Sunday, 13 March 2011
Catholic Anchor Online » Priests moved by ‘lost sacrament’ of confession
Catholic Anchor Online » Priests moved by ‘lost sacrament’ of confession. How many Roman Catholics drift away from the Faith because of poor catechesis, and poorer homilies by badly formed priests or worse. (For example, the career priests who have no heart for their work and are too lazy or cowardly to admit they mistook their vocation but have figured out they can live a fairly cushy life by keeping their heads down - a bit like benefits cheats, I think.)
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Muslim convert to Catholicism
Catholic Culture : News Features
I heard Magdi Allam speaking live after his baptism to a group of reporters outside St. Peter's in Rome. One of them said he was causing offense to Muslims deliberately by choosing a public Baptism. Catholics are generally baptised in public by their local bishop. The Pope is the Bishop of that part of Rome where Allam is resident. The Pope only baptises once a year, at Easter, so the ceremony attracts a natural attention. Allam was asked if he would like to be baptised elsewhere, in view of his high profile as Editor of a major Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. He already had an armed escort, 24/7 provided by the newspaper because of his clarifications and criticisms of the inherent violence in Islamic doctrines on various TV shows and interviews. He said Italy is full of ex-Muslim converts living in the "catacombs", referring to their fear of going public because of the real danger of they or their family members being murdered by their families or confreres. According to the Qur'an, it is impossible for Muslims to convert, and those who do are apostates for whom the penalty is death. Often this is carried out by angry family members who feel "shamed". When I learn of these honour killings, I pray for my own anger to be lifted from me by Jesus. I find it very hard to do as Christ did, to turn the other cheek, to love my enemy. I take hope in my belief that God Himself will shame those killers when they meet Him face to face in the next life. Mr. Allam said he knew and accepted the risk he was taking. Catholics do not tell Muslims whom they may convert, he said, and Muslims cannot tell the Catholic Church who she should baptise and when or where it can be done. He said his wife also accepted he may be martyred.
Today, May 4th 2012, I have just read the full letter Mr Allam wrote to his boss at Corriere della Sera. It is one of the articles in Christian Order journal, page 31 in Vol.53, Number 4, titled "Easter Liberation". I invite you to order the journal, it costs only £2.80 and it gives a traditional RC view of Church life.
I heard Magdi Allam speaking live after his baptism to a group of reporters outside St. Peter's in Rome. One of them said he was causing offense to Muslims deliberately by choosing a public Baptism. Catholics are generally baptised in public by their local bishop. The Pope is the Bishop of that part of Rome where Allam is resident. The Pope only baptises once a year, at Easter, so the ceremony attracts a natural attention. Allam was asked if he would like to be baptised elsewhere, in view of his high profile as Editor of a major Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. He already had an armed escort, 24/7 provided by the newspaper because of his clarifications and criticisms of the inherent violence in Islamic doctrines on various TV shows and interviews. He said Italy is full of ex-Muslim converts living in the "catacombs", referring to their fear of going public because of the real danger of they or their family members being murdered by their families or confreres. According to the Qur'an, it is impossible for Muslims to convert, and those who do are apostates for whom the penalty is death. Often this is carried out by angry family members who feel "shamed". When I learn of these honour killings, I pray for my own anger to be lifted from me by Jesus. I find it very hard to do as Christ did, to turn the other cheek, to love my enemy. I take hope in my belief that God Himself will shame those killers when they meet Him face to face in the next life. Mr. Allam said he knew and accepted the risk he was taking. Catholics do not tell Muslims whom they may convert, he said, and Muslims cannot tell the Catholic Church who she should baptise and when or where it can be done. He said his wife also accepted he may be martyred.
Today, May 4th 2012, I have just read the full letter Mr Allam wrote to his boss at Corriere della Sera. It is one of the articles in Christian Order journal, page 31 in Vol.53, Number 4, titled "Easter Liberation". I invite you to order the journal, it costs only £2.80 and it gives a traditional RC view of Church life.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Monday, 21 February 2011
The Steve Winter FAQ
BE WARNED ABOUT THIS MAN. He called me shocking, foul, names during what I thought was going to be a normal dialogue between Christians of different denominations. I have now learned he has a reputation on the Internet and that is why I am posting this FAQ. There is plenty more! I invite prayers for him, as he sounds possessed to me.
Friday, 28 January 2011
St. Katharine Drexel
St. Katharine Drexel: The anti-Margaret Sanger saint
I found this brief biog on the Vatican website:http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20001001_katharine-drexel_en.html
KATHARINE DREXEL (1858-1955)
I found this brief biog on the Vatican website:http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20001001_katharine-drexel_en.html
KATHARINE DREXEL (1858-1955)
Born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, in the United States of America, on November 26, 1858, Katharine
Drexel was the second daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth.
Her father was a well known banker and philanthropist. Both parents instilled in
their daughters the idea that their wealth was simply loaned to them and was to
be shared with others.
When the family took a
trip to the Western part of the United States, Katharine, as a young woman, saw
the plight and destitution of the native Indian-Americans. This experience
aroused her desire to do something specific to help alleviate their condition.
This was the beginning of her lifelong personal and financial support of
numerous missions and missionaries in the United States. The first school she
established was St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1887).
Later, when visiting
Pope Leo XIII in Rome, and asking him for missionaries to staff some of the
Indian missions that she as a lay person was financing, she was surprised to
hear the Pope suggest that she become a missionary herself. After consultation
with her spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor, she made the decision to
give herself totally to God, along with her inheritance, through service to
American Indians and Afro-Americans.
Her wealth was now
transformed into a poverty of spirit that became a daily constant in a life
supported only by the bare necessities. On February 12, 1891, she professed her
first vows as a religious, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament whose
dedication would be to share the message of the Gospel and the life of the
Eucharist among American Indians and Afro-Americans.
Always a woman of
intense prayer, Katharine found in the Eucharist the source of her love for the
poor and oppressed and of her concern to reach out to combat the effects of
racism. Knowing that many Afro-Americans were far from free, still living in
substandard conditions as sharecroppers or underpaid menials, denied education
and constitutional rights enjoyed by others, she felt a compassionate urgency to
help change racial attitudes in the United States.
The plantation at that
time was an entrenched social institutionin which the coloured people continued
to be victims of oppression. This was a deep affront to Katharine's sense of
justice. The need for quality education loomed before her, and she discussed
this need with some who shared her concern about the inequality of education for
Afro-Americans in the cities. Restrictions of the law also prevented them in the
rural South from obtaining a basic education.
Founding and staffing
schools for both Native Americans and Afro-Americans throughout the country
became a priority for Katharine and her congregation. During her lifetime, she
opened, staffed and directly supported nearly 60 schools and missions,
especially in the West and Southwest United States. Her crowning educational
focus was the establishment in 1925 of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only
predominantly Afro-American Catholic institution of higher learning in the
United States. Religious education, social service, visiting in homes, in
hospitals and in prisons were also included in the ministries of Katharine and
the Sisters.
In her quiet way,
Katharine combined prayerful and total dependence on Divine Providence with
determined activism. Her joyous incisiveness, attuned to the Holy Spirit,
penetrated obstacles and facilitated her advances for social justice. Through
the prophetic witness of Katharine Drexel's initiative, the Church in the United
States was enabled to become aware of the grave domestic need for an apostolate
among Native Americans and Afro-Americans. She did not hesitate to speak out
against injustice, taking a public stance when racial discrimination was in
evidence.
For the last 18 years
of her life she was rendered almost completely immobile because of a serious
illness. During these years she gave herself to a life of adoration and
contemplation as she had desired from early childhood. She died on March 3,
1955.
Katharine left a
four-fold dynamic legacy to her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who continue
her apostolate today, and indeed to all peoples:
– her love for the
Eucharist, her spirit of prayer, and her Eucharistic perspective on the unity of
all peoples;
– her undaunted spirit
of courageous initiative in addressing social iniquities among minorities — one
hundred years before such concern aroused public interest in the United
States;
– her belief in the
importance of quality education for all, and her efforts to achieve it;
– her total giving of
self, of her inheritance and all material goods in selfless service of the
victims of injustice.
Katharine Drexel
was beatified by Pope John Paul II on
November 20, 1980.
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