Maundy Thursday Sermon 2021
Solemn High Mass at St. Patrick's. https://youtu.be/uX7y3sX0FO8
Solemn High Mass at St. Patrick's. https://youtu.be/uX7y3sX0FO8
I recently read this from Harvard Business: "Highly intelligent, confident, and successful, alpha males represent about 70% of all senior executives. As the label implies, they’re the people who aren’t happy unless they’re the top dogs—the ones calling the shots. Although there are plenty of successful female leaders with equally strong personalities, we’ve found top women rarely if ever match the complete alpha profile. Alphas reach the top ranks in large organizations because they are natural leaders—comfortable with responsibility in a way nonalphas can never be. Most people feel stress when they have to make important decisions; alphas get stressed when tough decisions don’t rest in their capable hands. For them, [...]
The ABCs of Salvation is: A) Ask for Faith. B) Baptize. C) Confess. This is what a priest needs to think of every time he goes outside, every time he faces an emergency, every time he thinks of COVID-19.
On today's podcast, Oz and I discuss peaceful vigilance in lay people approaching both catechesis and priests, and how we want to avoid the two extremes of both negligence and panic.
On today's podcast Andromeda and Fr. Dave discuss persecution of Christians in the USA as well as what it means for a priest to wear his cassock or habit. As will be the custom, we will always close with a quote from the Life of the Virgin by St. Maximus the Confessor. It can be found on Amazon here.
Our Patristics professor in seminary said something that I will never forget. He said: “Don’t read the Scriptures with a higher IQ than who it was written for.” I’m going to keep coming back to this line, “Don’t read the Scriptures with a higher IQ than who it was written for,” so I need to explain first what it does not mean. My professor was a very intellectual man, so he was not saying that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was created to trick peasant-doofuses into becoming Christians or later that Catholicism would become the opium of the illiterate-masses. Nor did he mean that the Deposit of the Faith was [...]
Crux reports "When the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon rolls around in October, the long-debated possibility of ordaining mature, married men to the priesthood in areas where there are priest shortages will be brought to the table." Ever notice that when he who St. Ignatius of Loyola calls “the enemy of human nature" floats propositions to men, that proposition always begins under the guise of "safe, rare and legal"? This is not only in matters of human life, but even in liturgical matters. Fr. Heilman shows here in Truth About Communion in the Hand While Standing that Holy Communion in the Hand only started in 1969 by "bestowing an [...]
Here are 10 very important Nota Benes to read before the account of homosexuality in the American Catholic Church: 1. This is not a gay-bashing blog-post. I have good friends who have struggled with same-sex attraction. Most of them were smart enough not to enter seminary or religious life. I say "smart" because it would be stupid to go live with 100 people you're sexually attracted to for over seven years in a celibate vocation. 2. I do not believe anyone is born “gay,” so the correct Catholic term is actually “someone who struggles with same-sex attraction.” However, for the sake of brevity, I will often use the term “gay” [...]
I'll be posting some daily Mass sermons like this one since I'm [surprisingly] back in a parish.
I spent 2017 as the parish priest in a small bayou parish in south Louisiana. Their normal pastor was serving as a chaplain for the US Army for a year, and he needed someone who knew the Traditional Latin Mass. His tiny bayou parish was very unusual insofar as it was under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, but was 1962-sacraments-only. The bishop down there was very good to me. Like most “Latin ghettos” in other dioceses, this Latin Mass parish was found in a poor part of the state, in this case on Tiger Bayou, full of gators and ditched oil rigs. I describe Louisiana as a “Catholic [...]