I’m currently overseeing a Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II adult faith formation program in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and we’re just about finished with our examination of Sacrosanctum Concilium.
The question most commonly asked by participants at this point is not about the Council’s intent but “what do we do now?”
You see, the more they learn about the Council’s view of Holy Mass and its true intentions concerning liturgical reform, the more frustrated they are getting. One woman even told me that the price she is now paying for being “armed with the truth” is a “perpetual state of agitation!” (Read more)
With news of the Holy Father’s plan to beatify Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman later this year, I thought I’d share a necessarily abbreviated look at the life of one of Catholicism’s most famous converts – a man who has been called “the Father of Vatican II.”
Newman was born in 1801 into what has been described as an ordinary Church of England home – his father; a London Banker and Freemason, his mother; a descendent of French Protestants who had become famous engravers and paper makers in England. (Read more)
The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy called for a restoration of the “prayer of the faithful” saying:
Especially on Sundays and feasts of obligation there is to be restored, after the Gospel and the homily, "the common prayer" or "the prayer of the faithful." By this prayer, in which the people are to take part, intercession will be made for holy Church, for the civil authorities, for those oppressed by various needs, for all mankind, and for the salvation of the entire world. (SC 53) (Read more)
With Pope Benedict’s recent declaration of Pope Pius XII as “Venerable,” it is becoming clear once again that the true nature of the Catholic Church’s relationship with the Jewish people is widely misunderstood as an effort to promote a “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” brand of diplomacy, though it is really nothing of the sort.
The Second Vatican Council’s treatment of the subject, which is frequently misrepresented in the media, concerns an inter-religious relationship that is animated by the shared spiritual patrimonies of respective faith traditions; united as they are in covenant with the God of Abraham. (Read more)
Are you familiar with the Catholic social justice principle known as “subsidiarity”?
If you’re an American citizen in this day and age in which the federal government is about the only segment of the economy that’s growing and you don’t know what subsidiarity is; you better find out in a hurry. (Read more)
"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Cor. 2:9)
For most of us, these familiar words of the prophet Isaiah repeated by St. Paul to the Corinthians conger up ethereal images of the indescribable beauty of heaven, and they are commonly read at funerals as a result. Lately, however, I have been thinking of them more in terms of the here and now; the “heaven on earth” that is accessible to “those who love Him” - not just following physical death - but this very day. (Read more)
At the USCCB Fall General Assembly in Baltimore on November 17th, the bishops received a preliminary briefing from researchers of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on a report they commissioned in 2006 for insight into the clergy sex abuse scandal.
According to the original research proposal, one of the study’s stated objectives is to “understand, on an individual level, how priests with allegations of sexual abuse differ from other priests.” (Read more)
Just four days after removing the excommunication from the four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, Pope Benedict XVI offered insight regarding his motives during the General Audience of January 28.
"In the homily delivered on the occasion of the solemn inauguration of my pontificate, I said that the 'call to unity' is an 'explicit' duty of the pastor," he said. The decision to lift the excommunications, the Holy Father explained, should be viewed as "precisely in fulfilling this service to unity.” (Read more)
If the Holy Spirit was to manifest before you today and say, “I have a gift for you,” how would you respond?
Is there any chance you’d say, “Sounds great, but that’s probably not for me?” Of course not! Yet that’s exactly what most Catholics have unwittingly been doing for the last four decades or so. (Read more)
What do Fort Hood, Vatican II and Regensburg have in common? More than you might think.
As details continue to emerge surrounding last week’s massacre at Fort Hood, which wounded nearly three dozen people and left thirteen others dead, the consequences of a hyper-sensitive ‘kid glove’ approach to Islam is being brought into increasingly sharper focus. (Read more)
