Summer Session for Young Adults: Brothers of St. John

I'm passing this on to any readers that may be interested in attending the retreat with the Brothers of St. John. If you know someone that may be interested in the retreat, please pass this message on to them.

Dear young person ages 19-30,

The time is drawing nearer for the Summer Session with the Brothers of St. John. We know that many of you are interested in coming! Great! Please spread the word by forwarding this e-mail, and please let me know BEFORE MAY 28TH if you can come, or are thinking about coming, even if you are not sure!

The Summer Session will begin with having the participants arrive at 2 p.m. on June 6th. It is comprised of four elements: the hiking/camping trip; the Philosophy Session; the Theology Session; and the Silent Retreat. Participants may participate in any of the above activities, or two of them, or three of them. We simply need to know in advance in order to organize our guesthouse.

The hiking trip will be fun but also a good work out! I have not yet scouted out the course, but it should pulse through the beautfiul hills of Wisconsin. We will be sleeping in tents and sleeping bags in parks along the way. (We can supply them for those who cannot bring them by plane. If you can bring them with you, though, all the better!) Please bring boots, rain gear, sunscreen, hats, water bottles (large), a Rosary, and any other camping gear you think of. Please let me know if you can bring anything which we all can use -- I am thinking especially of things for cooking. We will leave Wednesday afternoon to drive to our destination and set up camp. From there, we will start our hike on Thursday morning, and hike all day Thursday and Friday and most of the day Saturday. The hike will be a good work out! Be ready for it! We will have Mass, Adoration, and the Offices every day. The rest of the day will be spent in "God's Cathedral" of nature! Sounds like Heaven!

After we return to Princeville Saturday night, we will have the chance to rest all day Sunday, celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi with the Brothers and Sisters in Princveille.

Sunday night begins the Philosophy Session, taught by Brother Nathan. We hope to have three Philosophy Classes per day on the theme of art and contemplation, with a conference a little more spiritual in nature in the evenings after dinner. The rest of the day will be structured by the prayer of the Offices and Mass with the Brothers, and a variety of things in the afternoons, varying from free-time to fun activities (like sports, walks, art and culture, etc) to work projects with the Brothers and Sisters. At night, we will have campfires, music, and time to relax together. We also hope to invite local artists and musicians to come for a few evenings per week to share their art with us. These evenings will be open to the young adults in the area to come and join us. The session will run through Friday night.

Saturday, the 16th, we will have a hike together in the woods nearby, and spend a day of recreation.

Sunday, the 17th will be celebrated with the Community of the Brothers and Sisters, in the calm repose of the Day of the Lord. On the evening of the 17th, will begin the Theology Session.

This Theology session, taught by Father Joseph Mary, will mirror the Philosophy Session in schedule, and will be based a lot on the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. (If you have a copy, please bring it, along with your Bible.) There will also be certain evenings for an "evening program" just as there will be during the week of Philosophy.

After another exhilarating weekend of hiking and rest, on the evening of Sunday, June 24th, a retreat will begin: a silent retreat on the Gospel of St. John. The retreat will be preached by Father Antoine Thomas (and perhaps another Brother), and will include three meditations per day on the Christian life flowing from the Gospel of St. John. Free time for personal prayer and study, time for solitary Eucharistic adoration every afternoon, spiritual direction and confession, and the liturgical prayer of the Brothers and Sisters will provide the perfect opportunity to go "into the deep waters" of John's contemplation of Christ Crucified and Glorified. The retreat will close on Sunday, July 1st, after lunch. The retreat will be entirely in silence, to afford each of the participants the opportunity to discover the unique choice and bond of love between their hearts and the hearts of Jesus and Mary.

The cost for the whole session is only $350! If you would like to come to any one of the parts, the price is $150 for each of the three main parts: the hike, one or both of the two-week sessions, and the retreat. Obviously, we are offering our services to you freely, out of love for Christ. If you can offer a larger donation, it would be appreciated, since we live on gifts. However, if this price is already too much for you, please just let me know and we can work something out!

All in all, this summer is going to be great! Please spread the word about this session, and bring your friends! We are happy to serve you, and I stand ready to answer any questions you may have.

May Mary draw the young people here who will most benefit from it.

"Let the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water!" (Revelation 21).

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Saints, Saints, and More Saints: Oregon State University

Below is an email that I have received and wish to pass on to my readers.

I'm emailing a number of prominent Catholic bloggers, and have included your address in the BCC of this email, to inform you of a project that took place at Oregon State University. This university has a strong liberal presence. You might remember that The Insurgent student newspaper at the U of O (in Eugene, 40 minutes away) printed pornographic drawing of Jesus Christ about a year ago. This was lauded by some here at OSU. The university has a very strong gay presence (with pride week, featuring "lube olympics" and other vile events). Despite the secularism and liberalism, the Catholic students here are pretty cool.

Well, some friends of mine got the idea to "Saint bomb" campus. Using chalk, hundreds of Catholic Saint names were written all over campus last week. This was done during perhaps the busiest week of spring term. Many events took place this week on the Quad. The Genocide Awareness Project came to the quad, drawing a large number of people. The "Snow in the Quad" (put on by the Protestant apparel designer CIVIL) came to set up the next day. The Relay for Life event happened at night on the quad, which meant hundreds of students were walking by Saint names nonstop all night long. We also used chalk to advertise Mass times. Lots of exposure for the Church!

Here are two videos documenting this event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yaAM5IpLqU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amsW6p13ofE

The Newman Center had a booth set up inside the Memorial Union building with a "Find your Saint" computer set up. Some non-Catholics came by to find their Saints. Other Catholics who haven't been to Church for a while saw their confirmation Saint name on the ground. Other Catholics got a lot of joy to see the names and to see Christ's presence in a tangible form on campus. And some others were annoyed at the audacity of these students.

We are trying to get more exposure to this project, so if you'd like to link to this video, please do! We'd like to see others get this idea, and maybe do it at their campus, to remind wayward Catholics of their roots and to show a strong presence of Faith! The response we've gotten from people around the community has been amazing, and the priests loved it!

One more thing to note... we got permission from the Memorial Union (the student union on campus) as well as the Church before doing this.

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Religious Communities that Accept Online Prayer Requests

Over the past few years, I have been contacted by countless numbers of people, many of whom have asked for prayers. Here is a list of religious communities to which you can send your prayer intentions.

For a separate list of religious orders accepting online Mass stipends, please click here.

Online Religious Communities that Accept Prayer Requests

• Benedictine Monks, Enfield, CT
• Benedictine Monks, Monastery of Christ in the Desert
• Benedictine Nuns, Abbey of St. Walburga
• Carmelite Monastery, Wolverhampton
• Carmelite Sisters in Malaysia
• Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles
• Carmelite Sisters of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus
• Discalced Carmelite Nuns, Terre Haute, IN
• Dominican Nuns, Summit, NJ
• Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration
• Friends of Campos, Brazil
• Marian Sisters
• Marmion Abbey
• Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI)
• Monastery of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
• Our Lady of Mercy Lay Carmelites
• Passionist Nuns, St. Joseph Monastery
• Poor Clare Monastery, Bothwell, Scotland
• Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration - Our Lady of Solitude Monastery
• Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration - Our Lady of the Angels Monastery
• Servants of the Holy Family
• Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration
• Society of St. Pius X
• Trappist Monks, Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, GA

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Bishop Appointment: Prendergast

The Holy Father appointed Archbishop Terrence Thomas Prendergast S.J. of Halifax, Canada, as metropolitan archbishop of Ottawa (area 5,818, population 859,000, Catholics 410,635, priests 239, permanent deacons 67, religious 867), Canada. He succeeds Archbishop Marcel Andre J. Gervais, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese, the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

I do not know how Traditional Archbishop Prendergast is. Does anyone know anything about Archbishop Prendergast?

Photo Source: Archdiocese of Toronto

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Traditional Catholic Youth in France

The New Liturgical Movement offers this stunning photograph and several other ones of Traditional Catholic youth in France.

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Updates with Amnesty International

It appears that Amnesty International may have adopted an overall pro-abortion stance. For this and other updates see my main post: Amnesty International and Abortion.

Below is an email that I found on the blog Kyrie Eleison. It is certainly time for us to sever our membership with Amnesty International.

To: All those who signed the petition asking Amnesty International not to take a stand on decriminalizing abortion and pushing governments to allow access in certain circumstances.

From: Rachel MacNair, Vice-President, Consistent Life

The petition was hand-delivered to the hands of each member of the Board of Directors of the U. S. chapter of Amnesty International on March 23, 2007.

I am sorry to report that AI has indeed decided to take this step. You can get more information at http://www.consistent-life.org/ai.html and a good editorial on this at http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=719.

The decision was made despite polling of members in the UK that went against it, despite a vote of US members the results of which were never reported, and included explicit censorship of someone wishing to leaflet at the U.S. national conference. Those of us AI supporters who are heartsick about this no longer have a voice, inasmuch as it can be said we ever did.

We encourage all US members of AI to telephone them at (212) 807-8400 and ask for the membership department. We have been told that they are keeping track of what this abortion policy decision does to their membership; they anticipate that losses may be offset by gains, so knowing of losses is important.

We also suggest the following organizations for those who wish to re-direct their human-rights donation budget:

Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC)
4121 Harewood Road NE ~ Suite B
Washington, DC 20017
Phone: (202) 529-2991
www.tassc.org
info@tassc.org

National Religious Campaign Against Torture
c/o CCTPP
4500 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016
Phone: (202) 885-8648
www.nrcat.org
campaign@nrcat.org

Human Rights First
333 Seventh Avenue, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10001-5108
Phone: (212) 845 5200
www.humanrightsfirst.org/
feedback@humanrightsfirst.org

Friends Committee on National Legislation (Issues of Torture and Civil Liberties)
245 Second St., NE
Washington DC 20002-5795

It would be good to include a note to let these groups know that they are getting funds re-directed from AI and why, to make it less likely that they will move in a pro-abortion direction in the future.

Student groups who no longer wish to affiliate with AI but would like to continue their good work might consider setting themselves up as independent organizations, and using informational research from AI along with other human rights groups in order to continue acting and educating on these important issues.

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LibraryThing

I must thank DilexitPrior from Letters From a Young Catholic for directing me to LibraryThing. Using the ISBN, title, author, etc you can catalogue all of your books rather quickly! This is a great website! I am spending my free time this evening by cataloging all of mine.

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St. Paul of the Cross on Anger

"When you feel the assaults of passion and anger, then is the time to be silent as Jesus was silent in the midst of His ignominies and sufferings" (St. Paul of the Cross)

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Advice for Future Articles

 This post will be linked to from the article Suggestions/Comments, which is listed in the sidebar. I started this post in order to create a list of possible future articles on this blog. I don't have time to write some articles immediately due to time constraints, but I want to create a list of suggestions. Just leave your suggestions in the comment box, and I will add them to the list. When the article has been written, I will link to it from this post.

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Address of Cardinal Hoyos to CELAM

As most Catholics should know, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, recently visited Brazil and offered Holy Mass for the start of the 5th general Conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops (CELAM). At the CELAM on May 16, 2007, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei gave the following address. Dear and Venerable Brothers, I allow myself to present a brief information on the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and on the state of the pastoral reality which the Holy Father has placed under its competence. This Commission was created by the Servant of God John Paul II in 1988, when a notable group of priests, religious, and faithful, who had made manifest their discontent with the Conciliar liturgical reform and who had congregated themselves under the leadership of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, separated themselves from him because they were not in agreement with the schismatic action of the ordination of Bishops without the appropriate pontifical mandate. They preferred, therefore, to stay in full union with the Church. The Holy Father, by way of the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, entrusted the pastoral care of these Traditionalist faithful to this Commission. Nowadays, the activity of the Commission is not limited to the service of those faithful who, at that time, wished to remain in full communion with the Church, nor to the efforts made to put an end to the painful schismatic situation and to attain the return of these brothers of the Saint Pius X fraternity to full communion. By the will of the Holy Father, this Dicastery extends its service, moreover, to satisfy the just aspirations of those who, due to a particular sensibility, and not having kept links to the above-mentioned groups, wish to keep alive the ancient Latin Liturgy in the celebration of the Eucharist and of the other Sacraments. Undoubtedly, the most important effort, which concerns the entire Church, is the search for an end to the schismatic action and to rebuild the full communion, without ambiguities. The Holy Father, who was for some years a member of this Commission, wishes it to become an organ of the Holy See with the proper and distinct end of preserving and maintaining the worth of the Traditional Latin Liturgy. Yet it must be said with all clarity that it is not a turning back, a return to the time before the 1970 reform. It is, instead, a generous offer of the Vicar of Christ who, as an expression of his pastoral will, wishes to put at the disposal of the whole Church all the treasures of the Latin Liturgy which for centuries has nourished the spiritual life of so many generations of Catholic faithful.The Holy Father wishes to preserve the immense spiritual, cultural, and aesthetic treasures linked to the Ancient Liturgy. The retrieval of this wealth is linked to the no less precious one of the current Liturgy of the Church. For these reasons, the Holy Father has the intention of extending to the entire Latin Church the possibility of celebrating Holy Mass and the Sacraments according to the liturgical books promulgated by John XXIII in 1962. There is today a new and renewed interest for this liturgy, which has never been abolished and which, as we have said, is considered a treasure, and also for this reason [the interest] the Holy Father believes that the time has come to ease, as the first Cardinalatial Commission of 1986 had wished to do, the access to this liturgy, making it an extraordinary form of the one Roman Rite. There are good experiences of communities of religious or apostolic life recently erected by the Holy See which celebrate this liturgy in peace and serenity. Groups of faithful who attend these celebrations with joy and gratitude assemble around them. The most recent establishments are the Institute of Saint Philip Neri, in Berlin, which functions as an Oratory, and which is also present, and well received, in the Diocese of Trier; the Institute of the Good Shepherd, of Bordeaux, which gathers together priests, seminarians, and faithful, some of them from the Fraternity of Saint Pius X. The proceedings for the recognition of a contemplative community, the Oasis of Jesus Priest, of Barcelona, are well advanced. In Latin America, as is well known, we must thank the Lord for the return of a whole diocese, that of Campos, Lefebvrian in the past, which now, after five years, presents good fruits. It was a peaceful return and the faithful who have enrolled themselves in the Apostolic Administration are glad to be able to live in peace in their parochial communities; furthermore, in effect, some Brazilian dioceses have made contacts with the Campos Apostolic Administration, which has placed priests at their disposal for the pastoral care of the Traditionalist faithful in their local churches. The Holy Father's project has been partly proved in Campos, where the peaceful cohabitation of the forms of the only Roman Rite in the Church is a beautiful reality. We have the hope that this model will yield good fruits, also in other places of the Church where Catholic faithful with diverse liturgical sensibilities live together. And we hope, furthermore, that this way of living together will also attract those Traditionalists which still remain far away. The current members of the Commission are Cardinals Julián Herranz, Jean-Pierre Ricard, William Joseph Levada, Antonio Cañizares, and Franc Rodé. Its consultants are the Undersecretaries of some Dicasteries. Several communities spread throughout the world have been up to now under Ecclesia Dei. 300 priests, 79 religious men, 300 religious women, 200 seminarians, and several hundreds of thousands of faithful. The interest of the young curiously increases in France, the United States, Brazil, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, and China. At the moment of its return, 50 priests, around 50 seminarians, 100 religious women, and 25,000 faithful came from Campos. Today, the group of the Lefebvrians includes 4 Bishops who were ordained by Mons. Lefebvre, 500 priests, and 600,000 faithful. Several contemplative monasteries, and some male and female religious groups have joined the group, which has parishes (they call them priories), seminaries, and associations. They are present in 26 countries. Let us ask the Lord that this project of the Holy Father may soon be accomplished for the unity of the Church. Translation from the blog of Rorate Caeli.

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