Faith & Parish

Recognizing lay gifts bears fruit in Las Cruces, bishop says

Latest installment of 'In Search of the Emerging Church' series
LAS CRUCES, N.M. Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, 72, was appointed founding bishop of the Las Cruces diocese in 1982. He is widely recognized as a skilled pastoral leader who has great rapport with the people of his diocese, which remains among the poorest in the country. It depends a great deal on financial help from outside the diocese and has had to be creative in tending to parishes with few priests.
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When you're mentally ill, no one brings you a casserole

Resources for ministry to people with mental illnesses
By Dennis Coday
Dorothy Coughlin tells the story of a man whose son had left college after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. “The dad was with friends who were all talking about their children, the degrees they were getting and what they planned to do after college.” He said nothing about his son. The man came to Coughlin distraught. “He said to me that he just hated the thought that he felt so ashamed.”
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Hopeworks 'N Camden

In diminished circumstances, Jesuit connects to 'a God of hope'
For Jesuit Fr. Jeff Putthoff, his ministry at a Camden, N.J., technology training center, is his declaration about the future of the church as well as his answer, for the moment, to unsettling questions he poses to himself about what it means to be a priest and a Jesuit. They become particularly pressing questions in this era of dwindling numbers and resources, a time he refers to as a period of “diminishment.”
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A spiritual, ecological celebration

The Muddy Boot Organic Festival, which held its fourth annual event this Sept. 11-13, marks for St. Philip Neri Parish not only a means of evangelization, reaching out to the wider community in this heavily unchurched region, but also a transition in its own identity.
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Boulder pastor says Jesus turned some away

Mar. 17, 2010
By Thomas C. Fox
Father William Breslin

Boulder, Colorado

Father William Breslin, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus parish, seemed to be a tired soldier of Christ as he sat outside his parish church March 13 greeting parishioners as they left the five o’clock Saturday Mass.

For more than a week, since word broke he had forbidden two young girls, five and three, to further their education in another year in the parish school because their moms are a lesbian couple, the parish -- and Breslin -- have been under attack, the parish has polarized, and even the school might be threatened with decreased enrollments.

“Let’s pray that we find ways to come together, that we find the means for reconciliation,” he said during the prayers of the faithful only minutes earlier. Already, it was said, long time parishioners had, at least for now, decided to worship elsewhere.

Reconciliation had been the theme of the mass readings and they seemed particularly appropriate. Sacred Heart parishioners are now passionately divided seemingly, though not exclusively, on generational lines, those over fifty likely to support the mindset of their priest more than others.

Children denied Catholic schooling, lesbian couple speaks out

The women talk with NCR in their first media interview

Mar. 15, 2010
By Thomas C. Fox
Entrance to Sacred Heart of Jesus elementary school in Boulder, Colorado

Boulder, Colorado

Two Boulder women have been at the center of a firestorm of media attention here for the past ten days since news broke that their daughters would no longer be welcome at the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish school because their mothers are lesbians.

Local media have been covering the story seemingly around the clock. Television crews have come to the school. Articles, letters to the editors, and opinion pieces, including one by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput in support of the expulsion, have appeared. Protesters have shown up outside the church with banners calling shame on parishioners. Police have been called in to patrol the school grounds for the safety of the children. Division has emerged within the parish though many Catholics – and others – here ask themselves how this could possibly have occurred in their progressive, welcoming community.

Referred to as “the mothers” here by those who do not know the couple and by those who do and want to protect their identities, the women have avoided all media contacts and interviews – until now. They also asked that they not be photographed.

Archbp defends school's booting children of lesbians

Mar. 10, 2010
By Catholic News Service

DENVER -- The decision to refuse re-enrollment at a Boulder Catholic school to two children of lesbian parents was the only outcome that was fair to the children, their teachers, school parents and "the authentic faith of the church," said Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

"Our schools are meant to be 'partners in faith' with parents," the archbishop said in a column published in the March 10 issue of the Denver Catholic Register, the archdiocesan newspaper. "If parents don't respect the beliefs of the church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible.

Homilies should be under eight minutes long

Mar. 10, 2010
By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Homilies should be no longer than eight minutes -- a listener's average attention span, said the head of the synod office.

Priests and deacons should also avoid reading straight from a text and instead work from notes so that they can have eye contact with the people in the pews, said Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops.

The hermeneutic of dysfunction

Mar. 05, 2010
An NCR Editorial
Bishops of the world line the main aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica during the opening session of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. (CNS file photo)

It doesn’t take an expert church observer to understand that those who want to diminish the effect of the Second Vatican Council have come upon an easy sound-bite solution: Put Catholics in one of two “hermeneutics” boxes. Under that scheme, Catholics embody either the hermeneutic of discontinuity, applied to those who believe significant change occurred at the council, or the hermeneutic of continuity, those who hold that the council was merely an affirmation of what went before, but dressed up for the 20th century.

It’s a “you’re for us or against us” strategy of dealing with the complexities and messiness of church reform. While a quick way to tidy the boundaries and square the edges, the strategy does a disservice to serious consideration of the council and it masks deeper problems within the community.

Our brains are wired for liturgy

Mar. 04, 2010
By Rich Heffern
Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (AP/Matt Rourke)

With their scientific research into the biology and anthropology of religious behavior, Andrew Newberg and the late Eugene d’Aquili, both physicians at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, have shed light on the origins of ritual and liturgy in the human sphere and in particular on the tensions that underlie the “liturgy wars.”

Liturgist: Pope aims to 'propose' practices

Mar. 03, 2010
By John L Allen Jr
Msgr. Guido Marini at the Vatican (CNS/Catholic Press/Alessia Giuliani)

ROME -- For the better part of five years, plenty of experts on Catholic liturgy have been waiting for the “real” agenda of Pope Benedict XVI, known as a traditionalist on matters of worship, to emerge from beneath a façade of patience seemingly built on dropping hints rather than imposing sweeping new rules.

Now, however, the pope’s own liturgist insists that the patient façade is actually the agenda.

The new spin on Vatican II

To downplay the council's impact, dividing Catholics into 'hermeneutic' camps has become a favorite tactic

Mar. 02, 2010
By Tom Roberts
Bishops of the world line the main aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica during the opening session of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. (CNS file photo)

Analysis

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a series exploring the long-standing "liturgy wars" and how they shape today’s understanding of the Second Vatican Council.

Not too long ago, when bishops spoke about the Second Vatican Council, the language you’d hear would often include words like people of God, dialogue and collegiality.

Appointment inspires hope in beset diocese

Mar. 01, 2010
By Tom Roberts
Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia looks on as Bishop-designate Joseph C. Bambera talks to the media Feb. 23 after being named bishop of the Scranton, Pa., diocese. (CNS)

The beleaguered diocese of Scranton, Pa., has a new bishop, a native son who wasted no time in his first news conference in setting a tone distinctly different from that of his predecessor.

Msgr. Joseph Bambera, who has been handling the day-to-day running of the diocese since the abrupt and early retirement of Bishop Joseph F. Martino in August, was named the 10th bishop of the diocese.

“We have a new age in this town,” said Sr. Margaret Gannon, a professor of history at Marywood University. “Hopefully everything’s going to be just fine.”

Battle lines in the liturgy wars

Mar. 01, 2010
By Tom Roberts
Massgoers receive Communion at the Church of the Annuciation in Washington, D.C. (Dreamstime)

Analysis

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a series exploring the long-standing “liturgy wars” and how they shape today’s understanding of the Second Vatican Council.

It would be difficult to find two more incongruous words to utter in the same phrase than “liturgy” and “war.” Yet those are the terms that have been widely used in the English-speaking world to discuss a struggle that has dominated much of the Catholic community’s life since the Second Vatican Council, that remarkable series of meetings of the world’s bishops that occurred 1962 through 1965.