Dear non-Catholic “Lord of the Rings” fans - the entire work, according to Tolkien, is infused with and inspired by and motivated by Catholicism.
Non-Catholics are ALWAYS welcome to come check out what it is all about. You are always welcome in our churches. You are always welcome to come pray with us at Mass.
If you ever would like someone to help you attend a Mass or if you have Catholic questions, give us a call!
A thread of quotes from saints on clerical celibacy (priests not getting married) and clerical continence (priests not having sex) from the book "The Case for Clerical Celibacy"
When I shared these on Twitter, they were retweeted by Bishop Seitz from Texas, so some of this social media work pays off!
1) “In his treatise Adversus Vigilantium (406), Saint Jerome reiterated the obligation that ministers of the altar had to live in permanent continence”
2) St Ambrose “Clearly stated that even ministers of the altar who had been married before ordination could not continue the use of marriage after ordination”
3) St Augustine “Participated at the Council of Carthage in which the obligation had been repeatedly affirmed and traced back to the Apostles”
4) Saint Gregory the Great (590-604) “Stated simply that even the ordination to the subdiaconate definitively carried with it the obligation to perfect continence”
5) St Leo the Great (456): “The law of continence is the same for the ministers of the altar, bishops and priests. When they were still laymen they could take a wife and have children, but once they have reached the ranks mentioned above, what has been permitted is no longer so.”
6) Pope Siricius In 385 “Priests and deacons who, even after ordination, have children act against an irrevocable law which has bound major clerics from the beginning of the Church. Their appeal to the Old Testament, in which the priests and Levites could use their marriage rights outside the time of their service in the Temple, have been refuted by the New Testament, in which the major clerics had to offer daily their sacred service. Thus from the day of their ordination they were obliged to live in perpetual continence.”
“In the various heretical and schismatic movements that have arisen in the Church, one of the first institutions to be attacked is clerical continence.” - from the book itself
For those who want an in depth breakdown of our Holy Land pilgrimage, here is a podcast that Dr. Marshall and I recorded yesterday:
Here is a podcast that we recorded while in the Holy Land, as we spent some time talking with those from our group who were interested in the Latin Mass and had questions. It was a great discussion that I think many people will find helpful.
So we’re obviously all coming to this
wedding Mass from different places.Some
of us are Catholics, and some of us are not.Some of us feel close to God today, and some may be struggling in their
Faith or even questioning God.I want to
just say that God meets us wherever we are at this afternoon.God draws near to us.
So whether we are Catholic or not, I
wanted to spend a moment asking and then reflecting on what we are doing
here.I’d like to share a quote I turn
to often when I teach or talk about the Mass.
I want to start with a quote from one
of the best Catholic authors of our time.He carries the added advantage of being a convert to Catholicism as an
adult.His name is Thomas Howard, and he
says this very charitably to non-Catholics and people who are wondering a VERY
fair question: what in the world is going on at a Catholic Mass.He says this
“It can be the case that one comes to
Mass from the happy precincts of Evangelicalism, and goes away at the end with
great sadness."But I miss the fellowship!" He might say. "I didn't since the eager atmosphere of
glad attention and participation I knew in my former church." [NOT
very BUBBLY]
He goes on: When the Roman Catholic
"goes to church", he or she sees themselves as joining them self to
something that is already going on…He has been summoned to the one necessary
thing. He or she takes their place, literally, with angels and archangels and
with all the company of Heaven, who laud and magnify the Holy Name of the Most
High.”
I love that!
In the Mass, we are drawn up into the
very life of God.When we come to Mass,
we are transported into the very life of God.When any Mass begins, it is kind of like what they used to say on TV, “we
now join the live broadcast already in progress.”
Jesus told his Mom 2,000 years ago in
the Gospel we just heard that His hour had not yet come.But it has come now.And every time we go to Mass, we join in with
His hour.
Laura and Mack, you know this.You know that any time you come to Mass, you
are joining in with something that is already going on.It is why we surround the Church with so much
beauty in architecture, artwork, sacred music, gold chalices, vestments, etc. –
the beauty helps remind us and those who see it that we are doing something
different here.This is not a Kohl’s nor
a Meijer nor a gym nor a fellowship hall.This is Heaven and Earth coming together.
In the first reading we are told that
God gazes through the windows of our souls and speaks to us, and that God our
lover invites us to arise, as his beloved, and come away with Him.
and so what I’d like to note is that
your wedding today is obviously a sacrament in the Church, and it takes place
within the central sacrament of the Eucharist.The sacrament of your marriage takes place within another
sacrament.So as with those who come to
a Mass, your wedding itself is also drawn up into the life of God.
And that’s amazing.But let’s unpack that just a bit.
As we are assumed into the life of
God, further up and further in, as the children of Narnia describe their
running into Heaven, we see things.As
we are drawn up into the Life of God, into the very heartbeat of God, as we
step into the flame of the eternal God, we see God’s inner workings.And so St. Paul says keep on doing what you
have learned and received and heard and seen in me.It is
St. Paul’s way of saying what Mary tells the wait staff in Cana – DO whatever
he tells you!
Learn, receive, hear, see…then DO!
That’s what students hear from their
teachers, including at Christ the King – DO what you have learned, received,
and heard and seen in me.
What do we learn, receive, hear and
see in God?Well we see the pure and
transformative fire of love.And the
fire of love, when it meets that which still needs perfecting, causes pain and
suffering.
But you should know, of course, that
sufferings and pains are not road blocks, sufferings and pains are not signs
that you are doing it wrong, they are not signs that God is punishing you, we
put crucifixes all over our homes, our classrooms, our cars to be a constant
reminder that, when you experience suffering, it means you are on the
trail.You are moving further up and
further in.That your marriage is being
drawn into the life of God, as gold that is purified in flame.The first reading says “Loves flames are a
blazing fire that deep waters cannot quench, cannot put out”
People who
say that Mass is boring don’t know what is happening, they can’t know, and they
can’t be listening to the words thundering lovingly into our lives like a
stampeded of wild horses driving out all that must be driven from us and awakening
in us what needs awoken.
Let your
marriage be assumed into the life of God, as the sacrament of your marriage,
and all of us here, are assumed into the very heart of God at Mass today.
Saint Paul says today “For freedom Christ sets us free”…”for
freedom, Christ sets us free”…
In America, this is our Fourth of July week and freedom is
something good that we talk about a lot in our country and cherish.
It is important because it’s connected really to what we read here.St. Paul is giving this beautiful explanation
in today’s reading about freedom and what it means in a Biblical sense, and of
course it applies in our civil sense as well.
St. Paul makes it really clear first of all that freedom is not
freedom to do whatever I want. He goes
into that and explains that throughout the 2nd reading.it is NOT the ability to do whatever I want.
He’s really clear about that.And if we think about it a little bit, although that notion is out
there, in our world and in some places that I’m not truly free unless I get to
do whatever I want, most of us realize that freedom is bounded if it really is
freedom.There’s going to be limitations.Freedom without limitations is license.That’s not what we mean.
St. Paul is saying it is NOT freedom from the laws of God. He is
saying that there is freedom that is found from LIVING them. There are not many
words different there, but there is an infinite difference in their
meaning.St. Paul is telling us, the
Church is teaching us, St. John Paul the 2nd who lived under all
kinds of tyrannical governments in different forms, said this over and over
again through his pontificate – the TRUE understanding of freedom is not found by
living apart from the Laws of God, it is found FROM LIVING them.And that’s what St. Paul is talking
about.Freedom in the true sense from
living the laws of God that are handed on to me through the Church.
A
couple of important notes:
1) The
laws of God that are given to us through the Church are not affected at all by
government. Let me say that again.The
laws that are given to us by God through the Church are not affected by the
government; by the “laws of the land.”There have been from the very beginning of the Church through today
different governments in different forms, kings, Caesar’s, rulers, comrades, that
have sought to rule and legislate and tell the Church what the laws given to it
by God ought to be.
And the
Church has repeatedly stood up and died in the face of that rather than change,
because we can NOT change the laws that are given to us by God through His
Church.
2)
Another thing: we can try to bring our laws that God has given to us through
the Church into government; into the laws of the land.In some places, there have been times where
Christians have been very successful at doing that; influence the laws of the
land and align them fairly well with the laws God has given us.Our country has been very blessed over its
200 plus years.We live in a place where
that has largely been the case.There
are other places around the world today where the laws of the land are almost
the complete opposite of the laws that God has given us through the Church.So you and I are called to work in the civil
realm, we’re not called to just come here and pray and then leave our Faith at
the door.We’re called to try to do what
we can to gather other people, to help convince, sway, bring other people with
us, explain to them why the laws of God ought to be brought into the laws of
the land.We are allowed to do that.
But the
government has never and will never be able to tell us what the Laws of God
are, because they are laws of God, not laws that change.
So this
idea of freedom, to come back to that.Freedom
comes from following those laws and living them, not from ignoring them or
walking away from them.
I’d
just like to share a brief example here at the end.I was asked, at the beginning of the summer,
to help coach a little league baseball team.There are some parishioners on the team, but there wasn’t enough coaches
to go around.So I’ve been coaching
little league baseball on Saturday mornings throughout this summer, and it has
been a blast.
The
very first time I showed up they were running to first and stopping, and I was
telling the kids to keep running, but then the kids would say “we stop at first”.And I was talking to the people who run the
league who said they’ve been bringing the kids along slowly.And I remember that is how it went with my
baseball when I was little.
It
takes a long time!It is a gradual
process.And over time we learn those
laws.And in the same way for us it
takes us a long time to learn the laws of God.We spend time in prayer, maybe we were raised in the Faith, we learn the
rules over time, we learn the rules God has given and we decide if we are going
to incorporate them into our lives or not.
To wrap
up the analogy, this afternoon I was watching the Yankees and Red Sox.There was such a freedom and a beauty to the
game.There always is with professional
sports.Women’s soccer is going on right
now in the World Cup…there’s a beauty to watching professionals play and the
beauty comes precisely from the fact that they all recognize the rules and live
them.They’ve all accepted them.And because they’ve lived them so long and
practiced so much and have lived those rules and have worked on every little single
element of that game for their entire live, there is a freedom that comes from
that.Because they all recognize and
know what they are doing.
Yeah
they were arguing with the ump over strike calls, and that kind of thing, “no
he was safe” or “no he was out” but they weren’t arguing about whether we
should have outs at all.No one was
saying is “you know what I think we should do is have SEVEN strikes!”They were arguing over little details, but
they all knew the rules.Precisely when
the rules are followed, embraced, understood, and lived, beautiful things
happen in the wake of that.
And it
is the same for us.And that’s what St.
Paul was trying to say, it is what John Paul the Second was trying to say, and
what countless other saints were trying to say.Encouraging us “Take these laws of the Church and LIVE them.Take them and live them and you will find
freedom.The freedom that comes from
beautiful things.”
The
beauty that comes from following the laws of God is not a nice baseball game,
it is sainthood.It is a holy life that
is not able to be destroyed by suffering, not able to be destroyed by pain, or
any other thing, not the government or any other external whatever.
The
beauty that comes from following the laws of God and internalizing them and
living them day in and day out is the beauty of a life well-lived – sainthood.
We pray
that we might hear St. Paul’s call to us; an invitation to live the laws of
God, and thus to find the freedom that He promises.
"Decree acknowledges Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School’s choice to no longer retain its Catholic identity"
The Catholic Church teaches that Catholic schools are integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and to be places of learning where students encounter the living Christ.
All those who minister in Catholic educational institutions carry out an important ministry in communicating the fullness of Catholic teaching to students both by word and action inside and outside the classroom. It is their duty and privilege to ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice. To effectively bear witness to Christ, whether they teach religion or not, all ministers in their professional and private lives must convey and be supportive of Catholic Church teaching. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis recognizes all teachers, guidance counselors and administrators as ministers. A comprehensive description of Catholic Church teaching can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, every archdiocesan Catholic school and private Catholic school has been instructed to clearly state in its contracts and ministerial job descriptions that all ministers must convey and be supportive of all teachings of the Catholic Church.
Regrettably, Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School has freely chosen not to enter into such agreements that protect the important ministry of communicating the fullness of Catholic teaching to students. Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School has chosen to no longer be recognized as a Catholic institution by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. The attached decree is effective as of June 21, 2019.
"Many people believe that the Catholic Church opposes same sex marriage because the Bible and the Church condemn homosexual sex. However, this is not the primary reason that the Church opposes same sex marriage. The Church says that there are several core key principles that a society has to be founded on and protect or else the society will collapse. And one of those is the dignity of marriage, particularly it being between one man and one woman. The Church says that as soon as that stops being protected, a society will begin to collapse. And so no Catholic could ever be indifferent toward, let alone work for or actually promote same sex “marriage”."
This is a completely fallible take on kids crying in Church.
In the discussion (a new round always exploding into existence on social media when word spreads of another bulletin article or pulpit comment), there are two large camps:
Camp 1 - "There should not ever be a sound at Mass" and
Camp 2 - "The Church is dying in the West, so we should always be grateful for all the noise that every child makes in Church, and Jesus said "Let the children come to me" so it might even be a good thing to keep a crying child in Mass"
As the oldest of 11 children I spent most of my teenage years as part of a family that was always retreating to the cry room, and I even sometimes took a sibling out to the play ground if my parents asked me to because they were taking another kid to the cry room and breaking up a fight between two other siblings. I spent most of my life watching my parents heroically try to herd us and keep us quiet for an hour, and I spent most of my life watching my Mom make a beeline for the cry room (a lot of Masses she just went straight there before Mass even started!).
My point in all this - I am DEFINITELY not in camp 1
But there does seem to be a trend over the last decade or so where some people think that every instance of a child crying/making noise in Church is a GOOD thing. I am DEFINITELY not in camp 2 either.
So I'd suggest a middle road - a recognition that anyone who thinks there can't be any noise at Mass needs to relax, and at the same time a recognition that sometimes children need to be taken outside or taken to the cry room.
Broadly speaking, let's look at the scenarios.
1) Babies crying - of course a baby is never at fault for any noise they make. But parents should also know that all of us are genetically hard-wired to be on edge when a child is crying. And so when an infant is crying, we all notice it and can't truly focus on anything else. At Mass, I continue praying the prayers but I (and everyone else) are definitely also thinking, instinctively, "I should be doing something to help this child...what is wrong". We also immediately start to move on when we hear the crying infant being carried out of Church. Not because we think "FINALLY! I can pray again and that nuisance is gone" but because my instinctive desire to help the child calms down when I can tell myself "someone is doing something to help the child, I can move on. He or she is okay."
Jesus: "Let the children come to me" Everyone: "Jesus, speak up. We can't hear what you are saying!"
2) Babies making baby noises - When I was in the seminary in Rome, most of our masses were 250 20-30 year old seminarians. One day, a seminarian's sister stopped by with her young family. Her baby was making the occasional baby noises (cooing, the occasional exclamation as the child began to notice and enjoy the echo of the Church, etc.) and for all 250 of us it was like being visited at Mass by a choir of angels. Everyone at Mass LOVED the sounds, and it was one of my favorite Masses in Rome. We all smiled and could appreciate it because the child wasn't CRYING.
3) Toddlers - This is also a tough one. Any rational person understands that a three year old isn't going to be perfectly silent for an hour. But again, I think there's a gray middle ground. Some tips:
Tip 1: My Mom told me that the best advice she got was from a priest in a homily who suggested "quiet toys". A plastic truck being banged up against a wooden pew over and over again is eventually going to pull most people away from prayer.
"Timmy, you are 8. Do you still need to shoot off your cap gun and play cops and robbers at Church and build a fort?"
Tip 2: I loved that my parents, on the way home from Mass, always broke down "game film" (like good coaches) with the toddlers and kids in our family ("Stephanie, you did a great job today at Mass of not making noise and behaving, we're very proud of you!" or, more often, "Dave, you were making a lot of noise today, what happened that you weren't able to behave?" and, as we got older, "Bill, you are 7, why were you squeezing your brother's hand in a death grip during the Our Father?").
"You are older and should know better. No coffee and donuts this week and no video games today"
Walk your kids closer to silence and continually talk over your expectations, and, as they get older, reinforce those expectations with donuts or other rewards/punishments!
In summary - if a baby is making the occasional baby noise, awesome. If a baby is crying, they should be carried out. Young children should be coached and molded into proper behavior at Mass.
Thanks to all the parents who make the huge and tremendous sacrifice of raising children. We all know it is really hard, and we admire you greatly. You are awesome!
