Posts

The Featured Post

Refuse to take communion from sinful priests: I turned the tables on one

-
Image
“Sixty-nine percent of all American Catholics do not believe that the host and wine that they receive is actually the body and blood of Jesus Christ”  How do Catholics know which priests are in the state of grace? If a priest or bishop is in a state of sin, should he be dispensing the body of Christ? This is a story about why I refused communion from a sinful priest. How could I know if a priest is sinful?  No one actually knows this but God himself.  However, I can know about a sinful priest in the same way that they they make the judgment about us, postulating that some of us are unworthy of receiving communion.  Important: I am in a state of grace with God, but not with the church. However, my guess is that many of those who take communion at a Catholic mass is in a state of sin.  Which is as Jesus would have wanted it. Still, how would a priest or bishop or cardinal know if someone is in a state of sin? Only God knows what is in our hearts and souls. And what would give that priest
Post a Comment
Read more

Former Albany bishop, “in shockingly frank deposition,” admits moving criminal abusers from parish to parish

-
Image
… acknowledged cover ups, did not report to police Most American bishops simply lie when they are asked if they reported known child abusers to the police or if they moved them from parish to parish. The most egregious was the former Cardinal Bernard Law of the archdiocese of Boston who was accused by the Boston Globe of doing so after denying what the Globe had learned through its investigations.  Knowing that these priests were abusers, Law and others simply moved them from one parish to the next, and while hierarchy like the pope in Rome and his underlings knew of this, they did nothing.  Finally, one bishop is admitting his complicity, perhaps knowing that he will not be able to enter heaven without cleansing himself of these sins. Albany deposition The deposition of Bishop Howard Howard occurred in 2021, and it is shocking on a number of levels. First, that he acknowledge his guilt. Second, that it took so long for him to do so.  America magazine reported this today about the depo
Post a Comment
Read more

Jesus Christ was Jewish; “The Jews did not kill Jesus”

-
Image
… Jesus was killed by the Romans One of the challenges for American Christians is acknowledging some basic truths. First, Jesus Christ was the son of two Jewish parents, and he was born in Nazareth.  The other has to do with his skin. Those from Nazareth, in Israel, have brown skin, not white.  So, why does the book of John refer to the Jews trying to kill Jesus? Father James Martin raised this issued last week. He is working on a book right now about the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and this part about the Jews trying to kill Jesus is in John’s gospel.  The background Why are “the Jews” written about by John in such derogatory terms, particularly when Jesus has been called "King of the Jews"? Though “the Jews” are described as friends of Lazarus’s sisters Martha and Mary and grieve over Lazarus’s death, in John’s Gospel they are often portrayed in the most negative of terms (as they are in today’s readings), with “the Jews” trying to kill Jesus.   We ma
Post a Comment
Read more

Why I am closer to “Mainline Protestantism” than to American Catholicism today

-
Image
Anglican Church … Mainline Protestantism is making a comeback, close to Catholic social teachings More than five centuries ago, a priest and intelligent scholar named Martin Luther pinned his “95 Theses” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. That movement signified the start of the Protestant Reformation, and it was a definitive break with the Catholic Church. What was contained in these theses? Quite a bit, but the essence of his condemnation of the Catholic Church focused on its corruption, In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the papal practice of asking payment—called “indulgences”—for the forgiveness of sins. History.com Since I was brought up in the Catholic Church was indoctrinated into its teachings, Martin Luther was condemned for his behavior in turning his back on that denomination.  The unfortunate part of this is that today, a person raised in that church like me can realize th
Post a Comment
Read more

Pew: People are not returning to church as they reopen: “in-person attendance is unchanged since fall”

-
Image
… is this a trend? Most churches have now returned to their pre-Pandemic schedule of services, but that has not increased the numbers of people who are attending them.  Some churches still have some restrictions in place, but that does not appear to be a factor in this.  The survey from the Pew Foundation reveals that while attendance increase somewhat into last fall, those numbers have not continued. Part of that could be because members are now used to and comfortable with remote services instead of having to attend in-person.  Church authorities, though, hope that this will change as Covid-19 numbers subside.  As COVID-19 cases continue to decline and pandemic restrictions are eased across the United States, churches and other houses of worship increasingly are holding services the way they did before the outbreak began, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. But there has not been a corresponding rise over the past six months in the share of Americans who are attending in
Post a Comment
Read more

On the feast of St. Joseph, an evaluation of a “Josephite marriage”

-
Image
… Catholic view is Mary remained virginal March 19 is the feast of St. Joseph, and since we are children were taught by nuns of the St. Joseph’s order, we knew about the man.  However, many people are not aware that Joseph and Mary lived a celibate life, according to the Catholic Church.  Today, there exists within the Catholic Church what is called a Josephite Marriage. I had never heard of it, so I did some investigating.  Here is what I found. Catholic view of celibate marriage I had read about this because of a piece in the New York Times about a man whose parents, with four children, applied to the church to enter into a Josephite marriage. Today, many priests think that such a thing is abhorrent, but not all of them.  So, what is a Josephite marriage? There appear to be two forms of the Sacrament of Marriage, one that we could call the “ordinary form,” the other that one might call the “extraordinary form.”  While both are the same vocation, the second requires
Post a Comment
Read more