [What makes them “ultra-traditionalist”. Will he go on to explain the why of the “ultra” or will he merely leave it steaming on the floor of his article?] that’s in schism with the Roman Catholic Church [Five minutes of research on the SSPX and schism would perhaps have modified this sentence. Or does he have an agenda of his own?] met to consider the Vatican’s conditions for reconciliation, but failed to announce a decision or say when they would do so. [“Failed”? Why the word “failed”? They didn’t promise to release anything definitive. So, what’s the writer’s game?]
[…]
In my opinion, this goes beyond reporting into editorializing under the guise of reporting.
In any event, you can read the rest there.
From a reader:
Father,
Thanks for your encouraging words to get to confession. It’s hard
getting the motivation to go, but it is a worthwhile effort once one
bites the bullet and just does it. I finally made the time to go
tonight by leaving a meeting a bit early to catch the priest before
0ur 7pm Mass. Bonus… there was Benediction after Mass. Anyway, thanks for all your efforts.
And thank you for going to confession!
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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