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Nigeria’s bishops decry ‘alarming’ rise in liturgical abuses Skip to content Nigeria’s bishops’ conference expressed “righteous indignation” Thursday at an “alarming increase” in liturgical abuses. © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.   In a letter to the country’s priests, dated Aug. 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption, bishops’ conference officials said clergy had committed “grave violations” that were “a source of scandal and embarrassment to the Church in Nigeria.” Share The letter — signed by bishops’ conference president Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, liturgy committee chairman Bishop Augustine Ndubueze Echema, and general secretary Bishop Donatus Aihmiosion Ogun — named 12 specific abuses: Deviations from prescribed prayers and rubrics of the Mass, including the Eucharistic Pra...

When Carter Anderson started seminary formation two years ago, he likely knew that hitting the books would be on the agenda.  But what the Diocese of Helena, Montana, seminarian might not have known at the time was that, in addition to sacred Scripture and theological texts, works of fiction would also play an important part in his preparation for the priesthood.   In particular, Anderson cites the impact of reading Georges Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country Priest in his first year of formation at St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.   Even though the novel is set in a different century and continent, the Montana seminarian found that its depiction of a 20th-century French priest embracing his weakness and depending more deeply on God amidst the difficulties of parochial...

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Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6, 10Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 161 Corinthians 15:20-27Luke 1:39-56 On this feast, we praise God who has taken the sinless Virgin Mary, body and soul, into His glory. In our first reading, from Revelation, we find God’s temple in heaven opened and the Ark of the Covenant revealed. The most sacred item in Israel’s history, the Ark had been missing since the Temple’s destruction in 586 B.C. Thus, John reports some startling news. Even more startling is his revelation that the sacred vessel is now a woman, who is mother of the royal Son of David, the Messiah. Of this woman, then, we sing to God as the ancient Israelites sang: “The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.” In the court of King Solomon, we glimpse Israel’s traditional arrangement: Solomon’s mother, B...

Athletic director expressed his hope that the harsh penalty would be enough to help the program correct course. The University of Notre Dame has suspended its men’s swimming program for at least one academic year after an investigation uncovered an internal betting ring and a toxic team culture.  The external review “confirmed and expanded on our initial concerns about a deeply embedded team culture dismissive of Notre Dame’s standards for student-athletes, including our expectation that they treat one another with dignity and respect,” Notre Dame Athletic Director and Vice President Pete Bevacqua said in an Aug. 15 statement announcing the decision. Bevacqua said the investigation also determined that members of the swim team, one of the top programs in the country, had made numerous...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 13, 2024 St. Augustine, who was trained in the heights of the Latin rhetorical tradition, found Scripture rhetorically primitive when he was looking at it from the outside, before his conversion. But he became far more impressed with the rhetorical power of both the Old and the New Testaments once he began to grasp their inner meaning. There are in fact many different rhetorical flourishes in Scripture, and some of the most satisfying of them employ what we might call “sequences” of various kinds. Indeed, rhetorical sequences seem to play an important role in most languages—such as the common habit of ending a speech with a triad of phrases, as Abraham Lincoln did in the Gettysburg Address: “Government of the people, by the peo...

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), rhetorically oversold as the “U.S. Church’s anti-poverty program” – Do no other such programs exist? – was an interesting idea in its time. That time has passed. A new model is needed. The American bishops created CCHD in 1969 as a kind of Catholic analog to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs. At the time, many well-intentioned people believed that the increasingly severe problems of America’s inner cities could be solved by large infusions of federal cash. That cash often flowed through “community organizing” associations led by “community organizers.” In college, I did some work for one of those associations in my native Baltimore and enjoyed the friendship of several community organizers in the years I worked in a poor parish. ...

This is a hospital newsletter Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Hey everybody, Today is the memorial of Pope St. Pontian, who reigned — and was killed — during a third century persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire —- along with the martyr priest Hippolytus.  Pontian’s pontificate started out ok — the Church was not persecuted by the emperor Severus Alexander, who led the Roman Empire until 235. But in 235, Severus was murdered, and succeeded by Maximus Thrax, a military man, who hated Christians, according to historians. Pontian, along with other Christians in Rome, was exiled to work as a slave in the gold, lead, and silver mines of Sardinia.  Knowing he wouldn’t make it home, Pontian resigned his office as Bishop of...

Near-assassination attempts make us pause. God can intervene. But does he? Consider the following.   After the Battle of Monongahela on July 9, 1755, a 23-year-old soldier wrote a letter to his brother in which he said, “But, by the all-powerful dispensations of God, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation, for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side.”  That soldier was none other than George Washington, America’s first president.  “I shouldn’t be here,” Donald Trump told the crowd on the first day of the 2024 National Republican Convention. “If I only half-turn, it hits the back of the brain,” he said. “The other way [the bullet] goes right through...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 09, 2024 My title question masks a deeper one which is perhaps more to the point. Are the indifference and even hostility to Christ so great in the world today that we are excused from meeting the challenges of raising our children Catholic, seeking to deepen the faith and commitment of our fellow Catholics, and attempting to evangelize others in the midst of a secular culture that is just not interested? I suppose this question answers itself except for one thing: Do not many of us at least secretly believe that the contemporary culture of the West is so uniquely uninterested and even hostile to Christ that it is all but pointless to engage in any sort of mission? What got me thinking about this again yesterday was the announc...