Real
presence: What Catholics with developmental disabilities bring to the
table
Catholic
churches strive to welcome those with developmental disabilities through
special ministries and a change in attitude.
Like many other lifelong
Catholics, Danny Benavidez, a member of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Chula
Vista, California, helps out at his parish in a number of ways. On
Thursdays he serves as a eucharistic minister. Every other Sunday he
delivers communion to the homebound. Once a month he listens to the
"talking, talking, talking" at his Knights of Columbus meeting.
And once a week--usually Tuesday--he stops into a neighboring parish to
visit an old friend, who is now a deacon. Read
more.
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In
praise of the 'good enough' family
The holy family, with its adoptive father-son
pairing, can lead the way for today's unconventional families.
I've never liked Norman
Rockwell. It is not because of his artistic abilities that I do not like
him, but because of his subject matter. I am particularly troubled by his
presentation of an idealized family. Remember the scene of the
Thanksgiving dinner? Everyone sitting around the table, cheerful faces,
waiting for Dad to carve the giant turkey? Where do those people live? Read
more.
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What's
your parish music preference?
Does the
music you hear at Mass have you singing to the mountains or running
for the hills?
Nothing can make or break a
sacred experience quite like the music. It can mean the difference
between sublime and sub-par, between fantastic and fiasco, between
extraordinary and merely ordinary. So we at U.S. Catholic are gathering responses
now to appear in our March 2014 Reader Survey. When you go to Mass do you
like to hear organ music, or do you prefer to clap your hands along with
a praise band? Does the sound of a guitar cause your ears to perk up or
your heart to sink? Take
our survey and let us know!
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How would U.S. bishops fare
under a papal performance review?
The messages coming from some American church
leaders still don't sync up with the mission statement put forth by their
boss in Rome.
Anyone who has ever held a
job has probably had to endure some type of employee evaluation. You know
the drill--the boss goes over your progress, lists your flaws, tells you
what you need to improve upon. Most workplaces today have some sort of
formal review process, and some of us even have the fun of not only being
reviewed but reviewing other employees as well. Reading a column
in the Boston Globe by
Kevin Cullen got me thinking about how some U.S. bishops would do if they
had to sit down with Pope Francis for an annual performance evaluation. Read
more.
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Is calling for women cardinals
an act of clericalism?
The pontiff offers a new take on the idea of the
church appointing female cardinals.
In the past few months,
there has been a lot of speculation and debate about the possibility of
Pope Francis appointing the church's first female cardinal. Some have
even tried to figure out what changes to church law would be needed to make
it possible (removing ordination as a requirement for being a cardinal
would be step one). The Vatican called the whole thing
"nonsense." But what does Francis himself have to say? Read
more.
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Read:
Atchison Blue
By Judith Valente (Sorin Books, 2013)
As is the case for so many
Catholics today, Judith Valente's faith had been chipped away by the
clergy sexual abuse scandals, by increasingly politicized statements of
bishops, and by priestly homilies "pointing to splinters in everyone
else's eyes but their own." In Atchison
Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith,
Valente tells how frequent visits to Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison,
Kansas taught her that spiritual peace requires not so much a change in
thinking as a change in habits. Read
more.
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