What are "Last Rites"?  "Last Rites" is simply a compound-noun indicating the sacraments you hope to receive on your deathbed.  First, the priest hears your confession.  Then, you receive your final Holy Communion (aka Viaticum, literally "food for the journey.")  Then, the priest gives you "extreme unction" (a Latin/English compound-noun simply meaning "anointing at the extreme—or end—part of your life.")  After all of this, but before the Final Commendation of the Soul (of which I wrote about here for my mother) the dying person receives the Apostolic Pardon.  (I also gave this to my mother, but didn't write about it in the above-linked blog post because most of you already [...]

Before going to confession, remember to never bring your phone in the confessional (as a phone even in airplane-mode may be hacked by the government or another enemy.)  Rather, write out your sins on a piece of paper that you may wish to bring into the confessional.  Then, begin your confession by saying to the priest your state in life (married, single, priest religious) and then say how long it's been since your last confession (one week, one month, one year, etc.).  Say, "I accuse myself of the following sins..." as you keep in mind the traditional Four C's of Making a Good Confession: Clear.  Someone recently told me about an [...]

There's a lot of combinations of sacramental debates happening today, but most of them are very similar:  Someone's Catholic family member is getting married outside the Church.  Half the family feels squeamish about it.  A priest steps in and says to the more conservative family members, "You should indeed go to your son's wedding outside the Church, so as to not break the bonds of charity.  That way, you can evangelize him back into the Church later." Then, all the lay people in the family have their consciences euthanized by the smiling priest, and they all go to the "wedding." Here's why that priest is wrong and it's actually a [...]

p/c Star of the Sea, San Francisco. The 1950 Carmelite devotional Divine Intimacy reads: “The Father and the Word, mutually beholding Their infinite goodness and beauty, love each other from all eternity, and the expression of this unitive love is a third Person, the Holy Spirit. As the Word is generated by the Father by way of knowledge, so the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of love. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the terminus, and the effusion of the reciprocal love of the Father and the Son, an effusion so substantial and perfect that it is a Person, the third Person of the Most [...]

I am on a group Signal thread with a couple getting married and they asked me on that thread about how to explain the sacrament of marriage to a group of believers and non-believers: The audience will be people attending the wedding ceremony. Many of them aren’t Catholic or even Christian. The goal is to explain what they are seeing today and why it is important. Part of the explanation is going to be about Christian Marriage as a permanent union of man and woman. The union was made sacred when Christ raised it to the dignity of a Sacrament. The Sacrament of Matrimony is the essential element of the [...]