Saturday, July 14, 2012

"Who Is Katie Holmes?"

Fr. Joe Costantino, S.J.
The pastor of Church of St. Francis Xavier, Father Joe Costantino,S.J. told the Daily Beast he was caught off-guard when reporters started calling about Holmes' alleged membership. “I didn’t even know who she was,” Costantino told the site. He added that if she had registered or taken Communion there recently, “It’s news to me.” Joseph Zwilling, the spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, couldn't confirm or deny that Holmes had joined the Church of St. Francis Xavier or any other Catholic church, saying that "if a person joined the parish, it’s done on the parish level.” Zwilling said he had not heard one way or the other from St. Francis Xavier's administrative offices. ...The Archdiocese of New York is no stranger to celebrity guests at its services, particularly at the famed St. Patrick's Cathedral, "Anyone who comes to Mass would be expected to follow the proper protocols," he said. "I think people understand and respect when you're in church, you don’t disturb them when they’re in a house of worship.” 
Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was born in Hollywood and grew up going to St. Charles Catholic Church in North Hollywood. He remembered going to services with "Farrah Fawcett on one side of me, John Wayne's family on the other side of me and the Bob Hope family behind me." Tamberg said he has had few, if any, incidents surrounding celebrities attending worship services. "When they come through the doors of the church, people know who people are, but people are doing their own thing," he said. “I’ve never seen anyone ask for autographs over the years ... and I’ve been in position to see it a lot.” 
Should Holmes decide to return to the Catholic Church, she could follow a similar script as Nicole Kidman, who was also once married to Cruise and was also raised Catholic. Tamberg said Kidman has returned to the church since her divorce. “Usually, what happens is, there’s still some ties to the church through your family,” he said. "My understanding with the Kidman story is, she was close to a priest her family had known their whole lives. That was helpful to her in picking up the pieces after the divorce." Should Holmes decide to return to Catholicism, Tamberg said, it's a fairly easy process. “You basically can pick it up where you left off,” he said, pointing to Jesus talking often in the Bible of rejoicing over wandering adherents returning to the fold. "There’s no test you have to take. Once you’ve received the sacraments, those are a permanent mark," he said, citing the sacraments of Communion, baptism and confirmation. Even if a person has publicly renounced his or her faith, Tamberg said, returning would only be a matter of private counseling with a priest, though even that process is not formalized. As the unnamed member of the Church of St. Francis Xavier and hordes of reporters wait for Holmes to attend a service in New York, they may want to consider that the parish has an online registration form that anyone can fill out. In most parishes, Zwilling noted, that's a form you have to fill out in person. Brewis welcomed the attention paid to the Church of St. Francis Xavier, saying it is “striving to be a vibrant parishioner-driven community.” He added, “On the plus side, many people who hadn't heard about us and the extraordinary work we do have heard about us now.”
Link (here) to CNN


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is this site obsessed with Xavier and Holmes ?
A number of "celebrities " worship at Loyola - some like Maria would consider then "sinners " in addition to your witchhunt i have seen other "celebrities" at Xavier who are Divorced

Maria said...

"When I sometimes reread the letters of St. Francis Xavier from India that he wrote back to Europe, they almost seem like the letters of a mad man overcome by the teeming millions all around him hungry for the word of God and there is no one to tell them. So much so that as he wrote more than once to Ignatius that his hands actually dropped dead, that he sometimes had to have them supported to baptize the people who want to become Christians once I tell them how much God loves them. That He died on the Cross and shed His Blood for them. That kind of a God they want to believe in.

No wonder he wore himself out. He lived a very short life, died exhausted preaching the Gospel."

Servus Dei John Hardon SJ

Can one possibly imagine the distress in the heart of St. Francis Xavier were he to encounter this "parish driven Church"? I think that we can safely conclude that Fr. Joe Costantino, S.J won't be wearing himself out proclaiming the Gospel.

Joseph Fromm said...

Dear Anonymous 1:25 PM
This is a current event driven blog. Katie Holmes is in the news. Nothing complicated about that.

Anonymous said...

The quote from Fr. Hardon--a cheap way to get Mary's guru on the posting--is irrelevant to the topic. If you wish to discuss Hardon please address the substance of the charges made against him.

clement said...

this is much more relevant to jesus gospel than katie holmes

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/world/americas/in-mexico-father-solalinde-defends-migrant-rights.html?pagewanted=all

specifically the Jesuits
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/world/asia/in-china-tensions-between-church-and-government.html?pagewanted=all

here
http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=20683

Little mention of the great Fr Brooks from Holy Cross

Anonymous said...

The newest from this church, from the 11/4 Bulletin online:

Well It’s About Time!

Thanks to our parish manager, Jacqui Falco, I was turned on to The New Normal, a comedy television series now in its first season. She particularly encouraged me to be sure to watch Episode 7 that aired on October 23rd, “The Godparent Trap.”

Thanks to the wonders of that wonderful, free service, Hulu.com, in which you can catch some programs that have already been aired, I did not have to wait, as I did in my youth, for the mid-season or summer reruns. For those of you who have not yet tuned into this new program it centers around a gay couple, Brian and David, who hired a recently separated woman, Goldie, with a precocious young daughter, Shania, to be a surrogate for their new baby.

As they are preparing for this birth, Brian, who is Catholic, and David, who is Jewish, stumble upon the idea that they need to care about the spiritual life of their new child. This results in their trying to find suitable godparents.

The first question raised in the show is simply “what is a godparent?” The erroneous, but still often misunderstood answer given is that godparents raise the child in the event that something happens to the parents.

The writers, Allison Adler and Ryan Murphy (both of Glee fame), quickly have someone correct this falsehood by emphatically stating, “that is a guardian,” and adding that a godparent, on the other hand, is suppose to provide “spiritual guidance.”

Who can offer the best spiritual guidance is surely a most appropriate
consideration in selecting godparents (and in the case of the Sacrament of Confirmation, a sponsor). Who really can authentically offer such true and important spiritual guidance? All too often though there is a “godparent trap.” The choice is sometimes simply to follow the path of least resistance and select a relative or friend, a person
you may feel simply obligated to choose. Those selected are often very
fine people, but are they spiritual? Are they persons of faith with a sense of the
supernatural and God? Are they a part of an active faith community? Do they
put their spirituality into charitable actions? Often these questions are regrettably not part of the equation.

The biggest surprise in the 30 minute exploration that had me shouting, well
it’s about time!, is in the depiction of the priest. Priests are all too
frequently portrayed in the media as caricatures of stupidity and rigidity, as
those out of touch with the present age. Not so here.

Brian winds up in a Church confessional. At first he offers the rather superficial statement that he has broken all the commandments except for killing. The priest refuses to engage him. Consequently, Brian admits who he is and his real concern that unless
he can find a spiritual foundation for his own life he realizes he cannot offer
one to his new child. Brian tells of his real love for the Church and its rituals. But, as is true for many in the gay community, he expresses that he does not feel accepted by the Church.

The priest reminds Brian that “being gay isn’t a sin” and “the Church is not
anti-gay.” When Brian pushes back, the priest continues that the Church
embraces everyone, but adds that Jesus was also defiant – he didn’t just
lie down and take things. He saw hypocrisy and injustice and thus the
need for change. Moreover, the priest challenges Brian, and by extension all
gay Catholics, to become fighters like Jesus: “fighters for change.” He
argues, “Gay people demand the right to fight for their country but for their
souls they just give up and walk away; but Jesus was a fighter.” And so he asks
Brian and thus all of us, gay or straight, “how about you?”...