Congregation Of Procurators

On Saturday, 7 July, the Procurators of the Society of Jesus concluded the eight days of Spiritual Exercises in readiness for the Congregation of Procurators taking place this week in Nairobi. A total of 84 Procurators are attending the Congregation, from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the United States. Fr Adrian Porter SJ from the Jesuit Institute in Oxford is representing the British Province. A Congregation of Procurators is called into session by Father General every four years after the end of a General Congregation. The 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) took place between January and March 2008. Delegates are elected by their provinces to represent them at the Congregation, where an important task will be for the Procurators to discuss the overall state of the Society, especially in its more universal dimension. The discussion could clarify if a General Congregation is warranted. Another purpose of the Congregation of Procurators is to decide whether a General Congregation should be called. While the Procurators have no power to legislate, they can suspend decrees issued by previous General Congregations if the members think it necessary. This is the first time a Congregation of Procurators has taken place outside Europe. They have been held regularly since 1568, in response to the wishes of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and his early successors that Jesuits should gather at least once every three years from each province to discuss the state of the Society. Previous Congregations of Procurators have taken place in Rome, Florence and in Loyola, the birthplace of St Ignatius.

Link (here) to Independent Catholic News

The Church Of St. Frances Xavier Is A Left-Wing Incarnation Of The Catholic Church

Returning to Catholicism is certainly a step toward regaining traditional religion, but don’t count your chickens yet; the church Holmes chose just happens to be the same church Nancy Pelosi frequented while she was Speaker of the House. You might think any Catholic Church Pelosi felt comfortable at would be somewhat marginal, as Catholicism goes, and you’d be correct. The Church of St. Frances Xavier is a left-wing incarnation of the Catholic Church; its members have marched in New York City’s Gay Pride parade for years. So Holmes has left the realm of science fiction and returned to Earth; but not quite back to traditional morality yet.

Link (here) to Big Hollywood

A Reprioritization In Human Rights

Thomas Farr

Thomas Farr, Professor of Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown University, delivered a dire warning to the U.S. bishops last month in an address, telling them that religious liberty for Christians is now a “global crisis.” 

And things just got worse. Farr writes at The Weekly Standard that the U.S. State Department recently announced that it was dropping coverage of religious freedom from its annual Human Rights Report. While this may seem inexplicable to many, 

Farr says it reveals the priorities of the Obama administration in that “this move may be part of a larger reprioritization in human rights policy in favor of the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights.”

Link (here) to The Cardinal Newman Society

Katie Holmes Registers As A Parishoner At A Jesuit Parish In New York City

Katie Holmes with daughter Suri

Five years after revealing that she had started to study Scientology, Katie Holmes has officially returned to the Catholic faith, registering as a parishioner at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York City. “Everyone is thrilled to have Katie join us,” a member of the church's choir told me. “She has not yet attended a service, but when she does she will be welcomed with open arms.” The church, located on 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, is known for inclusive thinking and its welcoming of many gay and lesbian Catholics. Its mission statement indicates that the Roman Catholic Church parish “strives to be a prophetic, welcoming community, inclusive witness to the presence of Christ Jesus in our midst.” Its website proclaims that it is a respectful community, “where seekers and their questions are welcomed, where injustice is challenged, where the poor, the alienated and marginalized find a home, and where people are refreshed, reconciled and renewed.” Cruise and Holmes just issued a joint statement saying, "We want to keep matters affecting our family private and express our respect for each other's commitment to each of our respective beliefs and support each other's roles as parents." The New York parish is no stranger to celebrity faces: Nancy Pelosi was seen worshipping there while serving as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Link (here) to the Huffington Post

Jesuit On French Poet Paul Claudel

Paul Claudel

Henri de Lubac, S.J., recounted this anecdote about Paul Claudel: One day, when he was visiting a convent library, having paused before the shelves of scriptural exegesis, he selected the largest volume, took it in his tow hands, brandished it, and exclaimed with appropriate gestures,  

"Someday I'd like to put all my commentaries on the Bible into a book like this one, and throw it in the face of my century!" 

Link (here) to Ignatius Insight 

A Day of Gifts by Paul Claudel

It’s not true that Your saints have won everything: they left me with sins enough.

Someday I’ll lie on my deathbed, Lord, ill-shaven and yellow as a lifelong drunk.

And I’ll make a general examination of myself, looking back over all my days,

And I’ll see that I’m rich after all, ripe and rich with evil in its unnumbered paths and ways.

I haven’t lost one single chance, Lord, to make matter for You to pardon.

Now I hearten myself with vice, having long ago sloughed off virtue’s burden.

Each day has its own kind of crime, plain to see, and I count them like some paranoid miser.

If what you need, Lord, are virgins, if what you need are brave men beneath your standard;

If there are people for whom to be Christian words alone would not suffice,

But who know rather that only in stirring themselves to chase after You is there any life,

Well then there’s Dominic and Francis, Saint Lawrence and Saint Cecilia and plenty more!

But if by chance You should have need of a lazy and imbecilic bore,

If a prideful coward could prove useful to You, or perhaps a soiled ingrate,

Or the sort of man whose hard heart shows up in a hard face—

Well, anyway, You didn’t come to save the just but that other type that abounds,

And if, miraculously, You run out of them elsewhere . . . Lord, I’m still around.

And what kind of a man is so crude that he hasn’t held a little something back from You,

Hasn’t in his free time fashioned something special for You,

Hoping that one day the idea will come to You to ask it of him,

And maybe this little that he’s made himself, kept back until then, though horrid and tortuous, will please Your whim.

It would be something that he’d put his whole heart into, something useless and malformed.

Just like that my little daughter once, on my birthday, teetered forward with encumbered arms

And offered me, her heart at once full of timidity and pride,

A magnificent little duck she had made with her own two hands, a pincushion, made of red wool and gold thread. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola On Lucifer

“Imagine that leader of all the enemy,

 in that great plain of Babylon, 

sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, 

a horrible and terrifying sight. 

Watch him calling together countless devils, 

to despatch them into different cities

 till the whole world is covered, 

forgetting no province or locality, 

no class or single individual.”

Link (here)

Italian Jesuit On Islamic Hell

Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, S.J. a brawny bear of a man who enunciates each word with a theatrical sense of certitude, scoffs at the "jihad priest" label. He says he remains committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict in his adopted homeland — a "jihad of the spirit, not a jihad of arms," as he declared during a recent stay in the rebel-occupied Syrian town of Qusair. 

Still, the Italian-born priest warns: "If nonviolence becomes another name for a lack of responsibility, then I am not with nonviolence anymore. I am with the right to defend people." Talk like that helped get Dall'Oglio expelled from Syria last month after 30 years in Syria, 

where his devotion to Christian-Muslim "harmony" earned him a global following as a charismatic and pugnacious interfaith visionary. The outspoken cleric says he was "kicked out" by church authorities acting on demands from the Syrian government, enraged by his strident pronouncements backing the 16-month uprising against President Bashar Assad. He evinces little sympathy for fellow Christians who fear Assad's fall could unleash an era of Islamist repression."They are in a state of Islamophobia," Dall'Oglio says of Syrian Christians still loyal to a fraying police state that has throttled dissent but tolerated religious minorities for more than four decades. "From the 1980s, all they've heard, repeated and repeated, is that without the Assad state, Syria would be an Islamic hell."

Link (here) to The LA Times

Jesuit App

Across the United States, the Society of Jesus, the U.S.'s largest order of priests and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church, runs universities, high schools and middle schools, parishes and retreat houses. And today, the 450-year-old religious order has an app. Available for free at the iTunes App Store, the Jesuit app operates on any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad; a similar app will soon be available at the Android Marketplace for use on devices such as the Droid, Evo and HTC Touch. The new app allows users to locate Jesuit retreat centers, schools and parishes across the U.S., read the latest news and information about the Jesuits, and access Jesuit prayers and spirituality documents.

Link (here) to Youtube

Jesuit Retreat Center In India

Gaurav Shroff

Gaurav Shroff. Gaurav, who was raised as a westernized upper caste Hindu in India, first encountered the Catholic faith through hearing Gregorian chant at his high school in Mumbai: “The sublime music of the Mass undoubtedly assured me of God's presence; the Gregorian chants elevated my spirits, creating in me a sense of awe for the Sacred. I was instinctively drawn by the aesthetic beauty of the Eucharist and this experience filled my heart with immense joy.” A year later, he attended a Good Friday service and participated in the veneration of the cross: “As I knelt down and kissed the Cross, I vividly remember the clear voice in my heart saying to me: ‘I died for you,’ and I began to weep unashamedly, and though I did not understand what it meant, I was certain, that the Crucified Christ loved me. Then it wasn’t about music anymore, I wanted to learn more about this Jesus. Either Jesus was completely crazy or he was God.” Remarkably, Gaurav sensed a call to the priesthood before he was baptized: He began reading everything about the Catholic faith, the Bible and regularly went for Sunday Mass. 

In 1993, Gaurav went to a Jesuit retreat praying alone at night before the Blessed Sacrament. “I strongly felt the presence of the Divine, the deep love of God for me, and in the darkness, I was illuminated: My life belonged to Jesus, to know him, to love him and to serve him. This was my mission and vocation. I felt called to be a priest.” On the feast of the Assumption, 1994, Gaurav was baptized (with the blessing of his father) and then moved to the US where he earned a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies and worked in campus ministry at the University of South Carolina. 

After exploring a possible call to religious priesthood with the Paulists in Washington DC (where I originally met him) Gaurav discerned a specific call to diocesan priesthood and was accepted as a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Atlanta in 2007. They keep Gaurav incredibly busy at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg these days but he still manages to squeeze in Called & Gifted workshops for us in English and Spanish from time to time. If all goes well, he’ll be ordained a priest for Atlanta in 2013.

Link (here) to Siena.org

Sacred Heart Jesuit Center And Fr. Jerry Linder, S.J.

Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos

A jury has acquitted a San Francisco man accused of beating a priest at the Los Gatos Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in May 2010. On Thursday afternoon, the panel found William Lynch, 44, not guilty of one count of felony assault with intent to cause great bodily injury and one count of elder abuse under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm or death.He had pleaded not guilty to both charges. The jury hung 8-4 on a lesser misdemeanor crime of an assault on Father Jerold Lindner and it's not clear if the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office will refile charges related to that lesser offense or appeal. Outside the San Jose Hall of Justice, Lynch said he was happy with the verdict and surprised by the outcome of the highly emotional trial. Lynch claimed on the witness stand that Lindner had raped and sodomized both he and his brother while they were young children in the 1970s. 

His testimony was thrown out after defense attorneys called for a mistrial, saying the cleric had perjured himself. "We've accomplished so much more," he said. "I wanted to bring attention to the issue of child sexual abuse. I wanted to bring Father Jerry into the light and careened the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center as the rapist resort." 

Lynch said he hopes the DA's office will prosecute Lindner for perjury. According to several Lynch supporters, the Jesuit Order - where Lindner is a member - has paid out millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements to other alleged victims.

Link (here) to Los Altos Patch

Read the heinous back story of Fr. Jerold "Jerry" Linder, S.J. (here) at the website entitled Counter Punch

Fr Frederick Coppleston, S.J. On Nietzsche

“Nietzsche tends to make the choice between theism, especially Christian theism, and atheism a matter of taste or instinct…Belief is a sign of weakness, cowardice, decadence, a no-saying attitude to life. True, Nietzsche attempts a sketch of the origins of the idea of God. And he cheerfully commits the genetic fallacy, maintaining that when it has been shown how the idea of God could have originated, any disproof of God’s existence becomes superfluous. He also occasionally alludes to theoretical objections against belief in God. But, generally speaking, the illusory character of this belief is assumed. And the decisive motive for its rejection is that man (or Nietzsche himself) may take the place of God as legislator and creator of values. Considered as a purely theoretical attack, Nietzsche’s condemnation of theism in general and of Christianity in particular is worth very little.”

Link (here) to Ignitum Today

Fr Frederick Coppleston, S.J. (here) and (here)

Mass Of Celebration For The Re-opening Of St Peter’s Church

Stonyhurst College in Lancashire celebrated the re-opening of its church, St Peter’s, last month, after its year-long closure for extensive restoration and conservation work. A congregation of 900 pupils, parents, staff and alumni from Stonyhurst College attended a Mass of Celebration for the re-opening of St Peter’s church. The principal celebrant was Fr Dermot Preston S.J., Provincial of the Jesuits in Britain. The choir sang Vivaldi’s Gloria, accompanied by the Stonyhurst Orchestra, which also played the opening hymn, Vaughan Williams’s arrangement of “All creatures that on earth do dwell”. The head boy, head girl and headmaster read the readings and pupils of all ages read the bidding prayers. St Peter’s is a Grade I listed building constructed by the Jesuits for Stonyhurst and its parish in the early 1830s. One of the first Catholic churches to be built after Emancipation in 1829, it is an important example of church architecture in the Gothic Revival Perpendicular style. Masons have replaced large expanses of stone eroded by wind and rain. Stained-glass windows have been re-leaded and cleaned. Stencilling from the 1850s and 1950s, previously covered by whitewash, has been painstakingly re-painted, and the magnificent ceiling has been restored.
Link (here) to The Catholic Herald

Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J. Verses The Real Presence

Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J.

In the sixteenth century the rise of Protestantism produced a crisis of faith in the Catholic Church. Whole nations were lost to the Catholic Faith mainly because Catholic leaders especially bishops and theologians were seduced by the so-called reformers. There never was a Protestant reformation, that is in plain Anglo-Saxon a lie, there was only a Protestant rebellion.

Thank God there was a Catholic reformation. Reformers like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola – that is what the Church needs today. Dear Lord how she needs these saintly courageous reformers today. These bishops and theologians, I am now speaking of the sixteenth century, denied that Christ had instituted the Sacrament of Holy Orders and thus conferred upon priests the power to change bread and wine into His own body and blood, and this is the heart of the crisis in the Catholic church today. It is the sixth Chapter of Saint John’s Gospel but now on a global scale.

Pope Paul VI uses two words to summarize this Eucharist Crisis, they are transignification and transfinalization. These terms are a synthesis of the widespread radical ideas pervading once Catholic circles as we enter the third millennium – how well I know. What I will do now is identify the two principal leaders of this devastating Eucharistic error. The error of transignification. This is the view that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist means when the consecration at Mass is performed only a change of meaning or significance of the bread and wine takes place. Their substance do not change only a change of meaning or significance of the bread and wine takes place their substance does not change. The consecrated elements are said to signify all that Christians associate with the Last Supper. The bread and wine acquire a higher meaning than merely food for the body. But they remain bread and wine. 

We get some idea of how deeply this error has penetrated Catholic thought, when we read what Karl Rahner writes about the Eucharistic consecration. Rahner therefore is the first of the two master teachers of profound error on the Real Presence. I will quote now from Rahner’s language, not always so clear, I chose the clearest part that I could find. Quote Karl Rahner, “the more recent approaches suggest the following considerations, one has to remember that the words of institution indicate a change. But not give any guiding line for the interpretation of the actual process. As regarding transubstantiation it may be said, the substance, essence, meaning and purpose of the bread are identical but the meaning of a thing can be changed without changing the matter. The meaning of the bread has been changed through the consecration something which served profane use now becomes the dwelling place and the symbol of Christ who is present and gives Himself to His own.” unquote Karl Rahner. 

 From the Encyclopedia of Theology edited by Rahner and defining the meaning of transubstantiation. What takes place through the Eucharistic consecration the significance the meaning attached to the bread changes but the bread remains bread. Rahner’s ideas are permeating the Eucharistic theology of whole nations.

Link (here) to read the full talk by Fr. John A Hardon, S.J.

Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Since Homiletic & Pastoral Review magazine went exclusively online on the Feast of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, this year, we have learned much about both the advantages and drawbacks of web-based publishing. Obviously, we miss the print edition. At the same time, we are reaching more readers online as we continue our high standard of presenting the richness of the Faith in a way that attracts, enriches, and converts. In our June issue, for example, we feature a full-length article by Dominican Father Austin Green on "The Eternal Priesthood of Jesus Christ", as well as an article by Cistercian Father, Roch Kereszty on the priest’s role the New Evangelization. Essays such as these bolster the morale of priests and encourage us all to love Christ and his people with great constancy, courage, and cheer. HPRweb.com has articles on pressing moral issues and, in every month’s crop of new articles, at least one essay on prayer, and not a few more pieces on contemporary concerns. Articles in the June edition include Deacon James Keating on spiritual martyrdom, Carmelite Carolyn Humphries on mystical prayer, and the indefatigable Jesuit Father James Schall on why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Dominus Iesus is needed more today than ever before. In addition to a dozen plus articles every month, HPRweb.com also reviews books pertinent to any pastor or parishioner wanting to keep current with both scholarly works as well as the more popular, pastoral books published today. We also run our highly-touted homilies for the month as well as feature Father Brian Mullady, O.P., who answers our readers’ questions in his usual in-depth and thorough manner.

In Corde Iesu,

Father David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Saint Louis University

To read the magazine online or sign up for their free newsletter, Click here.

Award Winning

Jesuit Parish of Church of the Blessed Sacrament

A member of the liturgy committee at a San Francisco parish was “ordained a deacon” on Saturday, June 23, according to the website of Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Participants in such sham ceremonies are automatically excommunicated, but the group has repeatedly rejected the ruling of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the subject. The event took place at Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco, where Olivia Doko, “bishop” of the Western Region of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, “ordained” Maria Eitz. According to the website of St. John of God Catholic Church in San Francisco, Eitz is a member of the parish’s Liturgy Committee. Now that Eitz has incurred automatic excommunication, it’s up to either Fr. Methodius Kiwale, administrator of the parish, or the Archbishop of San Francisco to determine whether she will be removed from her post on the committee. Much of the direction at St. John of God is supplied by the church’s deacon, Brian Bromberger. The majority of the published sermons on the St. John of God website are his. Bromberger, who previously served at San Francisco’s Most Holy Redeemer Parish, led St. John of God parishioners at San Francisco’s 2011 “Gay Pride” parade. Trinity Episcopal has long provided space to a Roman Catholic Womenpriests group called “Sophia in Trinity” for twice-monthly liturgies led by “Womanpriest” and open lesbian Victoria Rue. Over the past 18 months CalCatholic has published a number of articles documenting the “ordination” of women who serve, or have served, in Catholic parish ministries. Maureen Mancuso, an RCIA instructor at Christ the King parish in Pleasant Hill, was “ordained” a “womandeacon” by Doko on September 18, 2011 in Santa Barbara. “Ordained” as a “womandeacon” during the same event was open lesbian Jennifer O’Malley, who had served on the Ministry to Gay and Lesbian Catholics for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. 

Her biography on the RCWP website notes that O’Malley “previously worked as a Coordinator of Youth ministry at a parish in the archdiocese of Los Angeles and was a program director for a national Catholic service learning program.” According to the Autumn 2011 issue of GLOings, the newsletter of the LA archdiocese’s Ministry to Gay and Lesbian Catholics, O’Malley was one of seven persons receiving the “Lumen Christi” award at the Jesuit Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood on Oct. 22, 2011 -- after she had been “ordained,” and thereby, excommunicated. 

Despite an explicit warning from the Vatican that participation in such sham ordinations results in automatic excommunication

Link (here) to The California Catholic Daily

John Gerard Hunted Jesuit

Tower of London

Truth is stranger than fiction. And nowhere in literature is it so apparent as in this classic work, the Autobiography of a Hunted Priest. This autobiography of a Jesuit priest in Elizabethan England is a most remarkable document and John Gerard, its author, a most remarkable priest in a time when to be a Catholic in England courted imprisonment and torture; to be a priest was treason by act of Parliament.

Smuggled into England after his ordination and dumped on a Norfolk beach at night, Fr. Gerard disguised himself as a country gentleman and traveled about the country saying Mass, preaching and ministering to the faithful in secret - always in constant danger. The houses in which he found shelter were frequently raided by "priest hunters"; priest-holes, hide-outs and hair-breadth escapes were part of his daily life. He was finally caught and imprisoned, and later removed to the infamous Tower of London where he was brutally tortured.

The stirring account of his escape, by means of a rope thrown across the moat, is a daring and magnificent climax to a true story which, for sheer narrative power and interest, far exceeds any fiction. Here is an accurate and compelling picture of England when Catholics were denied their freedom to worship and endured vicious persecution and often martyrdom.

Link (here) to Insight Scoop

The Jesuit Priest Who Converted And Became A Taoist Priest

Michael Saso

The seven alchemical formulas are already stripped down to core practices. I don't think you need to invoke, as does the Mao Shan sect, the "lu" or name registers of hundreds of deities, or use special mantras and talismans to command them. 

You can learn that; it’s a lineage method. Michael Saso, the Jesuit priest who converted and became a Taoist priest, learned it and told me it works powerfully. But he told me there are only a handful of people left who know it. It is complicated for Westerners; you probably need to learn Chinese. I personally decided my time was better spent practicing nei gong than learning spoken Chinese.

My alchemical tradition works with the polarities of qi in nature and with the natural shen, which manage the natural flow of qi. You can directly tap the energy of the sun, the moon and the stars, volcanoes, water, wind and rain. All of these are natural forces and they are all represented microcosmically within your body. You can resonate those outer forces into your body and do all this work right inside your body without invoking any particular deities other than the natural shen, the spirits that are living inside you and which are connected to the natural spirits that run the body of this universe. Spirits don’t occupy any physical space. That’s why it is possible to unite an entire universe of spirits "inside" the microcosm of your body. I have no problem with people having connections to religious deities or special guides or anything. Those often appear and people maintain whatever alliances they want to. The principle is what counts, and the efficacy of one’s method. How do you work the different levels of polarity—of water and fire, yin and yang? How do you grasp the essence and open the mysterious gate, the "hidden period" or timeless state, and enter into it? 

Link (here) 

There Is No School Like The Old School

Fr. William O'Malley, S.J.

Heads were spinning at Fordham Prep after a gruff but beloved teacher — known to horror fans for his role in the film “The Exorcist” — was cast out. Administrators exorcised themselves of Father William O’Malley, a theology teacher at the Jesuit high school for the past 20 years, because they felt his old-school style was out of date. “Father O’Malley’s style was probably more abrasive than we are used to and something we discussed with the principal over the years,” Father Kenneth Boller, president of Fordham Prep, told The Post. “He has a somewhat confrontational style, and the times change and the [teaching] styles change,” he said. “His effectiveness, in view of the principal, has diminished. We thought it was time for him to end his career on an up note after completing a successful year.” O’Malley, 80, played Father Joe Dyer in the 1973 demonic-possession horror flick. As an author, Father O'Malley has published 37 books, Choosing to Be Catholic, Why Be Catholic?, God: The Oldest Question, Meeting the Living God, Building Your Own Conscience, and The Fifth Week are among them. His book, Help My Unbelief, won a Catholic Book Award in 2009

Link (here) to the NY Post

Town of Elvas And Its Fortifications

Elvas, Portugal

The site, extensively fortified from the 17th to 19th centuries, represents the largest bulwarked dry ditch system in the work. Within its walls, the town contains barracks and other military buildings as well as churches and monasteries. While Elvas contains remains dating back to the 10th century A.D., its fortification began when Portugal regained independence in 1640. The fortifications designed by Dutch Jesuit Padre João Piscásio Cosmander represent the best surviving example of the Dutch school of fortifications anywhere. The site also contains the Amoreira Aqueduct, built to enable the stronghold to withstand lengthy sieges.

Link (here) to the UNESCO website

Former Jesuit Complains About Bishop Selection Process

Paul Lakeland

A professor at Fairfield University has criticized the process of choosing a new bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, saying it's geared less to finding a leader committed to the faithful of Fairfield County than to choosing a man who will rise high in the ranks of the Church. "This is not just an ordinary diocese," said (Former Jesuit) Paul Lakeland, the Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. professor of religious studies at the Jesuit university. "You have a diocese that's quite dramatically divided between the wealthy and those in poverty." William E. Lori, who had been bishop since 2000, was elevated to archbishop of Baltimore on May 16. On May 22 it was announced by church officials that Monsignor Jerald A. Doyle will administer the diocese until a new bishop is appointed. Lakeland was quick to point out that the Bridgeport diocese has sent other bishops to high positions; Lawrence Shehan and Edward Egan both were elevated to cardinal. "It's a conduit to high ecclesiastical office, so they're unlikely to send someone here who they don't imagine will have at least a good chance of becoming a major figure in the American church," he said. "But the problem with that is you won't necessarily get some one who's committed to the diocese." 

A month ago, Lakeland hosted a forum in which he invited the Catholic faithful ---- the laity and priests alike ---- to discuss the qualities that would be desirable in the next bishop. But, according to Lakeland, attendance at "Choosing a Bishop: A Forum for the People and Clergy of the Diocese of Bridgeport," was discouraged by Doyle . "Monsignor Doyle informed his clergy that they were not to participate, nor to encourage their parishioners to do so," 

Lakeland said in his May 31 letter to Apostolic Nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò, who is the Vatican's ambassador to the United States. About 65 Catholics attended the meeting, none of them priests. One priest later sent a letter to Lakeland saying that he and other priests didn't attend because they feared disciplinary action.

Link (here) to CTPost.com to read the full article.

Democracy, Culture, and Catholicism

There are over 100 Jesuit Universities across the world. Their first college was created in the Italian city of Messina in the year 1548. Since then, they have expanded with locations in 27 countries. Members from these different schools recently gathered in Rome to discuss the situation of Democracy, Culture, and Catholicism in each of their countries. Many of these Jesuit Universities deal with censorship and other threats to political and religious freedom.

Link (here) to Rome Reports

Forty Million Reasons To Close

A majestic Gold Coast mansion in Manhasset, run as the St. Ignatius Jesuit Retreat House by Roman Catholic Jesuit priests for nearly a half-century, will close next June because of financial strains. The 87-room medieval-style mansion, located on a 33-acre site off Searingtown Road near the Long Island Expressway, is considered one of the grandest on Long Island and could sell for tens of millions of dollars if put on the market, a real estate expert said. The Jesuits are carrying out a regional consolidation of their retreat houses in the metropolitan area, said the Rev. David S. Ciancimino, provincial of the Jesuits' New York region.  Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House in Staten Island also will close, while the Loyola House of Retreats in Morristown, N.J., will remain open.  "Many will understandably experience sadness at the closing" of the two centers, Ciancimino said in a letter posted on St. Ignatius' website. "Nonetheless, the greater good of a more nimble and mobile ministry that reaches many more people convinces us of the need to make this change." St. Ignatius costs about $1.8 million a year to run, staff members told Newsday last year. About half of that comes from fundraising, the Rev. Edward Quinnan, Ciancimino's assistant for pastoral ministry, said Thursday. Because of the high costs, the center was "becoming more a fundraising operation than a retreat operation," he said. Quinnan said the Jesuits, known as the intellectuals of the Catholic Church, have no immediate plans for what to do with St. Ignatius after it closes. If they decide to sell it, the house and property potentially could fetch anywhere from $20 million to $40 million, said Paul Mateyunas of Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty and a Gold Coast historian. "It's an emotional property, an historical property. It has that 'wow' factor that could make a sky's-the-limit-type value to it," Mateyunas said.
Link (here) to the full article at News Day

Oath

" I affirm and believe the Church's teaching about the sinfulness of contraception." It asks the oath taker to assert that contraception is always intrinsically evil. 

The oath goes on: " I accept the church's teaching that any extra-marital sexual relationships are gravely evil and that these include pre-marital relations, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations." A further paragraph insists that homosexual acts are " intrinsically disordered.". 

Other sections of the oath affirm the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the virginity of Mary, a belief in hell and purgatory and that the oath taker acknowledges that church teachings "pronounced in a definitive manner, even though not as an infallible definition, are binding on the conscience of the faithful and are to be adhered to with religious assent." Note the ambiguity in the term, "binding on the conscience". Does this mean I must first take seriously the teaching and enter as best I can into it before my conscience may dictate a different path from it ? Does it allow ever any conscientious objection to fallible church teaching ? Theologians also dispute what the meaning of "adhering with religious assent' really entails. In a masterful book, A Church that Can and Cannot Change ( University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) John Noonan documents a series of changes ( even radical ones) on Catholic moral issues: the morality of slavery, usury, church discipline on divorce. Noonan, of course, earlier argued that he thought elements of the church's teaching on contraception as always and everywhere and in every form it takes intrinsically evil could change.

Link (here) to full blog post at America Magazine by Fr. John Coleman, S.J. 

Shane Mulligan, S.J. on the Perpetual Vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience (here)

Los Gatos In The California Province

William "Will" Lynch

Last week, Jesuit Priest Jerold Lindner testified for about 40 minutes about what he said was a "vicious" and painful attack. But Judge David A. Cena instructed the Santa Clara County jury to ignore Lindner's testimony, including his denial of the alleged molestation, after the Jesuit refused to answer any more questions on the grounds it might incriminate him. That left Gemetti with receptionist Santos and health care coordinator Eden as key witnesses, both of whom are now retired from Sacred Heart. Santos testified last week. On Wednesday, Eden painted a sympathetic portrait of the priest, who she said seemed "shaken" and "frightened" after the attack. She had to help him walk to the nurse's station, she testified, to get treatment for lacerations to his face after he refused her offer of a wheelchair. 

In three police interviews shortly after the incident, Eden said she did not witness the attacker strike Lindner. Then, last year, during the preliminary hearing, she said she saw a man she identified as Will Lynch punch Lindner. On Wednesday, she changed her story again, saying Lynch tried to get back in the parlor where he left Lindner crumpled on the floor and bloodied, but she blocked the entrance. 

Gemetti attempted to minimize the inconsistencies after Lynch's lead lawyer Pat Harris gently but relentlessly grilled Eden."Is it fair to say certain details are very clear in your mind and others that aren't so clear?" Gemetti asked. But Eden listed only two things that were very clear to her -- that Lindner was bloody and that the attacker paced while yelling about Lindner's alleged molestation of him and his brother. Yet the jury may well disregard the inconsistencies and focus on the combined effect of Gemetti's witnesses -- that it was Lynch who hit the priest because, as Eden testified, he was "very distressed" about the alleged molestation. Harris' focus has been to try to minimize the priest's injuries, as well as build a case that the attack was fleeting -- perhaps no longer than a minute. But if the jury believes Eden's latest account -- that she saw the punching and blocked the door -- they may also believe her testimony that Lynch stopped the attack only because she and Santos had come in the room. The jury remained mostly stoic Wednesday, enduring constant interruptions as the attorneys objected to the testimony and then conferred privately with the judge. 

But Harris got a reaction out of the panel when he asked Eden if she was aware that priests had committed sexual misconduct while living at the center. "Yes," she said, prompting some surprised looks on jurors' faces. About 10 years ago, the Jesuits paid two developmentally disabled men who had been living at the center for three decades $7.5 million to settle their lawsuit contending they had been molested by two priests.

Two years later, a Jesuit priest who had been sent to the center because of mental health problems -- not pedophilia -- committed suicide. His family won a multimillion-dollar legal settlement after filing a wrongful-death lawsuit claiming that his religious superiors at the center failed to protect him from sexual abuse by a priest there.

Link (here) to Mercury News for the full article.

Liberation Theology, Jesuit Trained, Former Bishop And Love Children

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is appalled that his fellow Marxist comrade-in-arms, ousted Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, has lost his Socialist control of Paraguay. Accordingly, the Venezuelan government is scheming to return Mr. Lugo to power. The Houston Chronicle reports that, “Paraguay’s new president on Thursday joined his defense minister in asserting that Venezuela’s foreign minister tried to convince the country’s military leaders to support former President Fernando Lugo in the face of a Senate impeachment trial.” 

Maria Liz Arnold, Paraguayan defense minister, claims the Venezuelan official visited a group of Paraguayan army, navy and air force brass on the day Lugo was dethroned and requested they support the former Jesuit-trained Liberation Theologian Roman Catholic bishop-turned president. Apparently Mr. Lugo allegedly used Paraguayan taxpayers’ funds to pay off scores of mistresses, who were raising his large number of ‘love children.’ 

Fortunately, the Paraguayan military refused to endorse Mr. Chavez’s coup d’ etat plot and supported Paraguay’s Senate decision to oust Lugo. The Houston Chronicle quotes Paraguayan President Frederic Pena as saying that, “the minister’s complaint is absolutely true. The decisions were taken to show by example that here we don’t tolerate military men who want to turn themselves into (policy) deciders or who accept recommendations or suggestions from foreign countries.”

Link (here) to the Dallas Blog