Fr. Giusanni had gift for deciphering signs of the times, priest recalls

When Father Luigi Giussani died in 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told the mourners at his funeral that “the centrality of Christ” in the life of the founder of Communion and Liberation gave him a particular “gift” for “deciphering correctly the signs of the times” in a difficult age “filled with temptations and errors.”
 
“Yes, I am convinced that Don Giussani has been a gift of the Holy Spirit for this past century,” agreed Father Ignacio Carbajosa Pérez of Communion and Liberation during an Aug. 23 conversation with CNA. “After all, it was a century with the danger that faith had nothing to do with reason.”

The 45-year-old from Madrid was only a teenager when he first met Fr. Giussani during a visit by the Italian priest to Spain. But the impact the priest had was instant.

“For me the most striking thing was to hear this man with this love for my humanity,” he remembered, “finally, to find someone who knew very well what is my humanity and then looked upon it in a sympathetic way.” 

Three decades later, Fr. Carbajosa is now responsible for Communion and Liberation in his native land as well as being a professor of Old Testament at the University of San Dámaso in Madrid.

This past week he was also a keynote speaker at the movement’s Rimini Meeting. The international event draws over 800,000 visitors from across the world to the Italian seaside resort for seven days filled with faith and culture.

The grand event all began, recalls Fr. Carbajosa, with a railway journey in 1950s Italy.
“Don Giussani was one day travelling on a train when he began talking to a group of young people, and he was struck because they did not know anything about what faith really was,” he said.

“For them, faith had nothing to do with love, for example, nothing to do with politics, it had nothing to do with culture, it was only a devotion.” 

The result was that Fr. Giussani asked if he could take leave from his academic position at the seminary and teach school children instead. From 1954 to 1964 he did just that at the Berchet Classical High School in Milan.

The scale of the task before him, though, was clear his first day.

“He tried to begin the first lesson when a young boy put up his hand and said, ‘excuse me Professor Father, you can say whatever you want but we know that reason has nothing to do with faith,’” Fr. Carbajosa said.

“And I think that this was the beginning of the movement,” he added.

Out of that moment grew what is now “Communion and Liberation,” an ecclesial movement whose stated purpose “is the education to Christian maturity of its adherents and collaboration in the mission of the Church in all the spheres of contemporary life.”

Over the years, Fr. Giussani’s approach led to friendship with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI – because the two men, suggested Fr. Carbajosa, “came from this common point of view, that is, a love for humanity and a preoccupation about how to use reason.”

Fr. Carbajosa sees this common approach reflected in several of Pope Benedict’s most significant speeches since he was elected in 2005, including his address in Regensburg, Germany in 2006, Westminster Hall in England in 2010 and the German parliament in 2011.

“There is a battle against a use of reason that is ‘positivist,’ and that had a dramatic consequence for human life, for people,” the priest said, linking this trait to “Don Giussani from 50 years ago when he began teaching at the school and also to Pope Benedict XVI.”

Capuchins to examine challenges of evangelizing secular societies

The Capuchin Franciscan religious order celebrated its General Chapter in Rome this past week and focused on the challenges of bringing Franciscan spirituality into the secularized life of the northern hemisphere.
 
According to the Capuchin’s website, some 234 members of the community are meeting Aug. 20 to Sept. 22 at the St. Lawrence of Brindisi Franciscan International School in Rome.

The assembly opened on Aug. 20 with a Mass celebrated by former Minister General Bishop John Corriveau of Nelson, Canada. The last several days have been devoted to workshop sessions.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, the current Minister General, Father Mauro Johri, said the Capuchins are “totally committed to maintaining our missionary presence in places that are very diverse and difficult.” 

They are also committed to addressing the new challenges which the Church has presented to them, such as engaging in “the New Evangelization in countries of the northern hemisphere.”

Fr. Johri said the Capuchins see themselves first and foremost as seekers of God and witnesses of his truth in today’s world, but also “as sons of St. Francis committed to living in simplicity, at the side of those of who are poor,” both spiritual and materially.

Among the goals the order has for advancing the New Evangelization are strengthening their presence at Capuchin missions and parishes, and improving preaching and the services they provide to those in need.

He also noted that with the opening of the Year of Faith and the Synod of Bishops for the New Evangelization (Oct. 7-28), the Capuchins “wish to make our voice and contribution heard as well.

“But I think the first step—and the general chapter is helping us to do this—is to be evangelized ourselves, that is, to allow ourselves to be reached by the novelty of the Gospel in order to be renewed in our faith and fundamental trust, because only thus will we be credible in inviting others to take this step,” Fr. Johri said.

Hanna Kleinberger: The woman who escaped the Holocaust by entering a convent

So much has been written about the Jewish children that were saved from the Holocaust by being taken into convents. And praise has been given to religious institutions for the courage shown in the face of the risks which this help involved.
 
But there has also been a great deal of controversy surrounding the question of the lost Jews, that is, those children and young people whose parents entrusted their care to clerics. Then, when they became orphans, they were baptised and raised as Christians. This is an extremely delicate topic about which generalisations should not be made: each story was unique in some way, as were the developments which followed.

A good description of this chapter of history was given in recent days in Israel: the Hebrew speaking Catholic Vicariate commemorated the figure of Sister Hanna Kleinberger - an 88 year old nun who died in Jerusalem at the beginning of August – on its website.
 
Born in Antwerp in 1924, Hanna was the daughter of a Polish Jewish couple who had immigrated to Belgium; during the war, Hanna’s parents sent her and her brother and sister, both younger than her, into hiding in some Catholic religious institutions. 

Assuming a false identity, then adolescent Hanna attended a school for nurses run by nuns. 

The three children survived the war but their parents did not; then Hanna’s life took a different path: she was baptised and about a year later she chose to enter religious life and joined the Sisters of Charity of Namur. She left for Zaire as a nun and nurse, where she carried out her ministry as a missionary for thirteen years.
  
But the question of her Jewish roots, which she had never renounced, remained. Until she asked her order to complete the aliyah, the “return to Jerusalem”, a right held by all Jews in the State of Israel. So as of 1970, Sister Hanna lived in the Holy City, becoming a living testimony of the possible meeting between Jews and Christians. In Israel her professional skills were put to good use: for many years she trained the new generations of nurses at Hadassah hospital, the most important hospital in Jerusalem.
 
But this is not all. Once she reached retirement age, she was able to return to Kinshasa for a month or so thanks to an Israeli humanitarian mission which was to open a new hospital in the country. This did not for one moment bring her vocation as a Catholic nun into question. 

In Jerusalem, Sister Hanna worked with Yad Vashem, contributing, through her testimony, to the recognition of the Righteous Among the Nations title given to five Belgian Catholic monks.

US Hispanic Catholics could play 'definitive' role in election

Political changes in recent years could mean that Catholics play an important role in the upcoming presidential election, but in a new way, say political analysts.
Dr. John Kenneth White, a political scientist at The Catholic University of America, explained that Hispanics – many of whom are Catholic – could be a “definitive group” in deciding the 2012 presidential election.

The 2012 election is unique, he told CNA on Aug. 23, noting that not only are both contenders for Vice President Catholic, but that neither candidate from either major U.S. party is a white Protestant.

The unprecedented situation has led to an unexpected amount of attention on Catholics, he said.

However, he explained, “it’s very hard to talk about the Catholic vote in generic terms” because the vote of Catholics is “incredibly diversified.”

White observed that in 1960s, Catholic self-identification was high and the faithful largely voted as a single bloc.

In recent elections, however, the Catholic vote has looked more like the national vote, he said.

Catholic identity has decreased, he added, and it is “not necessarily the first identity people bring with them into the ballot box.”

Rather, Catholics tend to think of themselves by their race, gender and other distinguishing factors, he said. The voting habits of the faithful can therefore be better analyzed by carving out groups based on factors such as Mass attendance and ethnicity.

A blog post issued by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate agreed with this observation, adding that membership in a union, unemployment and military service also factor into the way that Catholics cast their ballots.

An Aug. 3 blog post on the research center’s website noted that while Catholics have made up approximately 25 percent of the total electorate in recent elections, they make up about 19 percent of the total voting age population in the 16 states that remain the most competitive this year.

Catholics account for “the largest share of the voting age population” in the competitive states of New Mexico, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and they could also be a significant “swing vote” in Florida, Nevada and Ohio, it said.

While polls indicate that Catholics are split in their candidate preference, it is difficult to make predictions about the election so far out, especially since both national conventions and the candidates’ debates could still be key in swaying voters, the blog post noted.

However, it suggested, “the votes of those without a religious affiliation may be more decisive to the election outcome” than those of Catholics.

Nevertheless, White believes that both national campaigns are actively trying to court the Catholic electorate.

“They both see the Catholic vote as being important,” he said.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney recently announced that Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York would be offering the final benediction at the Republican National Convention on Aug. 30.

The announcement drew national attention, particularly since Cardinal Dolan – who leads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – has been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, which requires employers to offer health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and early abortion-inducing drugs.

White believes that the controversial mandate, which has drawn strong criticism from Church leaders, will have an impact on the vote of Catholics, “especially among frequent Church attendees.”

But the Obama campaign is “absolutely” trying to reach out to Catholics as well, in an effort that “takes on many different forms,” White added, explaining that a big part of this is the campaign’s outreach to Hispanic voters, which tend to overlap with Catholics.

And as a “leading minority” in many areas, Hispanics could be “a decisive number” in some swing states, he said.

White thinks the Hispanic vote will be “absolutely critical” in determining the outcome of the election.
 “At the end of the day, that vote seems to be a lot more unified,” he said.

French cardinal to contest Rimsha’s case

French cardinal Jean Louis Tauran has announced he is to contest the case of 11-year old Christian girl Rimsha, allegedly accused of burning Quranic verses.

A French media source, has quoted an interview by cardinal in which he has said that the alleged girl was illiterate, who could not read or write. 

Cardinal Jean, who is incharge of interfaith dialogue chapter in the Vatican, also said that the accused girl was a filth scavenger for her livelihood, and was definitely not obvious of the contents of the already discarded book. 

Declaring the issue as a serious and quite conflicting issue, he stressed on a dialogue over the issue, as it was impossible for an underage, illiterate girl to express her views about Quranic verses.

20 more suspects in Vatileaks case?

Vatican investigators could investigate 20 more people in the connection with the leaks of confidential papal documents, the Italian news service ANSA reports. 

Citing “well-placed Vatican sources,” ANSA said that after indicting two people - Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s former valet, and Claudio Sciarpelleti, a computer technician in the Secretariat of State - investigators are preparing a new phase of their investigation, in which at least 20 people will be examined. 

The Vatican has not commented on the ANSA report.

Gabriele has said that he acted alone in taking papers from the Pope’s apartment. 

But informed observers suspect that other Vatican insiders were involved in the release of the confidential documents. 

When the indictments of Gabriele and Sciarpelleti were announced, prosecutor Nicola Picardi indicated that investigators would continue to pursue all available leads. 

“We don’t think we have finished our work,” he said.

Pope's Lebanon trip could be a papal high-wire act

In what may be among the most challenging voyages of his papacy, Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit Lebanon Sept. 14-16, against the backdrop of a bloody insurrection in neighboring Syria and deep tensions in Muslim/Christian relations in various parts of the world.

Vatican officials have repeatedly said that security concerns will not derail the trip, but even if the pope can be kept safe, nobody’s disputing that it will be both a diplomatic and an interfaith high-wire act.

Assuming it goes ahead, the trip will mark Benedict’s first visit to the Middle East since the Arab Spring, and his fourth overall to the region after Turkey in 2006, the Holy Land in 2009, and Cyprus in 2010. The official purpose is to present the conclusions from the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on the Middle East in October 2010.

Lebanon is an obvious launching pad, since Christians make up 39 percent of the population of 4.1 million, the largest Christian footprint in percentage terms in the Middle East. Lebanon is the spiritual center of the Maronite church, which traces its roots to St. Maron, a fourth-century Syrian monk, and is the third-largest of the 22 Eastern churches in communion with Rome.

The trip unfolds amid anxiety that violence in Syria may spill across the border.

In mid-August, five predominantly Sunni Arab countries advised their nationals to leave Lebanon for fear of pro-Syrian violence by the large Shiite community. 

Some Lebanese citizens have been kidnapped in Syria by rebel forces on charges of supporting the Assad regime, while Shiite clans in Lebanon have grabbed Syrians on suspicions of supporting the rebels.

While Benedict has repeatedly called for an end to bloodshed in Syria, the Vatican has not taken a clear position on the controversial question of military intervention. In late July, a Vatican spokesman said the country is experiencing a “slow descent into hell,” but also called the prospect of an armed international response “very worrying.”

An Italian Jesuit who lived in Syria for 30 years until being expelled for supporting the anti-Assad uprising, Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio, has criticized that seeming ambivalence. If you don’t believe foreign troops sometimes have a legitimate role to play in keeping the peace, he told Vatican Radio in early August, what are the Swiss Guards doing in St. Peter’s Square?

Anyone expecting a clear line from Benedict on the Syria situation may be disappointed, in part because Lebanese Christians are divided. Some, including former general and politician Michel Aoun, are allied with Hezbollah and sympathetic to Assad. Others, especially the “March 14 alliance,” are strongly anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian.

That split stands in clear contrast to the last time a pope visited Lebanon.

When John Paul II arrived in 1997, the country was under Syrian occupation, and Christians were seen as the bulwark of the resistance. The Maronite leader at the time, Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, compared the situation to that of Poland’s Catholics under the Soviets, invoking Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski’s heroic defiance of communist rule.

John Paul encouraged the analogy, welcoming opposition leaders to his events and endorsing aspirations to “freedom, sovereignty and independence.” The takeaway for Christians was that John Paul wanted them to play a major political role.

Given the welter of competing Christian voices today, it would be difficult for Benedict to issue similar marching orders, even if he were so inclined. The present Maronite leader, Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rahi, is also a different figure from Sfeir, now 92 and retired. Rahi landed in hot water last year for opposing regime change in Syria, as well as seeming to accept Hezbollah’s unwillingness to disarm. Rahi has subsequently backed away, trying to steer a more neutral course.

Most experts expect a largely apolitical line from Benedict, stressing a humanitarian role for Christians as reconcilers, peacemakers, and dispensers of charity across sectarian and ideological divides.

In terms of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, few expect the pope to lay out an explicit vision for the future of Middle East societies, apart from extolling religious pluralism and minority rights. Both are considered essential for the small but symbolically important Christian presence in the region, already threatened by decades of emigration.

Lebanon also affords Benedict a platform to address the broader Christian/Muslim relationship.

Since triggering a firestorm of Islamic protest in 2006 with a speech in Regensburg, Germany, appearing to link Muhammad with violence, Benedict has tried to get relations back on track. 

During a stop in Jordan in 2009, Benedict proposed an “alliance of civilizations,” styling Christians and Muslims as natural allies in the struggle against secularism.

Some Islamic leaders in Lebanon have called for a “big welcome,” but not everyone seems inclined to roll out the red carpet. Radical Islamic Sheik Omar Bakri called on Muslims in mid-August to prevent the pope, “who insulted your religion,” from even entering the country.

Referring to Benedict’s Regensburg speech, Bakri said, “There is no doubt the pope’s remarks were ... aimed at inciting the Western world against Islam and Muslims.”

In addition to those resentments, Christian/Muslim relations have also been strained by various conflicts around the world, such as the Boko Haram uprising in Nigeria. 

The militant Islamic group is considered responsible for 10,000 deaths over the last decade, and has made a specialty of attacking Christian targets, including bombing churches during Sunday services.

During his encounter with Islamic leaders on Sept. 15, Benedict is expected to lay out a positive vision of Christian/Muslim collaboration, but also to press for rejection of religiously motivated violence.

Finally, Benedict faces an ecumenical challenge of promoting harmony among the country’s notoriously fractious patchwork of confessions, including the Maronites, the Greek Orthodox church, the Armenian Apostolic church, the Syrian Orthodox and the Assyrian church of the East.

In Lebanon, as elsewhere in the Middle East, there are also persistent intra-Catholic rivalries. 

At the 2010 Synod of Bishops, leaders of the Eastern churches called for an end to “confessionalism,” meaning fights among themselves, but also protested what they see as a lack of respect from the dominant Latin tradition.

However trying all that seems, right now some Vatican officials are quietly saying that as long as Benedict gets in and out of Lebanon without a major security scare, and without his presence somehow adding more fuel to the fire in Syria, they’ll consider it a win.

Call for Cardinal Pell to appear before inquiry

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, has been urged to appear before the upcoming Victorian  inquiry into  sex abuse, reports The Australian.

A senior Victorian Labor MP, Ann Barker, who has studied the church's Irish response, said Cardinal Pell should appear before the inquiry in his role overseeing the church's initial response to Catholic abuse in Melbourne, and added that incumbent Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart also should give evidence.

Cardinal Pell's connection to the issue is twofold: first as the archbishop of Melbourne who dealt with the church's initial response to the scandal, dubbed the Melbourne Response; and second as a younger priest who worked and lived in the diocese of Ballarat, 110 km west of Melbourne.

The Australian reports that the inquiry is poised to undertake regional sittings, with victims from Ballarat preparing submissions and inquiry members describing as inevitable that the committee will sit in the regional city.

Under the powers afforded the state parliamentary inquiry, Cardinal Pell and other senior members of the church can be compelled to appear before the committee.

A church spokesman said Archbishop Hart expected and planned to appear before the inquiry and remained supportive of the process.

Dawkins: Creative intelligence not so ridiculous

Evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, in an interview for the September edition of Playboy magazine, discusses a host of topics related to science and religion – and shares some of his favourite Bible verses.
Dawkins, who is known for ridiculing the different interpretations various religions have of God, noted that the idea of there being some kind of "creative intelligence" in the universe is at least more likely than there existing any one specific deity.

"I think a particular god like Zeus or Jehovah is as unlikely as the tooth fairy, but the idea of some kind of creative intelligence is not quite so ridiculous," he said.

On the subject of Christianity, the famed atheist admitted that he had not read the entire Bible, but knew it well enough to consider himself more knowledgeable on the subject than most Christians.

"My favorite book is Ecclesiastes. It's wonderful poetry in 17th century English, and I'm told it's very good in the Hebrew. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.' The Song of Songs is terrific, and it's more bawdy in the Hebrew, almost a drinking song," Dawkins said of his favourite parts of the Bible.

As for Jesus Christ, The God Delusion author shared that the evidence for his actual existence "is surprisingly shaky", although he did not outright rule out Christ's earthly existence. He expressed, however, that he found the idea of the Son of God sacrificing himself to atone for people's sins to be "truly disgusting", because it would imply that God could not think of a better way to atone for mankind other than Christ being tortured to death.

Of his own faith progression, Dawkins shared that it was the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre that made him into a very militant atheist – noting that he blames the belief in the afterlife for the actions of the hijackers who crashed planes into the Twin Towers with expectations of being rewarded in heaven.

"Normally when an aircraft is hijacked, there's an assumption that the hijackers want to go on living. It changes the game if the hijackers look forward to death because it will get them into the best part of paradise," the author said.

Most recently, Dawkins was labelled a "snob" by a Scottish church leader after he declined an invitation to participate in a debate at the Faclan Hebridean Book Festival in Scotland, where he will be giving a speech in November.

The Rev David Robertson, a Free Church minister in Dundee, said that he sees Dawkins as an "elitist snob, who once told me he would consider debating with me if I was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope or Chief Rabbi".

Robertson added: "Dawkins considers, like so many of his fellow new atheists, that there is no debate and they, and they alone, have the truth. Ironically, such arrogance and intolerance of others is the very definition of the fundamentalism that Dawkins professes to hate. I suspect that Richard Dawkins' problem is that he is not a good debater."

New era as iconic Limerick building sold

THE former Sacred Heart church at the Crescent in Limerick city is to get a new lease of life after it was bought by a community of young priests.

Six years after it was last in operation, the iconic city centre building is expected to be back in use by the end of this month.

This comes after the Institute of Christ the King, a community of priests, paid just €700,000 for the protected structure.

When the site was last on the market in 2006, it had an asking price of €4m. 

Developer John O’Dolan’s plans for the site included a leisure centre, and a bar. 

But now the building is to go back to its original use.

The community is led by 38-year-old priest, Canon Wulfran Lebocq, who has lived near Kilmallock since 2010.

He said they have been working on the deal for the last year, and met the asking price “with the help of numerous friends from Ireland, the United States and Continental Europe.”

The community of priests has an average of age of just 32, and for the time being, the Jesuit’s Church will be used as their chapel.

However, it is hoped that eventually the church will re-open to the public.

The building measures 25,000 square feet overall, and is split into the church area, a 
Georgian living space, and an enclosed garden.

Canon Lebocq added because the church has stood vacant for six years, and was in danger of falling into ruin, there was a willingness to help.

The institute is Roman Catholic in tradition, and the 64 priests who serve under it work all 
over the world.

It follows the spirituality of St Francis de Sales, which is expressed in the motto of the Institute: Live the truth in Charity.

Canon Lebocq emphasised his hope the “architectural jewel” could work as a centre that everyone can use.

“We truly desire to reopen this church for the benefit of all, in close collaboration with the local civil and ecclesiastical authorities. In this way, yet another sign of a brighter future will come alive in Limerick,” he said.

Pat Kearney, managing director of the selling agent Rooney’s, said the sale will “breathe new life” into the area.

Midwest drought to impact altar bread prices

Manufacturers of altar bread are preparing to face rising costs of wheat flour as grain prices fluctuate in the wake of a severe drought that continues to plague the Midwest and Western Canada, although they expect to pass along only a minimal price increase to their customers.

In Clyde, Mo., Benedictine Sister Rita Claire Dohn, manager of the altar bread ministry of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, has witnessed a 25 percent increase in the price of wheat flour since the convent last received a delivery two months ago.

“That’s pretty steep when there isn’t a large profit margin,” Sister Dohn emphasized, adding that the convent is the largest religious producer of altar breads in the world. The sisters offer their altar breads wholesale to many smaller convents that resell the life-giving breads to support their community.

“You have to be competitive,” she continued, noting that the sisters are being cautious and have yet to increase the prices of their goods.

She added that the sisters will “hold off as long as possible,” on passing on to their customers any price increases. In addition to making altar bread, the 52-member community is supported by the sale of liturgical vestments and gourmet popcorn.

Sister Dohn said the Clyde monastery produces about 125 million altar breads per year, from whole wheat or white bread. A package containing 500 hosts costs $5.

A farmer in Kansas produces the whole-wheat flour they use, and the white flour comes from a commercial miller in Missouri. Because of contractual obligations, the sisters would not release specific information regarding wheat prices or their suppliers.

Sister Dohn said that the prolonged drought has already taken a toll on the monastery grounds, where new landscaping has withered and died.

“The trees are totally burned,” she lamented. “It looks like fall; the leaves are falling off the trees.”

She added that many of the monastery’s lay employees are also farmers, and many have had corn and soybean crops destroyed by the drought.

According to the National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center, based in Maryland, drought has affected more than 60 percent of the contiguous 48 states as of mid-August, although significant expansion stopped during the last two weeks.

About one-quarter of the country has experienced extreme to exceptional drought, primarily in a large area extending from the central Rockies eastward through the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. 

Many parts of the Midwest received 8 to 12 inches less precipitation than normal from April 1-August 14, with a few areas reporting deficits exceeding one foot of rainfall.

Locally, at the Cavanagh Company, in Greenville, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of altar breads, the Midwest drought has yet to make its impact felt.

General Manager Andy Cavanagh said the company hasn’t yet witnessed an increase in the price it pays for its wheat flour, although it has been notified by its supplier to expect higher prices in the near future as the price of wheat continues to rise.

“We have not felt the effects of this yet,” Cavanagh said, adding that the price of wheat flour doubled in 2008 when a wheat shortage developed as a result of Midwestern farmers shifting their focus to corn, which at the time was more lucrative.

“It’s tough to foresee what the future prices will bring,” Cavanagh added, noting that the company currently pays about $29 for 100 pounds of wheat flour.

The fourth generation altar bread manufacturer said that while his company is utilizing its current inventory of wheat flour, he does expect a slight increase in the cost of the next shipment in a few weeks.

“I’m assuming it won’t be much of a price difference,” he continued. “We pass it on as gently as possible.”

Cavanagh added that the company would increase prices by two percent on October 1, which he attributed to rising employee medical insurance and energy costs, and other operational factors, but not because of an increase in the price of wheat flour.

The company currently produces hosts in whole wheat and white varieties and larger celebration breads in whole wheat.

Cavanagh said that the company operates 24 hours a day, and uses 100 pounds of wheat flour every 20 minutes, for a total of 1.9 million pounds a year. 

The altar breads are distributed to church goods stores and other retailers, such as convents, throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, England, Africa and the Caribbean.

He emphasized that because the company produces altar breads in volume, the cost to retailers should not be significantly higher.

Father David Green, pastor of St. Martha Church, East Providence, said he has witnessed slight periodic increases in the cost of altar breads during the 11 years he has been a pastor.

“It hasn’t become prohibitive,” he said, noting that the higher prices are in line with the cost of living increases that affect most products.

Tony Prattico, the parish’s bookkeeper, said that he purchases celebration hosts directly from Cavanagh. 

Last month, the cost of a box of 100 of the large celebration hosts was $7.71, an increase of 15 cents from February 2011.

Pope Benedict: insincerity is 'the mark of the devil'

Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that a lack of sincerity in life is “the mark of the devil” as witnessed in the decision of Judas Iscariot to continue following Jesus Christ even after he had ceased to believe in him.
 
“The problem is that Judas did not go away, and his most serious fault was falsehood, which is the mark of the devil. This is why Jesus said to the Twelve: ‘One of you is a devil’,” said the Pope in his midday Angelus address to pilgrims at Castel Gandolfo Aug. 26.

The pontiff said that Catholics pray to the Virgin Mary to help them to believe in Jesus as St. Peter did and “to be always sincere with him and with all people.”

The Pope continued his recent weeks’ reflections upon Jesus’s “Bread of Life” discourse as delivered in the synagogue of Capernaum.

After Christ declared himself to be “the living bread which came down from heaven” many of those who had followed him, records St. John in his Gospel, “drew back and no longer went about with him.” 

Asked by Jesus if they too will leave, St. Peter replied on behalf of the Twelve “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

The one exception, said Pope Benedict, was Judas Iscariot who “could have left, as many of the disciples did; indeed, he would have left if he were honest.” 

Instead, he chose to remain with Jesus. Not because of faith or love, said the Pope, but out of a secret desire to take vengeance on his master.

“Because Judas felt betrayed by Jesus, and decided that he in turn would betray him. Judas was a Zealot, and wanted a triumphant Messiah, who would lead a revolt against the Romans.” Jesus, however, “had disappointed those expectations.”

The Pope, turning to the 11 apostles who did believe, reminded pilgrims of “a beautiful commentary” of St. Augustine in which the Church Father observed how St. Peter “believed and understood.”

“He does not say we have understood and believed, but we believed and understood. We have believed in order to be able to understand,” wrote St. Augustine in his Commentary on the Gospel of John.

After reciting the Angelus, the Pope expressed some special words of welcome to the new class of seminarians at Rome’s Pontifical North American College.

“Dear seminarians, use your time in Rome to conform yourselves more completely to Christ. Indeed, may all of us remain faithful to the Lord, even when our faith in his teachings is tested. May God bless you all!”

Lebanon: The hopes and uncertainties surrounding Benedict’s visit

Despite the clashes and disorder that have been going on in recent days in Tripoli, north west of the country, preparations for Benedict XVI’s trip to Lebanon are going ahead at full speed: the Pope and his collaborators are working on the speeches to be pronounced and on the post-Synodal exhortation text which is the fruit of the Synod for the Middle East in 2010. 

This will be signed and delivered to Middle Eastern Churches in Lebanon.

Lebanon has every right to be part of the Holy Land: Matthew the Apostle sets the journey undertaken by Jesus and his disciples’ in the Tyre and Sidon region and writes about the episode of the Canaanite woman who asks for her possessed daughter to be healed. 

It is a country where the century-long Christian presence has been a determining factor.

Newspapers recently reported alarming rumours about security in Lebanon, suggesting that the papal pilgrimage could be postponed at the last minute. 

Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi immediately denied the rumour, informing the public that Benedict XVI’s Popemobile has already arrived in Beirut. 

Yesterday, Paolo Dell’Oglio - the Jesuit who had to leave the Monastery of St. Moses in Syria after 30 years of hard work promoting dialogue between Muslims and Christians – also spoke of the risks of the Pope’s visit. 

According to Fr. Dell’Oglio, the risk is posed by the close links between the current Lebanese government and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

It is true that diplomatic sources are not excluding the possibility of a postponement, should the situation in Syria worsen even further. They recall what happened in 1994 when John Paul II was forced to cancel a scheduled visit to Beirut because of a series of attacks against Christian churches.  

But the situation was different back then. The pilgrimage was postponed - until May 1997 - partly because of existing tensions between Christians. “At the moment there are no plans to postpone the visit,” Vatican sources say. 

“The Pope is keen to visit this country which has suffered and is still suffering; a delicate and problematic part of the world where Christians were and still are a constituent element and where they have traditionally always been present.”
 

The appeal to peace, co-existence, interreligious dialogue, the commitment towards a common good, the end to violence and above all the solidarity and support to Christians in the Middle East are the very aims of the Pope’s forthcoming trip. 

“It is important - Holy See sources stated – that Christians play an active role: they represent an element of stability and must continue to do so in this moment of great change and uncertainty for the future of the entire region.”

Despite Lebanon’s proximity to and dependence on Syria, the situation in the country appears generally calm and it is unlikely anyone will want to destabilise the country by opening any new Pandora’s boxes. 

Especially Hezbollah, the “Party of God”, a Lebanese Shiite political party supported by Iran and Syria which has a military wing. 

Some Lebanese Christian factions are close to Hezbollah and in any case it is in the interests of all the main forces at play to ensure that the Pope’s visit goes smoothly, that he is able to say what he has to say about Christians, co-existence in the area and Syria.
 

One issue which is close to Ratzinger’s heart is youngsters. Benedict XVI will appear before a huge audience of young people - not just Christians – to whom he communicate in person a message of peace and dialogue, based on evangelical values. His message will be different from other appeals which too often focus on hate. 

This message will also be included in the post-Synodal exhortation, which will address the difficult situation faced by Christians in the Middle East but also the wealth of their traditions and rites and the role which this irreplaceable element of society must continue to perform.
 

After the hopes raised by the “Arab Spring”, which Christians were also at the forefront of, a moment of trouble and uncertainty has come: many Christian communities are afraid. 

Regimes which guaranteed their survival are now falling and there is a risk of plunging into chaos. 

Even in countries like Iraq, which are trying to come out of the difficult post-war transition period, Christians feel threatened by fundamentalism and the lack of security. 

But they do not want to be isolated in protected “ghettoes” and separated from the rest of the population they have lived side by side with for centuries.

Nuns in talks with Vatican to end conflict

Catholic nuns across the United States say they hope to defuse a head-on conflict with the Vatican over allegations their national leadership group has become too liberal and secular, but will not back down from their core mission.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which held a national meeting this month in St. Louis that attracted a record 900 members, decided to try to head off more conflict with the Vatican through continued dialogue, said Sister Mary Hughes of Amityville, who was at the conference and recently ended a three-year term as one of the group's top three leaders.

The clash has left the future of the nuns' group unclear. In the most extreme case, the group could decide to dissociate itself from the Vatican. 

For its part, the Vatican has threatened to withdraw its recognition of the group, which represents about 80 percent of the 57,000 U.S. nuns.

"We hope it doesn't reach that," said Hughes, who is also head of the Dominican Sisters of Amityville. "It's women who really love the Church and who desire to be in an organization recognized by the Church."

In a statement, the group said it "will proceed with these discussions as long as possible, but will reconsider if LCWR is forced to compromise the integrity of its mission."

Scathing report

The Vatican launched an investigation of the group in 2008 and issued a scathing report in April accusing it of promoting "radical feminism" and failing to support official Church teachings on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and the all-male priesthood. 

The Vatican ordered a special delegate to intervene and oversee the group.

The nuns deny they oppose official Church teachings, and contend they are merely implementing the directives of the 1962-65 Vatican II Council aimed at moving the Church more into the modern world. 

As they shed their habits, the sisters expanded their traditional work in schools and hospitals to include advocacy on issues such as the environment, nuclear weapons, poverty and social justice.

In an interview, Hughes said the Vatican is misinformed about the nuns. On issues such as same-sex marriage, she said, the group has not issued any official positions.

On abortion, she said, nuns help fight it by working in programs such as Birthright that help pregnant women seek alternatives to abortion.

But she said dialogue with the Vatican over the years has failed to address Rome's concerns. 

"Clearly tensions have risen to a point where they are not healthy," she said.

After the group's meeting Aug. 7-10, leaders met with Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, designated by the Vatican to oversee the rewriting of the organization's statutes, review its plans and programs, and approve speakers at its events.

Hughes didn't attend that meeting because she had just stepped down from her post, and was briefed by the group's leaders, who "felt their first dialogue was very positive."

Work praised

In a statement, Sartain praised the nuns' work and said, "We must also work toward clearing up any misunderstandings, and I remain truly hopeful that we will work together without compromising Church teaching or the important role of the LCWR."

Some church experts said it is unclear whether the conflict can be amicably resolved. The Rev. Thomas Reese, senior research fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, D.C., said that while neither side wants a "train wreck," avoiding one will require compromise.

If the concerns about the nuns emanated from American cardinals, as some suspect, the Vatican might back off, Reese said. But "if it came from the Pope, there's not going to be any backing down."

THE CONFLICT

Vatican says nuns do not always have the Eucharist at the center of their lives.

Nuns say they do, noting that at the national conference in August, a huge ballroom was packed every day for 7 a.m. Mass.

Vatican alleges group at times promotes "radical feminism" that is "incompatible with the Catholic faith."

Nuns such as Sister Mary Hughes of the Dominican Sisters of Amityville say that for some sisters the term "radical feminism" might mean espousing equality between men and women.

Vatican says nuns do not always support Church's official teaching on all-male priesthood.

Nuns may question such Church doctrines, but Hughes says, "to raise a question is not the same thing as defiance."

Vatican says group has been "silent" on the abortion issue.

Nuns responded that they fight abortion not just by political lobbying, but through programs such as Birthright that help pregnant women seek alternatives to abortion.

Pope should focus on bringing peace than blessing motorcycles, Hindus assert

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, biggest religious leader in the world, should be doing better things for the welfare of the mankind than blessing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Hindus argue.

According to reports, Pope Benedict will bless Harley-Davidson bikes at a special ceremony at the Vatican next June as a part of its 110th anniversary.

Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, suggested that Pope Benedict; leader of about 1.2 billion adherents worldwide, “supreme priest”, holder of “Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven”, supreme shepherd and teacher of the faithful, “The Holy Father”, “Servant of the Servants of God”; should dedicate himself to interfaith dialogue, defending human rights, helping the helpless, charitable projects, human improvement, ecological responsibility, etc. ; instead of spending time in blessing expensive motorcycles.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, further said that in addition to his Roman Catholic responsibilities, Pope Benedict should we working to bring world religions together for the cause of peace because interfaith dialogue was the need of the hour. 

Pope, being the leader of the largest religious organization of the world, was best positioned to bring together leaders of various religions and denominations for dialogue and commitment to peace and should take the lead. 

Religion was the most powerful, complex and far-reaching force in our society, so we all must take it seriously, Zed added.

Rajan Zed pointed out that instead of taking up serious and real issues like the apartheid conditions faced by about 15-million Roma (Gypsies) in Europe, Pope Benedict appeared to be aiding in the mercantile greed of a corporation. 

If Pope made serious and honest efforts at interfaith dialogue, Hindus would wholeheartedly participate and support his peace mission, Zed indicated.

Pope Benedict heads the Roman Catholic Church, which is the largest of the Christian denominations. Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world, has about one billion followers and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal.

Demonstrators demand removal of Darien priest

Handing out fliers and wearing placards, a former Catholic priest and an abuse victim stood at the entrance of St. Thomas More church Saturday, demanding the Diocese of Bridgeport remove an elderly priest for allegedly abusing three high school students some 30 years ago.

The demonstration was directed at the Rev. Robert Post, who is assigned St. Thomas More as the parochial vicar and serves as the chaplain of the Stamford Fire and Rescue Department.

Demanding his removal were Robert M. Hoatson, who served with the Rev. Post in the Irish Christian Brothers, but now heads Road to Recovery, which assists victims of clergy abuse. 

Handing out leaflets with Hoatson was Kevin Waldrip, who said he was abused on his 13th birthday by the late Rev. Richard Galdon, who was convicted and sentenced to prison for abusing children in New Jersey. Waldrip's abuse is not linked to Rev. Post.

The three complaints against the Rev. Post are part of a federal bankruptcy suit pending in White Plains, N.Y., against the Irish Christian Brothers. That suit contains some 462 allegations of abuse allegedly committed by numerous members of the Irish Christian Brothers across North America. 

J. Michael Reck, a New York lawyer, said Saturday he is representing the three men, who claim they were abused by the Rev. Post while attending high schools operated by the Irish Christian Brothers. 

Reck said at least one of his clients was abused while attending Blessed Sacrament High School in New Rochelle, N.Y. The Rev. Post served as the school's principal.

Meanwhile, Brian Wallace, a spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport, said this is the first they've heard of the complaints against the Rev. Post.

"We've never had an allegation of abuse against Father Post," Wallace said Saturday. "We never received anything about these three complaints ... But rest assured, the Diocese will fully investigate this. We take such allegations seriously and have a zero-tolerance policy."

Wallace said the Rev. Post "has had a very good record and done very good work" since coming to the Diocese.

The Rev. Post could not be reached for comment.

Wallace said the priest spends time studying in Rome every summer and his being there Saturday is "totally unrelated to this demonstration."

He expects the Rev. Post to return to Connecticut next month.

While most Catholics arriving for Mass at St. Thomas More stopped to take the flyers from Hoatson and Waldrip as they stood on a grassy area just before the church's entrance, some including a woman and a man, chastised the pair for their tactic. 

Darien police assigned an officer to the scene and a representative of the parish stood guard to make sure neither the media or the two demonstrators moved beyond the designated area.

"I find this troubling," the woman said. "These are unproven allegations that could destroy the man's reputation. The proper way to handle this would have been to go to the police."

However, Paul Tavolacci, a Darien resident who registered his two young children to attend Happiness pre-school at St. Thomas More, spent a long time discussing the allegations with Hoatson.

"The first thing I am going to do is research this," Tavolacci said. "I'm going to look up the bankruptcy court proceedings."

Catholic lapses, moral and fiscal

While some Catholic bishops and lay people have been waging a campaign to convince the public that their religious freedom is being threatened, Jason Berry's book stands as a formidable reminder of how much the church needs to learn from the "secular" realm that it often scorns.

Like common-law justice for sex abusers.

And certified public accounting of obscure church finances.

Combining superior investigative skills and adroit analysis, Berry links clergy sexual abuse of children - a subject he helped push onto a national stage in an earlier book - with the tactics designed to cover legal and psychiatric damages resulting from it in a crisis that has cost the church more than $3 billion in settlements, according to the advocacy group BishopAccountability. 

The chief cause he identifies is appalling moral failure by top church officials, including Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Abuse and its cover-up, widespread and hidden, became a nightmare when Berry in Louisiana and a blockbuster series later in the Boston Globe exposed the scope and horror of the scandal. Expenditures on legal fees and suits quickly became astronomical. Strapped for funds, bishops resorted to various schemes.

The reflexive response in settings like Boston, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, was to sell off church property. That often meant killing a parish that was the cherished spiritual home to neighborhood Catholics. Asking them, in effect, to pay for clergy abuse sparked protest.

As Berry illustrates in exhaustive detail, the misuse of money and the host of deceptive practices are rooted in a system of clerical privilege that gives the pope, bishops, and pastors virtually unlimited authority over funds that fall into their jurisdictions. 

It's all top down with few if any internal checks, resting on a monarchical model that expects lay passivity and unquestioned trust in the ordained men who run the church. In such a blurry climate, the larceny and license can be hard to separate. A check for charity may or may not be used for personal purposes.

The shocking scandals have shown how misplaced such blind trust can be. Ignoring modern criminal and fiscal standards has wrought catastrophic ruin and shame, underscoring the huge cost of refusing to report abusers or filing complete financial audits for parishioners to inspect for themselves.

Berry's book, initially published last year and now reissued in paperback, tells a story of strategies to meet the enormous fiscal demands and includes sordid tales of skulduggery in major dioceses, shady money transfers, apparent pay-offs to curry favor with the Vatican, hush money, contract swindles involving kickbacks, and black holes swallowing resources intended for other purposes to cover unreported budget gaps. Peter is repeatedly robbed to pay Paul, as it were.

It starts at the pinnacle, where the Vatican funnels the proceeds from Peter's Pence, the yearly worldwide collection supposedly for the needy, deployed to balance the pope's budget.

In Berry's account, dioceses scramble to settle legal operations. Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston succeeded the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law who was forced to resign for enabling abusers. 

Berry writes that O'Malley inherited not only "a horrific sexual scandal" but "a financial sinkhole." 

Law had already secretly diverted funds from priests' retirement reserves to pay off abuse judgments. Plans to sell off 83 parishes created angry outbursts and a fall in contributions.

The Cleveland diocese highlights the corrosiveness of inner-circle corruption. Bishop Anthony Pilla went to great lengths to conceal his protection of sex abusers and attempted to arrange an elegant retirement in a high-end home. Top financial officials acted in cahoots with a prominent contractor who paid them handsome gratuities for obtaining diocesan business.

On an even grander scale, East Coast dioceses teamed up with a rich, charismatic Italian real estate dealer named Rafaello Follieri to unload vast acres of church land and buildings, for scandal relief. Follieri was eventually arrested by the FBI on charges of money laundering and fraud.

Berry reports that skimming weekly Mass collections may be startlingly common. His chief source, Michael Ryan, a devout Catholic who oversaw accounting integrity for the U.S. Postal Service, estimates that such larceny may cost the average parish $1,000 a week or about $50,000 a year. 

Stories of theft by individual pastors are plentiful. The single most notorious scoundrel in this account is Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, who used his religious order's fortunes to stave off disclosure of his chronic abuse of young people and his illegitimate son. 

Despite a flurry of indictable accounts, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, and John Paul II continued to lavish praise on him. The dam of concealment finally broke, however, making a mockery of his defense.

Berry's reporting justifies a wholesale revamping of the way the church does business. His commitment to Catholicism gives him hope, but his probe leaves him wary that entrenched patterns will change.

Short of adopting "generally accepted accounting principles," and shifting to contemporary models of sound finance and prosecution of the guilty, no one will know how much the medieval system remains in place. 

Catholics these days have come to expect openness and accountability in their daily lives (however violated that code may be), but will large numbers continue to permit the church to live outside those standards?

Berry is left wondering where much of the money went. "As long as the people ask no questions about their money," he writes, "the church can ban reformers from church grounds." 

He concludes: "The Catholic church's great problem is structural mendacity, institutional lying."

Our gaudy cathedral is a monument to vanity (Comment)

The metropolitan cathedral church of St Andrew in Glasgow will never be regarded as the most ornate piece of episcopal architecture the world has ever seen. 

Built in 1816 on the north bank of the River Clyde at a time when the Catholic faith in Scotland was in the process of re-establishing itself after more than two centuries of persecution, it is not magnificent, but handsome.

In keeping with the status of the church at that time it is also modest, taciturn and unprepossessing. There are no gargoyles with lolling tongues, nor bearded saints, and no serpents being crushed under the dainty heel of the virgin queen of heaven. There is, dare I say it, Presbyterian rectitude in its masonry. For it is what it is: a Catholic church in a Protestant country.

Last year saw the completion of a £5m facelift for the cathedral, and though the work was long overdue, I cannot have been alone in wondering if the archdiocese of Glasgow had slightly lost the plot when we all got to view the finished product. The renovation included an expensive gold leaf restoration and the installation of specially commissioned bronze doors.

A new painting by the acclaimed Glasgow artist Peter Howson was also commissioned to hang over the altar. This depicted the martyrdom of St John Ogilvie in 1615 at nearby Glasgow Cross and, well… perhaps after many visits you may acquire a taste for it all. I was expecting something a little less gaudy than all these trinkets, but perhaps I am being churlish and unduly rebarbative.

To complement all this Mediterranean rouge, something called an Italian memorial garden was landscaped on a plot beside the cathedral. This was dedicated to the hundred or so Scots-Italians who died when their ship, the Arandora Star, was sunk by a German U-boat near Ireland in 1940. An Italian choir was flown over to help inaugurate the garden and there was an opera singer to add a bit more drama to the pantomime.

Not half a mile east of our new painted cathedral lie some of the most deprived and troubled streets in Europe. This neighbourhood is home to tens of thousands of Catholics of Irish descent whose antecedents flooded into Glasgow in the decades that followed the construction of the cathedral. 

Most had fled disease and starvation from Ireland's great famine to find refuge in Glasgow. And it was their labours and ill-afforded financial contributions that set the archdiocese of Glasgow on a sound footing.

A memorial commemorating an Gorta Mór and its place in Glasgow's history would have been a much more fitting monument than this Italian vanity project. The only gold leaf they ever saw was the name on the side of their grandfathers' favourite tobacco for their rolled cigarettes. 

The entire cathedral restoration project, though, is simply the physical manifestation of something that has been evident for a few years now; that the Catholic church in Scotland is losing touch with reality.

Further credence was given to this view when the church announced that it was ceasing all official dialogue with the Scottish government over the issue of same-sex marriage. Having lost the battle to prevent such unions becoming law, the Catholic hierarchy, like a drunk man trying to get past wine bar bouncers on a Friday night, keeps coming back for more. 

As such, it is blind to the potential consequences of its absurd obsession with homosexual unions. These will be far more damaging than the prospect of a few hundred gay people upgrading their civil partnership to a marriage.

The church's opposition to gay marriage is entirely valid and rooted in the central role that the sacrament of matrimony plays in Christian life. It has every right to express its opposition and not to be branded homophobic by Scotland's liberal fundamentalists. What started, though, as reasonable opposition to proposed legislation with which it fundamentally disagreed has become a bitter and spittle-flecked campaign.

Thus we had the unedifying sight of the church's director of communications appearing to espouse the absurd view that homosexuals, by dint of their wretched lifestyle, have a shorter life expectancy than other people. This followed the revelation that the new archbishop of Glasgow had suggested that the untimely death, at 44, of David Cairns, the Scots Labour MP and former priest, had somehow been linked to a gay lifestyle. 

We were then treated to a grotesque Monty Python vignette involving one of Glasgow's most senior priests, a skinful of the old altar wine and some clumsy (and unwanted) advances toward his male dining companion. It seems the poor chap had merely forgotten himself in the bevvy and succumbed to his inner Quentin Crisp.

There are districts of Glasgow where nine out of 10 adults are on benefits and which top all those international league tables which measure the indicators of multi-deprivation. The obscenity of poverty strikes at the very heart of the Christian message that all men are created equal. 

This inequality cries out to God for vengeance much more than a few hundred gay people who want to have their union endorsed by a marriage certificate.

The Catholic church in Scotland enjoys many rights earned by hard-working men and women at a time when their faith was under attack. Among them are the right to educate its children, on the state's account, in separate Catholic schools and the right to veto the appointment of teachers in these schools if their beliefs are deemed contrary to the Catholic ethos.

Others might suggest that, in a pluralist and secular state, there should be no room for privileges such as these. 

Yet there is a small cabal of ultras in my church, who, distressingly, enjoy far too much influence in its affairs. Their actions, words and attitude are in danger of provoking a backlash which would seek to withdraw its privileges.

There is something rotten at the heart of the Catholic church in Scotland right now and I fear that it is about to engulf it.

Diocesan Changes 2012 - Archdiocese of Dublin

 

Diocesan Changes can be accessed by clicking here

September - The Holy Cross

I adore You, O glorious Cross,
which was adorned with the Heart and Body
of my Saviour Jesus Christ,
stained and covered with blood.

I adore You, O Holy Cross,
out of love for Him, Jesus,
who is my Saviour and my God.