The apron Our Lady made her own
At Catholic Exchange, Fr William Saunders told the story of the scapular – a piece of cloth originally worn as an apron and part of monks’ habits. Lay people took to wearing smaller versions: two small pieces of cloth, attached to string and worn around the neck. “Eventually these smaller scapulars were marks of membership in confraternities, groups of laity who joined together, attaching themselves to the apostolate of a religious community and accepting certain rules and regulations.”
In 1251 Our Lady intervened, appearing to St Simon Stock to give him the brown scapular of the Carmelites. She told him: “Take, beloved son, this scapular of thy order as a badge of my confraternity and for thee and all Carmelites a special sign of grace; whoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire. It is the sign of salvation, a safeguard in dangers, a pledge of peace and of the covenant.”
However, Fr Saunders said, “the Church does not teach that wearing a scapular is some sure ticket to heaven; rather, we must strive to be in a state of grace, implore our Lord’s forgiveness, and trust in the maternal aid of our Blessed Mother.”
Lee Harvey Oswald’s address to Jesuits
Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F Kennedy, could barely read and had no interest in religion. But believe it or not, said Kevin di Camillo at the National Catholic Register, four months before the assassination “Oswald was invited to deliver a lecture to a group of Jesuits in Mobile, Alabama, at their House of Studies.”
The reason was that Oswald had lived in the Soviet Union: he was being asked to give an account of life behind the Iron Curtain. The author Gerald Posner said the Jesuits remembered a “very tense and high-strung” speaker.
Two pitfalls in the Church’s crisis
At Crisis magazine, Anthony Esolen said that, while we are right to demand justice over clerical sexual abuse, we also need to take a look in the mirror. “How many of the people who are furious with the evil men in the Church,” Esolen asked, “spent some years of their lives doing their kinds of sexual evil? Fornication, cohabitation, adultery, pornography –were priests the big promoters of all of those? Abortion, too?
I am not making an excuse for the evil. I am taking away the right of almost everyone alive during these times of easy and widespread and socially accepted sexual immorality to get on their horses and portray themselves as chivalrous defenders of the Order of Decency. Give me a break.”
Esolen also cautioned against revelling in the scandals, writing: “The Church is our Mother. No true son or daughter takes delight in the shame of his mother.” Esolen said Catholics must not turn into “prancing play-actors shedding phony tears to hear about the sins of others. We now must be more loyal to our Mother, more committed to keeping her teachings, more devoted to the faith she has brought us, and more humbled by the sight of once-admired men brought to the pit by sin. That pit may await any one of us, too.”
✣ It’s not often you see a cardinal ride around the Vatican on a scooter. A video posted by Rome Reports showed Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, coolly driving across a Vatican square on a classic 1971 Vespa. The scooter was a gift to Pope Francis from a Vespa fan club. It was decorated with the Pope’s initials and coat of arms. Krajewski rode off on it as two men from the club urged him to wear a helmet. “No, no, no,” the cardinal said. “They won’t give me a ticket at the Vatican.”
✣ A joke about the liturgy has gone viral. The tweet, by Cath (@cathjmag), was liked 140,000 times last week. It followed a series of tweets beginning “Just gave my name in Starbucks…” The “names” generated implausible responses from a usually uproarious crowd of customers. The tweet that started the meme read: “Just gave my name in Starbucks as ‘Stop Brexit’. As the (Remain) barista screamed out my ‘name’ repeatedly, the whole place erupted in to applause. Result. Try it.”
Cath’s version read: “Just gave my name in Starbucks as ‘The Lord be with you’. When the barista shouted my ‘name’, half of the customers yelled ‘And also with you!’ and the other half shouted ‘And with your spirit!’ and it was a right ecumenical mess. Try it.” (See Cartoon by Kipper Williams)
With people who lack good will…even within the family: silence, prayer
Pope Francis
Morning Mass homily
Patriotism is good, but nationalism is not Catholic
Cardinal Reinhard Marx
Deutsche Welle
I ask you … for forgiveness for my errors of judgment
Cardinal Donald Wuerl
Letter to priests on the abuse crisis
Shame on me that I didn’t ask sooner
Cardinal Joseph Tobin on the rumours about Theodore McCarrick, which he says he first heard in 2017
North Jersey Record
31,000
Women who signed a letter to Pope Francis seeking ‘answers’ to the Viganò letter
Source: catholicwomensforum.org
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