Saturday, January 7, 2012
"On the Transformative Power of an Observed Love"
Msgr. Charles Pope shares an incredible story about the transforming power of love. I can't find any small piece to excerpt because it really must be read in its entirety. So, click on over to the Archdiocese of Washington blog for a good read.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Archbishop Dolan on the Today Show
I just love Cardinal-elect Timothy Dolan!
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The world in which we live
It's a world where a mother can report:
My daughter Liliana, who was 8 when we were playing the board game, tossed off this remark as she stuck the tiny blue husband pin into her car: "When I grow up, I don't think I'll get married. I think I'll just get some sperm."
And it's a world where mother can then describe why she has now come to see that marriage is valuable and something she would love to see for her daughter.
But then it's a world where mother doesn't give enough weight to her ideas by wavering about what actually makes marriage a good thing.
How to defend the goodness of marriage as an objective form in which we are invited to participate through marriage vows? An individual couple receiving and actually living these vows can say volumes more to the world than a 500-word op-ed. So how are we living in this world in which we live?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Meeting mom 77 years later
When Minka Disbrow was raped and found herself pregnant in 1928, she reluctantly placed her precious baby daughter for adoption. For 77 years, she wondered about her little girl. So, it was quite a surprise for mother and daughter to meet for the first time at age 99 and 82, respectively.
Read the beautiful story here.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Ma'am, you should be a priest
This article originally appeared on Catholic Exchange in 2009.
Recently I was volunteering at a local pro-life event, when a former fellow parishioner approached me to say hello. She asked what I was doing these days. At my reply that I am studying for a master’s in theology, she grumbled, “It’s a shame you’re into that theology of the body, or else you could be priest.”
Shocked, I attempted to collect my composure being answering.
I have had a handful of Protestants ask if my goal was to be a minister upon graduation. Despite my insistence to the contrary, middle-aged Brenda, from whom I purchased my car a year ago, eagerly told her mother that I was going to be a minister. The mother ran out of the house, arms flailing in excitement at the revelation that I would be preaching the Good News in such a capacity. My protests were met with wagging fingers and amused expressions as they told me that “God surprises us sometimes.”
Yet I think my run-in at the pro-life event was my first encounter with a Catholic who thought that I should be a priest. She had no interest in my words that the priesthood isn’t about power, but about service. “Tell that to the priests,” she quipped.
My reminder that the Blessed Mother was not a priest but enjoyed an incredibly privileged role in the Church, was met with, “That’s true, but that was 2,000 years ago.”
She mentioned the necessity of equality, to which I replied that equality is not identical to sameness. She disagreed and added that the Church must offer “equal opportunity for Sacraments.”
It’s interesting how much we let our culture’s ideas color our views of the Church. Society espouses that there is no difference between male and female. They are the same.
The fact that only one can be a mother, and only one can be a father apparently makes no difference.
Ephesians 5, which is typically used to discuss the meaning of marriage, is just as valuable in the discussion of male priesthood. Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Priests stand in the person of Christ, in relation to His Bride, the Church. How, then, could a woman be a priest? How could a woman, a potential mother, “marry” Mother Church?
The male-only priesthood isn’t an exclusive club of cigar-smoking men in black who chuckle at their ability to fool women into believing they can’t join. Rather, it’s an invitation to service – an opportunity for men to “wash the feet” and sacrifice their lives for their beloved Bride, the Church.
This doesn’t make women sighing, whimpering, fragile creatures whose sole role in life is to be catered to by men. Rather, only women can be mothers. Only they can nurture life in such a way that two or more heartbeats can palpitate in their bodies at the same time. Only a mother can give birth to a priest. One can say that without women there would be no priests.
It’s all a matter of seeing the beauty of God’s plan – the unity that can occur because of the diversity in creation. Each of us exists as a man or as a woman. Neither is deficient or lesser than the other. But the fact that each is created in God’s image and likeness does not mean that they exist as the same. Rather in the difference they reflect something of God. It is because they are different, yet equal, that they are able to love in a way that can include a total and unique gift of self, resulting in the possibility of new life. And this union points us to the love of God that exists in the Trinity.
There is a particularly poignant scene in the film Pope John Paul II: The Movie, in which the Holy Father is driving through a group of angry, protesting women, holding signs advocating women priests and abortion on demand. Jon Voight, playing John Paul II says, “How can I tell them how much God loves women? His intention from the beginning, equality, balance, perfection.”
I don’t think these words were taken as a direct quote from the late Holy Father, but I think they certainly capture the essence of his love for women, and therefore his frustration that so many failed to receive his tender words.
Anyone who disbelieves the dignity with which the Church treats women should pick up John Paul’s “Letter to Women” or “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.” There they will find his careful treatment of the “genius of women” and their unique call to love.
John Paul II’s enthusiasm is apparent, for example, in the conclusion of “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women”: “During the Marian Year the Church desires to give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the ‘mystery of woman’ and for every woman – for that which constitutes the eternal measure of her feminine dignity, for the ‘great works of God,’ which throughout human history have been accomplished in and through her. After all, was it not in and through her that the greatest event in human history – the incarnation of God himself – was accomplished?” (31).
When viewed through this lens, as opposed to the culture’s, we can see that the Church’s understanding of priesthood is a loving way of preserving the unique dignity of both men and women. And in the end, this guarantees that we will be truly happy.
I’ll take that over being called “Father” any day.
Shocked, I attempted to collect my composure being answering.
I have had a handful of Protestants ask if my goal was to be a minister upon graduation. Despite my insistence to the contrary, middle-aged Brenda, from whom I purchased my car a year ago, eagerly told her mother that I was going to be a minister. The mother ran out of the house, arms flailing in excitement at the revelation that I would be preaching the Good News in such a capacity. My protests were met with wagging fingers and amused expressions as they told me that “God surprises us sometimes.”
Yet I think my run-in at the pro-life event was my first encounter with a Catholic who thought that I should be a priest. She had no interest in my words that the priesthood isn’t about power, but about service. “Tell that to the priests,” she quipped.
My reminder that the Blessed Mother was not a priest but enjoyed an incredibly privileged role in the Church, was met with, “That’s true, but that was 2,000 years ago.”
She mentioned the necessity of equality, to which I replied that equality is not identical to sameness. She disagreed and added that the Church must offer “equal opportunity for Sacraments.”
It’s interesting how much we let our culture’s ideas color our views of the Church. Society espouses that there is no difference between male and female. They are the same.
The fact that only one can be a mother, and only one can be a father apparently makes no difference.
Ephesians 5, which is typically used to discuss the meaning of marriage, is just as valuable in the discussion of male priesthood. Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Priests stand in the person of Christ, in relation to His Bride, the Church. How, then, could a woman be a priest? How could a woman, a potential mother, “marry” Mother Church?
The male-only priesthood isn’t an exclusive club of cigar-smoking men in black who chuckle at their ability to fool women into believing they can’t join. Rather, it’s an invitation to service – an opportunity for men to “wash the feet” and sacrifice their lives for their beloved Bride, the Church.
This doesn’t make women sighing, whimpering, fragile creatures whose sole role in life is to be catered to by men. Rather, only women can be mothers. Only they can nurture life in such a way that two or more heartbeats can palpitate in their bodies at the same time. Only a mother can give birth to a priest. One can say that without women there would be no priests.
It’s all a matter of seeing the beauty of God’s plan – the unity that can occur because of the diversity in creation. Each of us exists as a man or as a woman. Neither is deficient or lesser than the other. But the fact that each is created in God’s image and likeness does not mean that they exist as the same. Rather in the difference they reflect something of God. It is because they are different, yet equal, that they are able to love in a way that can include a total and unique gift of self, resulting in the possibility of new life. And this union points us to the love of God that exists in the Trinity.
There is a particularly poignant scene in the film Pope John Paul II: The Movie, in which the Holy Father is driving through a group of angry, protesting women, holding signs advocating women priests and abortion on demand. Jon Voight, playing John Paul II says, “How can I tell them how much God loves women? His intention from the beginning, equality, balance, perfection.”
I don’t think these words were taken as a direct quote from the late Holy Father, but I think they certainly capture the essence of his love for women, and therefore his frustration that so many failed to receive his tender words.
Anyone who disbelieves the dignity with which the Church treats women should pick up John Paul’s “Letter to Women” or “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.” There they will find his careful treatment of the “genius of women” and their unique call to love.
John Paul II’s enthusiasm is apparent, for example, in the conclusion of “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women”: “During the Marian Year the Church desires to give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the ‘mystery of woman’ and for every woman – for that which constitutes the eternal measure of her feminine dignity, for the ‘great works of God,’ which throughout human history have been accomplished in and through her. After all, was it not in and through her that the greatest event in human history – the incarnation of God himself – was accomplished?” (31).
When viewed through this lens, as opposed to the culture’s, we can see that the Church’s understanding of priesthood is a loving way of preserving the unique dignity of both men and women. And in the end, this guarantees that we will be truly happy.
I’ll take that over being called “Father” any day.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
"We should not be surprised that she is spoken of as a thought by God before the world was made. When Whistler painted the picture of his mother, did he not have the image of her in his mind before he ever gathered his colors on his palette? If you could have preexisted your mother (not artistically, but really), would you not have made her the most perfect woman that ever lived -— one so beautiful she would have been the sweet envy of all women, and one so gentle and so merciful that all other mothers would have sought to imitate her virtues? Why, then, should we think that God would do otherwise? When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, "You know how it is; one tries to make one's Mummy just as nice as he can." When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could -— and that would make her a perfect Mother." -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen in "The World's First Love"
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