I was talking to a friend last Friday after our holy hour for priests and she made a brilliant point about what's happening these days in the modern, post Vatican II Church. Here's the question. In the history of the Church over the millennia, who were persecuted and martyred? Who were executed in the Roman Coliseum and covered with pitch and set on fire to light Nero's garden? The Pharisees? The Sadducees?
I recently read an important article that I recommend to every parent who reads my blog.
Charlotte Mason and John Senior Agree: Great Books Are Not Enough
Years ago, no actually decades ago, I read an article in Parade Magazine that keeps coming back to me these days. It was during the height of the AIDS epidemic and told the personal human interest story of a young, active homosexual man. In the early days of his lifestyle choice, he discarded his parents because they would not approve. He slandered them to all his homosexual friends and maintained no contact for years.
The heads of the Church's continental bodies have gathered in Rome this week for three days of meetings dedicated to the next phase of the Synod on Synodality, according to a press release issued by the General Secretariat of the Synod on Monday.
The meeting, taking place on June 23-25, brings together representatives of continental ecclesial organizations from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, and North America, accompanied by coordinators of the continental synodal teams.
I went to someone for grief counseling for about six months several years ago. During the course of our discussions she suggested a diagnosis for a family member I was dealing with. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but after reading the statement above, I thought about it again. Sometimes it's hard to diagnosis the person talking to you. How can you possibly diagnose someone you've never met just by listening to a description from a third party who may be giving you a distorted picture?
Franz Werfel's Romantic Novel; "The Pascarella Family" Is Old-Fashioned Pure Narrative, With a Distinctly Fairy-Tale Atmosphere THE PASCARELLA FAMILY. Translated from the German of Franz Werfel. 437 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $2.50.
About 40 years ago a bishop in Hawaii excommunicated several lay members over the TLM and they appealed to Rome and won. How times have changed, eh? They probably would get the cricket treatment today and the excommunication would be allowed to stand. They likely would be accused of "breaking the unity of the Church." Really, folks, do you want to be in unity with a lot of what goes on in the conciliar, synodal church these days? I sure don't!
