The 15 Marks Of The Church As Defined By St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J.

The 15 Marks of the Catholic Church

developed by

St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J.

1542-1621,

Doctor of the Church and Cardinal:

<1>

The Church's Name, Catholic, universal, and world wide, and not confined to any particular nation or people.

<2>

Antiquity, in tracing her ancestry directly to Jesus Christ.

<3>

Constant Duration, in lasting substantially unchanged for so many centuries.

<4>

Extensiveness, in the number of her loyal members.

<5>

Episcopal Succession, of her Bishops from the first Apostles at the Last Supper to the present hierarchy.

<6>

Doctrinal Agreement, of her doctrine with the teaching of the ancient Church.

<7>

Union, of her members among themselves, and with their visible head, the Roman Pontiff.

<8>

Holiness, of doctrine in reflecting the sanctity of GOD.

<9>

Efficacy, of doctrine in its power to sanctify believers, and inspire them to great moral achievement.

<10>

Holiness of Life, of the Church's representative writers and defenders.

<11>

The glory of Miracles, worked in the Church and under the Church's auspices.

<12>

The gift of Prophesy found among the Church's saints and spokesmen.

<13>

The Opposition that the Church arouses among those who attack her on the very grounds that Christ was opposed by His enemies. The Unhappy End, of those who fight against her.

<15>

The Temporal Peace and Earthly Happiness of those who live by the Church's teaching and defend her interests.

Link (here)

Fordham University’s law school mustered up a pro-abortion Republican, former New York Governor George E. Pataki, to speak and receive an honorary degree Sunday, May 22.
Link (here) to The Cardinal Newman Society

Now That Is Saying Something About Liberation Theology

Fr. Jon Sobrino, S.J.

As the heir of the Holy Office of the Inquisition -- and housed in a building still known as the Palace of the Holy Office -- the congregation often is portrayed as an agency almost exclusively dedicated to seeking out errant theologians and condemning their writings. The congregation does review books that bishops' conferences bring to its attention, especially if the book presents itself as explaining Catholic morals or doctrine and is widely used in schools of theology or seminaries. 

But since Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005 and U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada was appointed to succeed him as the congregation's prefect, the office has issued only one formal public criticism of written works: a notification about two books by a liberation theologian, 

Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino.

Link (here) to Clerical Whispers

Friedrich von Hugal On Cardinal Juan de Lugo, The 17th Century Spanish Jesuit

Cardinal Juan de Lugo, S.J.

We all greatly require criticism, stimulation, reproof, of our most intimate and cherished convictions; and it is our reciprocal duty, with tact and restraint, to try to serve our fellows similarly. Hegel, perhaps most probingly among all Protestant philosophers, has exposed in general this impoverishing formalism of Kant "the Philosopher of Protestantism." But I believe the true scheme, as concerns religion, to have been best developed by Cardinal Juan de Lugo, the Spanish Jesuit, who wrote in Rome under the eyes of Pope Urban VIII., at the end of the seventeenth century. De Lugo first lays down that, according to Catholic doctrine, God gives light, sufficient for its salvation, to every soul that attains to the use of reason in this life. He next asks,  What is the ordinary method by which God offers and renders possible this salvation and he answers that, though God doubtless can work moral miracles, these do not appear to be the rule, and are not in strictness necessary; that the human soul, in all times and places, has a certain natural affinity for, and need of, truth; and again, that the various philosophical schools and religious bodies throughout mankind all contain and hand down, amid various degrees of human error and distortion, some truth, some gleams and elements of divine truth. Now what happens as a rule is simply this: the soul that in good faith seeks God, His truth and love, concentrates its attention, under the influence of grace, upon these elements of truth, be they many or few, which are offered to it in the sacred books and religious schools and assemblies of the Church, Sect, or Philosophy in which it has been brought up. It feeds upon these elements, the others are simply passed by; and divine grace, under cover of these elements, feeds and saves this soul. I submit that this view admirably combines a sense of  man's profound need of tradition, institution, training, with full justice to the importance of the dispositions and acts of the individual soul, and, above all, with a keen sense of the need of special graces offered by God to the several souls. And such a view in no way levels down or damps the missionary ardour. Buddhism does not become equal to Mohammedanism, nor' Mohammedanism to Judaism, nor Platonism to Christianity, nor Socinianism, or even Lutheranism, to Catholicism. It merely claims that everywhere there is some truth; that this truth comes originally from God; and that this truth, great or little, is usually mediated to the soul, neither by a spiritual miracle nor by the sheer efforts of individuals, but by traditions, schools and churches. We thus attain an outlook, generous, rich, elastic; yet also graduated, positive, unitary, and truly Catholic.

Link (here) to read the portion of the book entitled,  Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion by Austrian Catholic writer and apologist Friedrich von Hügel

Fr. Louis Cellot, S.J. On Godeschalcus

All the Benedictines, Jansenists, and Augustin monks maintain, almost without exception, that Godeschalcus was most unjustly persecuted and oppressed by Blessed Rabanus Maurus. The Jesuits are of a different opinion; they assert in general, and Louis Cellot, one of their order, has in a more particular manner labored to demonstrate, in his Historia Godeschalci Praedestinationis, published at Paris in 1653, that the monk in question was justly condemned, and deservedly punished.

Link (here) to the mentioned portion of the book entitled, An ecclesiastical history, ancient & modern... By German Lutheran historian Johann Lorenz Mosheim

The Jacobite Jesuit: Fr. Alexander Cameron, S.J.

The Battle of Culloden

A FASCINATING account of a "forgotten" hero of the Jacobite Uprising has just been published by a senior Lochaber churchman. The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron S.J, has been written by Monsignor Thomas Wynne, well-respected and much-loved parish priest of St Margaret's Church in Roy Bridge. Telling the story of Father Alexander of Achnacarry, a missionary Jesuit priest and chaplain to Bonnie Prince Charlie's army, has been a long-held interest of 80-year-old Monsignor Wynne. He revealed to the Lochaber News: "Many years ago, I was intrigued by a small piece of tartan in a cabinet in the Cathedral House in Oban. "With it was an old hand-written note saying it was part of the tartan vestment worn by Father Alexander Cameron when he said mass on the eve of the Battle of Culloden.  "When I had more time in my new parish of Arisaig, I decided to investigate the life of this virtually unknown priest, and over a long period put together the story of his life which I found so moving.  "Alexander Cameron is almost forgotten by history, yet he was a remarkable man. The brother of the clan chief, Donald Cameron ("the Gentle Lochiel"), he was a life long Jacobite and a missionary in the Highlands during a period of great political, social and religious turmoil.

Link (here) to read the full account at Lochbar News

Fr Tacchi Venturi S. J. On Giuseppina Berettoni

Fr. Tacchi Venturi, S.J.

All my energy – she wrote – all of my life I want to spend making Jesus known to the Christian people. Characteristic of her life was the apostolic lay activity in varied forms and in any field with which her zeal was confronted, with a special preference for the Clergy and everybody consecrated to God. With youngsters she was a strong but amiable teacher; with children, tenderly loved by Jesus, amongst whom she spent the better part of her life, she was always motherly. She worked generously for the Daughters of Mary until the last day of her life; in the Franciscan Third Order she was an unparalleled novice mistress. Fr Tacchi Venturi S. J. wrote, with regard to her work for the dying: God used her for the salvation of unrepenting sinners, who at the very end of their lives, after having rudely sent the priests away from their beds, won over by her angelic ministration during their illness, surrendered to her and accepted God’s Ministers, shedding tear on the Crucifix. Her apostolic activity was carried out mainly in Rome, where she spent the major part of her life, but her good deeds also reached Argentina, Genoa e the Marche, places where she lived for short periods.

 

Link (here) to read  full account of Servant of God Giuseppina Berettoni

The Jesuits, Who Ran The College, Rented A Large House Opposite

I married in 1939, aged 23 years, and had just finished training as a nurse when war was declared. My husband, 15 years my senior, was history master at Wimbledon College. Being in a reserved occupation, he joined the Home Guard during the war. We both agreed to look after the boys there who couldn't travel because of the air raids. The Jesuits, who ran the college, rented a large house opposite. With the Battle of Britain raging overhead, my first daughter was born on 4th July 1940 - American Independence Day. She was placed into an old leaded safe. Bullets splattered onto the leaded roof as some watched the battle overhead. I was below, alone, in the cellar. It all seemed like a horrid dream; even now it remains a blur.

Link (here) to the BBC to read the full account.

Fr. Emanuel Alvarez, S.J.

The Jesuit, Emanuel Alvarez of Lisbon (1526—1583),

produced in 1572 a Latin Grammar, which has been extolled as the first in which the fancies of the ancient grammarians were laid aside. It was the  text-book in all the Jesuit schools, and has often been reprinted, the latest edition being that of Paris in 1879.

Link (here)

Yesterday And Today : Boston College Alum And Former Trustee Jack Connors

From May 2007 Jack Connors Commencement address at Boston College

John M. "Jack" Connors

Jack Connors regaled Boston College graduates today with his own story of how he made it through the school despite little money and family tragedy. Connors paid his way through Boston College in the 1960s, selling peanuts and hot dogs at Fenway Park and driving a Checker Taxi. His mother died of colon cancer during his junior year. Yet, by the time he was 25, John M. "Jack" Connors Jr. was on the fast track in the advertising industry, poised to become a corporate vice president of advertising for a Detroit automobile maker. He didn't want to leave New England, so he instead began an advertising firm in Boston with three other friends -- the now-prestigious firm of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc. "Being here today is like coming home for me," Connors told the more than 3,000 graduates and 15,000 spectators at BC's Alumni Stadium. "I first came to Boston College some 48 years ago having been taught by my parents and family about respect, honesty, faith, hard work, and loyalty. Then the Jesuits taught me how to think...."

Link (here) to the full Boston Globe article. 

From May 03, 2011 Jack Connors is taking heat for supporting pro-abortion President Obama by virtue of his service on the Archdiocese Finance Council and Campaign for Catholic Schools is considered to be in the category of “Church Personnel,”

Eileen Connors, Cardinal O'Malley and Jack Connors

From the Boston Globe- Connors, a millionaire many times over who is dedicated to helping those in need, said he was impressed by Obama’s practice of being friendly to everyone he met, from the police officer who escorted him to the waitstaff in the hotel. Connors ended up introducing Obama at three Boston fundraisers during the 2008 campaign, but he largely receded into the background after the president was elected. His more recent focus has been raising the $120 million needed to build and endow the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Dorchester. Yet as Obama and Biden gear up their reelection effort, Connors feels compelled to help. His fundraiser is generating $35,800 per couple. “A lot of my friends who have made a bunch of money like I did are Republicans, and I’m still tied to being a Democrat, and I think the president said it right the other day: ‘It’s about values,’” he said….

Link (here) to the full piece Boston Catholic Insider 
More on the subject at The Cardinal Newman Society (here)

Fr. Paul Carrier, S.J. And Fairfield University Named In 20 Million Dollar Lawsuit

Fr. Paul Carrier, S.J.

One of the Haitian victims of Douglas Perlitz has filed a $20 million civil law suit against Perlitz, and not only against Perlitz, but also against Father Paul Carrier, the priest who was instrumental in raising millions of dollars to sustain the school that Perlitz ran in Haiti, against Fairfield University which employed Father Carrier for many years, and against the New England Order of the Society of Jesus, in other words the Jesuit Order that runs Fairfield University. The suit also names The Haiti Fund, the umbrella charity for the Haitian school, Hope Carter, who was a member of the Board of Directors of the Haiti Fund, and a dozen others, who are identified only as John Doe One through John Doe Twelve. The attorney for the victim is Mitchell Garabedian, the lead attorney in obtaining an $85 million settlement against the Archdiocese of Boston for 500 victims of abuse by priests, and the lead attorney in obtaining a $10 million settlement against ex-priest John Geoghan and the Archdiocese of Boston on behalf of 87 other victims of sexual abuse.

Link (here) to read the full story at Minute Man News

The Queen Of Seattle University Sylvia O'Stayformore

Sylvia O'Stayformore

Sylvia O'Stayformore wasn't surprised there was a negative response; religious conservativism is something the host is familiar with. But even with religious communities there is usually room for diversity, according to O'Stayformore. "There is usually a pocket of acceptance in every religion no matter how conservative it is," O'Stayformore said. Originally a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, O'Stayformore is no stranger to religious conservatism; the fact that Seattle U is willing to support an event like a drag show comes as a welcome surprise to O'Stayformore. "It's pretty amazing that it happened in a Jesuit college, and that [the show] is getting support. I don't think it's going to say that the college is going to be accepting all but its pretty eye opening," said O'Stayformore. As far as the Cardinal Newman Society goes, O'Stayformore wasn't really surprised. "I guess it is a passive aggressive way of saying they don't agree with it," O'Stayformore said. Sylvia is a non-affiliate performer, so from her perspective the allegations against Seattle U. aren't personal. For the Catholic community on campus, however, the assertion that Seattle U is somehow non-Catholic is personal. "I believe whole-heartedly that Seattle University is thoroughly Catholic," said Director of Campus Ministry Mike Bayard, S.J..

Link (here) to read the full article at Spectator.

Fr. James Martin, S.J. On The Abuse Scandal

First of all, nearly every reputable psychologist and psychiatrist, not to mention almost every scholarly study, decisively rejects the conflation of hom@sexuality with p@dophilia, as well as any cause-and-effect relationship. The studies are almost too numerous to mention. 

Link (here) to read in context the above quote of Fr. James Martin, S.J. at In All Things

To read a total contradiction to this line of thinking read Steven Baldwin's, CHILD M@LESTATION AND THE H@MOSEXUAL MOVEMENT 

The Vatican document on h@mosexuals and seminaries (here)

Some excellent criticism (here) by George Weigal with an excerpt below, read the John Jay Report # 1 and the John Jay Report #2

Eighty-one percent of the victims of s@xual abuse by priests are adolescent males, and yet this has nothing to do with homosexuality? Perhaps it doesn’t from the clinicians’ point of view (especially clinicians ideologically committed to the notion that there is nothing necessarily destructive about same-s@x behaviors). But surely the attempt by some theologians to justify what is objectively immoral behavior had something to do with the disciplinary meltdown that the report notes from the late 1960s through the early 1980s; it might be remembered that it was precisely in this period that the Catholic Theological Society of America issued a study, Human Sexuality, that was in clear dissent from the Church’s settled teaching on fo@nication, self-abuse, and hom@sexual acts, and even found a relatively kind word to say about be@tiality. And is there no connection to be found between the spike in abuse cases between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, with its victimization of adolescent males, and the parallel spike in hom@erotic culture in U.S. Catholic seminaries and religious orders in that same period?

To read a blistering attack on the "New Morality" published in the book entitled "Human Sexuality" by the Catholic Theological Society of America go (here)

 

Maria Shriver is a graduate of Georgetown University, with a degree in American Studies (here)

Tertainship Changes

Fr. Thomas H. Smolich, S.J.

After completing theological studies and some years of ministry, Jesuits complete their formal formation of prayer, guidance and studies with tertianship, a time of spiritual renewal and ministry with the poor. 

After the tertianship period, the Jesuit is called to final vows in the Society of Jesus. In a May 6th letter to all U.S. Jesuits, Jesuit Conference President Father Thomas H. Smolich announced a change to tertianship procedure, with the creation of a national tertianship program. 

This transitions away from current practice of tertainship programs being coordinated by each province.

Link (here) to read the full piece at Jesuit.org

Censured Nun, Sr. Jeannine Grammick To Speak At Jesuit Universities

Sr. Jeannine Grammick

“More Than a Monologue: Sexual Diversity and the Catholic Church” set to be hosted by Fairfield and Fordham University. The series will include an October 29th conference at Fairfield University titled “The Care of Souls: Sexual Diversity, Celibacy and Ministry.”  The conference description appears to challenge Catholic teaching against h@mosexual activity. Sr. Jeannine Grammick, co-founder of New Ways Ministries, is listed as one of the conference speakers.  Life Site News had this to report about Sr. Grammick in 2006  A report from Life Site News in 2009 revealed that Sr. Grammick wrote in the Catholics for Choice magazine Conscience: “We cannot afford to let our dissenters be silenced.  They are a gift to our church.” Just this past March, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Chairman of the U.S. bishops’ doctrine committee, condemned a booklet from New Ways Ministry on “Marriage Equality” and recounted the numerous occasions on which the group’s co-founders, Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent, were disciplined by the Church for activities in defiance of the Church and its authority, Life Site reported. The Fairfield University website notes that Sr. Grammick is the author of Building Bridges: Gay and Lesbian Reality and Catholic Church and Voices of Hope: A Collection of Positive Catholic Writings on Lesbian/Gay Issues. Thanks to the research of Thomas Peters, we learned that Fairfield University received $100,000 from the Arcus Foundation last year .

Link (here) to read the full article at The Cardinal Newman Society.

Jesuits At Georgetown University Receive 88 Million Dollars From Islamic Monarchies

Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal

 ....The largest donor in this tranche is the Qatar Foundation. The largest recipient remains Georgetown University. I have asked the Qatar Embassy to make a spokesman available to me so that I can ask what the Foundation determines are the benefits to it and to the American universities of the Foundation relationship, but have not yet heard back. Without further research and data it would appear that Qatar is spending a great deal to jumpstart its educational program and, in essence, is purchasing intellectual capital from the universities and colleges with which it contracts.....

• Georgetown University received a gift of $6,000,000 from Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia “to support a chair in the Center for Muslim and Christian Understanding.” He is one of the richest men in the world and previously made $20 million gifts to Harvard and Georgetown for Islamic studies.

• Georgetown also received a $20,124.955 contract from the Qatar Foundation “for the operation of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.” Inquiry reveals that this covers the operations of the university’s campus in Qatar’s Education City, including the costs Georgetown incurs in this connection, and a “helpful but not enormous” extra amount to the university. The university also received a contract from the Qatar Foundation on 7/15/10 for $42,800,000. The purpose of this contract does not appear in the report, though it certainly appears related to the Education City campus operations.

Link (here) to read the full report at Pajamas Media 

Jesuit At America Magazine Links Blessed John Paul II With The Disgraced Founder Of The Legionaires

I remember watching a TV broadcast of a papal Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome with the announcer pointing out that the young acolytes in surplices sharing the altar with the Pope were Legion seminarians. The trouble is that Maciel was a fraud......

Throughout John Paul’s papacy the victims besieged the Vatican with their evidence, and the pope ignored their pleas, partly, 

according to Berry, because Maciel was a great fund raiser and had showered Vatican officials with cash. 

Link (here) to the full controversial blog post at America's In All Things by Fr. Raymond A. Scroth, S.J.

Jesuits Celebrate 400 Years Of Missionary Activity In Canada

Port Royal, Nova Scotia

400 years ago French Jesuit priests landed at the trading post of Port-Royal in today's Nova Scotia; join us at Port-Royal National Historical Site on Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 12:00 noon as we celebrate and re-enact that historic landing. "The Jesuits have been an integral part of Canada's rich and diverse history and we continue to be active across this great country," says Father Jim Webb, S.J., Provincial of the Jesuits in English Canada.  Special guests attending include: the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, the Honourable Mayann E. Francis, Member of the Grand Council, Grand Chief Keptin Antle Denny, and the Archbishop of Halifax, His Excellency, the Most Reverend Archbishop Anthony Mancini.  A travelling exhibition highlighting the story of the Jesuits in Canada will be unveiled and a historical vignette will be performed. Following the events at Port-Royal, a Mass will be celebrated at St. Louis Catholic Church in Annapolis Royal at 3:00 p.m.

Link (here) to the full story at Digital Journal.

Should I Fall A Victim To 'Yellow Jack,'

Each "province" of the Society of Jesus has some foreign mission confided to its charge. Thus an outlet for Irish zeal is afforded by Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand; and England has the West Indies. To the West Indies, therefore, Father Law was sent. A letter to his father on the 12th of November, 1866, is dated from "the Tasmania at sea," 25 degrees of north latitude, 51st degree of west longitude, wherever that may be. "I was so delighted, as I told the Provincial, with the generosity with which you willingly and cheerfully let me go to Demerara. For, should I fall a victim to 'Yellow Jack,' I could not die a better death after martyrdom; and I hope that in that ease God in His mercy might overlook all my other shortcomings. However, by the help of your prayers, I trust God may spare me many years to labour for His glory, and, if it be His will, to see you again, my dear, dear father. But fiat voluntas Dei. This is not our home. Heaven is our home, and it is there the best and happiest meeting will take place. But you know and understand all this far better than I do. Pray that I may know and understand it better every day. I shall be so delighted when Friday morning comes, for I shall then, I hope, be able to say Mass at St. Thomas's. It will almost appear to me like a first Mass. For, before this voyage, I had only missed saying Mass one day since my ordination."
Link (here) to the full account of Fr. Augustus Law, S.J. in the Irish Monthly

North American Jesuit Seminary Curriculum In 1846

Our records indicate an interregnum for the year 1846. In that year, as we know from other sources, Bishop John Hughes placed St. John's College and St. Joseph's Seminary (Now Fordham) in the hands of the Jesuit Fathers. The negotiations were carried on with Father Clement Boulanger, the Superior of the Canadian Mission, and Father Augustus Thebaud, who was made rector of St. John's College as well as of the Seminary. During the next ten years the institution remained under the management of the Jesuit Fathers, who furnished the professors. Their lectures were attended not only by the students of the diocese, but also by the Jesuit scholastics who were preparing for ordination. The course of studies was immediately extended and the faculty enlarged. The following subjects were treated by various professors: Dogmatic Theology, Moral Theology, Holy Scripture, Hebrew, Logic and Philosophy. In 1851 Ecclesiastical History was added to the above-mentioned subjects. After 1850 Hebrew disappears from the curriculum, probably because no professor was available.

 Link (here) to read the full portion of the essay in the book entitled, Monograph Series #4

Jesuit On Planetary Conjuncture

If the planets are sending a message at all from the cosmos, it’s that earthlings should stop worrying and just relish the show. The conjunction of Earth’s heavenly neighbors—Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter—is a regular phenomenon attributed to their normal orbit around the sun, not a cosmic conspiracy that signals the end of the world as doomsayers fear, according to Dario dela Cruz, officer in charge of the Space Sciences and Astronomy Section of the Pagasa weather bureau. To 81-year-old Fr. Victor Badillo, a Filipino Jesuit astronomer who has spent 30 years studying the firmament at the Manila Observatory, the cosmic phenomenon is just one among the many amazing sky shows to enjoy. “There are so many wonderful things [in the sky] for us to enjoy than to worry about,” Badillo said by phone from the Jesuit Residence Infirmary at the Ateneo de Manila University. Instead of treating this event as a harbinger of doom, it must be considered “something beautiful to behold,” just like the meteor storm in 1999 that marked the night sky with dazzling lights, he said. Confined at the infirmary for seven years now, Badillo keeps himself busy blogging on his favorite topics ranging from astronomy and physics to theology.  “What [doomsayers] are saying is not true. You will just see the planets close to each other this month. They are visible to the naked eye before sunrise, best at 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the eastern side,” Dela Cruz told the Inquirer. “People should just enjoy it. Just wake up early to see it,” he said.

At The Jesuit Ateneo University In The Philippines

"Hail Mary Squad"

In the time of Jose Rizal, to be an Atenean is to have a liberal education. Jose Rizal studied Latin and Greek and learned the arts and sciences. A true Atenean is a devotee of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jose Rizal carved the Statue of the Sacred Heart in wood with a penknife. A true Atenean is a devotee of Our Lady. Jose Rizal prays the rosary. This is the reason why the Ateneo Basketball Team was once known as the Hail Mary Squad because they always pray the rosary before each game. And this is also why we sing our Alma Mater Song:

“Mary for you! For your white and blue! We pray you’ll keep us, Mary, constantly true! We pray you’ll keep us, Mary, faithful to you!” As an agnostic, you have to be careful when you sing this song. Mama Mary can convert even the most hardened sinners. The Campus Ministry in Ateneo never cease to give the Miraculous Medal every year. It is not called Miraculous Medal for nothing. If you receive that medal and pray a Hail Mary a day devoutly for a month, you will be converted. If you are incredulous, try it.

Link (here) to the great blog entitled, The Monks Hobbit

Fr. Patrick Conroy, S.J. On His Job Interview For Chaplian With Speaker Boehner And Nancy Pelosi

Did you interview for the job?

Yes. About a month ago, I met with two staffers from Mr. Boehner's office and two from Mrs. Pelosi's office -- four people. It was a very pleasant interview that lasted about 75 minutes. Then I returned to teaching freshmen theology (at Jesuit High School). There were five candidates, and I made the cut. Last Wednesday (May 4), I had a half-hour interview with Mr. Boehner and Mrs. Pelosi and their four staffers. Then I stepped out of the room. They talked and they offered me the position.

 Link (here) to the full and great interview at Oregon Live

Dancing Jesuit On Being Labeled Effeminate And Incorporating Yoga Into His Retreats

Fr. Saju George, S.J.

Religion has to be felt, believes Fr Saju George Moolamthuruthil SJ (Society of Jesus). And he has chosen dance, that too Bharatanatyam, to help people experience God. 

This ‘Dancing Jesuit’ priest, a native of Peruva, Kottayam, is in the city to give a Bharatanatyam performance on Saturday  as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Kerala Jesuits. With over two decades of experience and hundreds of performances to his credit, mostly in Europe and the US, Fr Saju is more than happy with the acknowledgement he has garnered over the years.  

“I have got positive responses from most quarters. You can say, I have survived...!,” he says, breaking into a smile, obviously hinting at the criticisms hurled at him when he had started off. The tag Christian, that too a priest, has given him enough tough times. With his dance retreats - where he explains the essence of Indian dance, its variations, the spirituality incorporated in them, its aesthetics, the Natyashastra, the ‘bhavas’, ‘ragas’ et al through demonstrations and lectures -  Fr Saju has gone through enough and more opposition. 

“I conduct the retreats for groups. I incorporate yoga and spirituality in the sessions. And certain groups don’t welcome them. I have faced stiff opposition from certain orthodox sects, some churches...,” he pauses, hinting he would rather talk about the positive side of his journey so far.

He has a mission to fulfill. “Take the Indian art - the traditional dance, theatre, music - the world over, especially to those who can’t afford,” he says. Coming to the first part of it, he has performed over 150 times outside India. “I make each performance an interactive one.” He talks more from his PhD thesis on the concept of Nataraja based mainly on the text ‘Thirumandiram’, which explains the Dancing God concept, ie Shiva as dancer, and connect it with Bible. “I touch upon Christian theology and philosophy and ask for suggestions from the audience.” Talking about the second part, ie taking dance to those who can’t afford to learn it, he is doing that through ‘Kalahrudaya’, which is coming up as a universal home of art and culture. “It would cater to the young people, less privileged ones in society who are interested in art forms. We’ve got the land, some seven acres, away from Kolkata city, and it would start functioning in full swing in a year or so. I am envisaging something on the lines of Kalakshetra or Kalamandalam,” he says.  He is also running ‘Shanti Nir’ (Nir means nest of peace) of the Calcutta Jesuit Province which offers care and support to needy children and also help with low-cost housing, self employment and medical help.On the whole, Fr Saju wants to blend dance and social work. “My priority is to show the world that an artist can be a social activist too. I want to cater to the real needs of poor. Next month, I am going to Japan for a fund-raising programme for the tsunami-affected people,” he says. He had that liking for art forms right from childhood and got fascinated by dance when he saw his sister learning it. Side by side, he also got that call from inside to indulge in missionary activities. Fr Saju left Kerala, in 1985 for Kolkata, to join the Society of Jesus, after his Plus-II.He did his MA in dance from Kolkata, had his ‘arangettam’ in 1996, came down to Chennai to study philosophy, during which he learnt Kuchipudi under Vempati Chinna Satyam. Simultaneously, he got to learn Bharatanatyam, the Kalakshethra style, and soon realised that the latter suited him.  

“I am at home with Bharatanatyam,” he says. He emphasises one point. “I have been very conscious about not being labelled ‘effeminate’. I stress that a male dancer should dance like a male, except for those portions which need feminine postures from him. I even tell my students about this,” he says.

Fr Saju, 44, fondly remembers people like C V Chandrasekhar, Leela Samson, Kalanidhi Narayanan and Priyadarshini Govind who have encouraged him throughout. He is currently the research adviser at the Kalai Kaveri College of Fine Arts, Thiruchirappalli.

Link (here) to read the full article at Express Buzz