Doctrine: Why We Can’t Crack
A young priest with whom I was once a seminarian is now on Facebook like me. About a year ago, he posted the account of how he asked an old priest if young priests would save the Church. The old priest said “No, Jesus will save His Church,” or something like that. Of course, this post had a ton of “likes.” For one, it seemed so humble for a young priest to admit that we young priests would not “save” the Church. Secondly, it tapped our modern Catholic desire to prove to Protestants that we only look to for Jesus for salvation. Both are true, and I have no problem [...]
The Priest and Our Lady
I was staring at the Eucharist in my private chapel, and I marvelled at how the Eucharist came from me. And the Eucharist is Jesus. And Jesus is God. So...God came from me? I immediately knew there was something wrong about in my thinking. It was this: The Eucharist did not come from me. The best preposition is probably “through.” That is, the Eucharist came through me. The Catholic Church uses the verb to confect as seen in Canon Law: "Can. 900 §1. The minister who is able to confect the sacrament of the Eucharist in the person of Christ is a validly ordained priest alone.” This verb comes from [...]
The Last Jedi and the Priesthood
The Prequels Towards the end of our first year in seminary, we were required to take a 30-day silent-retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It was the summer of 2005, and we seminarians arrived in Omaha for a month off the grid. We were taken about 45 miles northeast of Omaha to a forest in Iowa, where we would pray along the Nishnabotna River for 30 days in silence. Every day would include four to five hours of meditation on the Gospels (Ignatian mental prayer) as well as daily Mass, Rosary, Divine Office and manual labor. The Spiritual Exercises are truly that: Exercises, not a [...]
Padre’s Platinum List
People have been asking me for my favorite books in one single blog post. Here's a short "best-of" list. NB: I hesitantly use Amazon Prime as it does not fulfill Catholic social teaching on subsidiarity. Thus, I'm not going to hyperlink these books. You will have to do your own research to find them. That way, you can use whatever market you want. How to Pray Conversation with Christ by Fr. Rohrbach Best book on Mary The World's First Love by Archbishop Fulton Sheen Best histories of the Catholic Church The History of Christendom by Warren Carroll (long at six volumes coming to about 5,000 pages) Triumph (short, coming to [...]
Lead Us Not Into Temptation
There has recently been some debate on the last line of the Our Father: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.—Matthew 6:13 Should the Our Father read "lead us not into temptation" as it has always been translated or the modern "let us not fall into temptation"? Let's look at the Greek. The Greek of Matthew 6:13a is καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν. Word-by-word, it is καὶ (and) μὴ (not) εἰσενέγκῃς (to bring/lead) ἡμᾶς (us) εἰς (into) πειρασμόν (temptation.)—Matthew 6:13 Notice that the verb εἰσενέγκῃς (pronounced ace-in-egg-ace) is the active verb translated as bring or lead. On the other hand, the whole idea of "let us not fall [...]
Trent on the Holy Eucharist
"Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."—St. Luke 16:18 "For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself."—1 Cor 11:29 "For no crime is there heavier punishment to be feared from God than for the unholy or irreligious use of the Eucharist."—Council of Trent, Chapter 6 on the Eucharist The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another's Sin: By counsel By command By consent By provocation By praise or flattery By concealment By partaking By silence By defense of the ill done
Fulton Sheen’s Little Heroine
The only person to reach more people for Christ on television than Billy Graham was a Catholic bishop named Archbishop Fulton Sheen from Illinois, later bishop in New York. Every Tuesday night, starting in the 1950s, up to 10 million Americans from all faiths tuned in to his TV Show, Life Is Worth Living. Not only Catholics, but many older Jewish people fondly remember tuning in to his Tuesday evening show about God. Venerable Fulton Sheen also traveled the world and raised millions of dollars for foreign missions in poor countries. He is credited with converting the following to the Catholic Faith: Agnostic writer Heywood Broun, politician Clare Boothe Luce, [...]
Carta Abierta a Un Sacerdote
Una pareja católica escribió una carta anónima a su pastor y a cada sacerdote. Ellos asisten a la Missa de forma ordinaria en la zona oeste de los E.U. Son buenos amigos míos desde hace 10 años. Me pidieron que lo publique en mi blog. Padre, Estoy muy agradecido que haya dedicado su vida a ser nuestro padre espiritual. Estoy agradecido por los regalos que nos ha puesto a disposición en los sacramentos. Sabemos que usted trabaja incansablemente para mantener todo equilibrado y funcionando sin problemas. Por eso estamos agradecidos. Debemos ser sinceros y divulgar nuestras preocupaciones y frustraciones: hemos escuchado más acerca de la comunidad LGBTQ y la aceptación [...]
Open Letter to a Priest
A Catholic married couple with children wrote an anonymous letter to their parish priest, to every priest. They attend the ordinary Mass in English out West. They have been good friends of mine for almost a decade, and they asked me to publish it here. Open Letter to our spiritual Fathers Dear Fr. ___________, I am so very thankful that you have given your life to be our spiritual father. I am grateful for the gifts you make available to us in the sacraments. We know you work tirelessly to keep everything balanced and running smoothly. For that, we are thankful. But we have to be honest and share our [...]
Mary: God’s First Love
Although the pro-life movement’s arguments can be proved from science as much as religion, one of the reasons that I am so involved in the pro-life movement is based on this piece of theology: God imagined every person as an unrepeatable blueprint long before their conception. Since God is the exclusive Creator of the Universe, and since God is in eternity (two philosophical necessities to a world with only One God) this means that God imagined the blueprint to each person’s genome long before an individual zygote was ever conceived. Of course, “imagined” and “before” are words that fail us, especially since we are speaking of a God who exists [...]