For all of you who are in or near the San Diego area, we want to let you know about an exciting event coming up: Kyrie Eleison (a Catholic fellowship at UCSD) is going to host Dr. Michael Barber for a talk on “Why the Bible is a Catholic book”! It’s happening this Thursday (5/10) at 8pm on UCSD campus in Center Hall room 214.

Dr. Michael Barber teaches at John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego and is an amazing theologian (I’d say he ranks up there with Scott Hahn; and they are actually very good friends), and so we encourage you all to take this opportunity to attend this FREE talk by him.

For more info on Michael Barber himself, check out his bio on the JPIIU faculty page or his blog called The Sacred Page (which is a joint blog with two other theologians, Brant Pitre and John Bergsma).

This is a topic that I think is overlooked often.  Since Easter’s coming, we at the Church have had a number of brothers and sisters come back or enter the Church for the first time.  It’s a wonderful experience for new converts, and I’m sure those you know have a strong sense of duty, responsibility, and connectivity with the faith.  I’m personally a recent “revert” to the faith, attending a Southern Baptist college town church and fellowship for 2+ years in college.  I must admit, these pitfalls that Jennifer Fulwiler depicts here are some of the most fundamental problems that reverts and converts face in coming to the Catholic Church.

I just wanted to add to the article my own experience of what to do about these pitfalls.  In my own reversion, I found that the most essential thing to do is to be active and bold in your faith.  This does not mean we should sign up for EVERY activity at our local parish and run around talking to every single person we meet about our faith for every conversation.  But I do think that new converts tend to be passive in coming to the Church.  This is understandably the case, given that it is usually their first time placing so much importance in their religious life.  But it is no less imperative that we converts develop the habits of participation and community, as our service in church and the community is a part of the Christian virtue of Charity.

This is not only addressed to converts, but even more so, this is important for cradle Catholics to realize, too.  Cradle Catholics tend to be too complacent and lax with their faith, being such a regular part of their lives, and it is often easy to forget that converts do not have that same familiarity with the faith.  It is necessary that we keep our eyes and hearts open in receiving friends, families, and more importantly, strangers, into the loving embrace of the Church and show them our own love and heart in living our faith.  This call to action also pushes us to realize that our faith requires more than simply coming to Mass on Sundays and helping out at church, but is a lifestyle supported and built through participation with fellow believers who we can grow and learn more about the faith with.

So, this is my little addition to what I read from this article, and that our faith is not something that is finished once we have crossed the Tiber, but is a continual process to the moment we die, a race we run and a battle we fight once we commit to begin.  This journey is best done in fellowship and connection with other like minded brothers and sisters, and so I encourage each of us to develop our community with friends who are passionate for their faith.  But more than this, it is the reunification of our relationship with God and the dance of love and life that we participate in with God.  And so I look forward to the years to come, with all my new and long-time brothers and sisters! :D

-John

Great follow-up article with a wealth of information about what exactly happened, what is going on, and what is to come. It also links to the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) document itself if you wish to read it.

If you haven’t heard yet, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has issued a document regarding the findings of one of the two assessments of women’s religious groups in the United States. This one was with regards to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) who had been under assessment regarding their theology and doctrine.  What they found is that there are serious errors and lapses in their doctrinal foundation that need to be addressed. The media has been all over this. By their judgment it looks like this is yet another instance of the cold hearted, backwards patriarchy cracking down on humble, innocent, religious sisters who are being sniped because the church wants them to hate gays instead of helping the poor.

I would like to submit for your consideration two articles. Both broke literally hours apart. The first is from the National Catholic Register.

The second is from the New York Times.

Who is right and who is wrong? Who is playing the spin? One part that made me physically cringe from the NYT:

Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping “silent” on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Such a play on words. Such a twist. It makes me think of the serpent and his half-truths. It turns something good (that they need to expand their understanding sense of justice and service) into something malicious and totally unintended(they want you to stop helping the poor). There is something sinister about the way the LWCR is playing the victim. When you have active communities under your umbrella proudly proclaiming that their faith has moved “beyond Jesus”, how can you possibly maintain that you are in good doctrinal standing in the Catholic Church? How can you pretend that you don’t know why this is happening? As much as they are trying to portray themselves as an unwitting victim against a tyrannical Magisterium, I echo the words of Cardinal Levada about the actual intent of the CDF that the NYT hardly cares to report. I hope that this document will help “provide a stronger doctrinal foundation” for LCWR’s “many laudable initiatives and activities” and that the whole Church can benefit from this step.

I cannot help but laugh at the media’s portrayal of Benedict XVI’s Holy Thursday Chrism Mass homily. News agencies worked overtime to find some newsworthy ways to bash the Church in time for Easter; but read the homily yourself and tell me if the media isn’t 95% spin!

-Peter

Fiat lux

Imagine if our modern media technology existed at the first Good Friday of our Lord’s Crucifixion? What would that have been like? Perhaps we can imagine every news agency covering a story titled:

“THE DAY GOD DIED”

And in that report, perhaps the typical questions and details would be included:

Time of death: 3:00 PM
Cause of death: The sins of the world

Would there be weeping at the discovery of such news? Yes. But by who? Perhaps it’s not enough to say that all Christians would be weeping, but in fact the whole world, that is, all of creation would rightly be weeping because its Creator had died. Our Creator had died. Our Life had died. And it’s because we killed Life. In such a universal atmosphere of dread, it wouldn’t be irrational to think that once the sun set that day, it would never rise again, for its Light had been extinguished.

And yet we would come to see that Love triumphs. The Son will rise. We killed Love and yet He comes back for us, for Love transcends death.

Our Lover returns to love us forever. But will we respond to His call?

-Ben

Below are two links to awesome reflections on the Scourging at the Pillar and the Crowning of Thorns by Bad Catholic. I also copy-pasted small portions from them that stuck out to me (or more like blew my mind!), but I definitely recommend going to the links below to read the full reflections (which are themselves pretty short) on these particular events of Christ’s Passion.

The Scourging at the Pillar

And thus we arrive at the Scourging at the Pillar. Christ was naked under the whips, and oh, how we gain from such humiliation! We are the pillar, and our Lover Christ stretches the gift of his body around us, protecting us from the lash of sin. He absorbs the sting of humiliation on his back, the pain that we by all rights should feel, that we might be able to look at God Who is Goodness and not die from shame. He wraps himself around the Pillar — and after all, what is a Pillar? “And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” (Gen 28:22) It is God’s house. It is the Church. What a bridegroom have we!

The Crowning of Thorns

They struck him on the head. The thorns were pressed into the wellspring of life itself. They were embedded in the most fertile soil of flesh, blood, water, bread and wine. How could they do anything but flower? And they do: The thorns woven around the Sacred Heart of Jesus flower in the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

-Ben