The Most Important Decision in Life

Adapted from the address by Bishop Robert Barron at Hillsdale College's 171st commencement on May 13, 2023.

"So there’s the question, young graduates. What kind of soul will you have? What kind of person will you be? Will you do whatever it takes to get what you want? Or will you accept even great suffering in order to do what is right? Everything else in your life will flow from your answer to that question."

Who Killed the Catholic University

James F. Keating at First Things.

"More than thirty years ago, John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae, his apostolic constitution on Catholic universities. Although in some respects an updating of Vatican II’s Declaration on Christian Education, the all-but-forgotten Gravissimum Educationis, John Paul’s document was meant to inspire a renewal of authentic Catholic education in troubled times. He adopted what the late John O’Malley called Vatican II’s “invitational” style. Rather than denouncing abuses, the pope sought to invite, perhaps re-invite, Catholic professors and administrators to the adventure of Catholic higher education."

Census Fidei? Methodological Missteps Are Undermining the Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality

Mark Regnerus with a methodological critique, including of the Document for the Continental Stage, at Public Discourse.
"What the Frascati group heard, or wrote down, is a great deal of woundedness and suffering. Are these the norm within the Church? Emotive terms saturate the document. For example, the word 'feel' appears twenty-five times, including '[I]f the Church is not synodal, no one can really feel fully at home.' (What does this mean?) The term 'dialogue' shows up thirty-one times, 'discernment' twenty-eight times, 'listening' thirty-eight times, 'experience' forty-three times, 'journey' thirty-three times, and versions of 'welcoming' eighteen times. Exactly whose voices are these?"

'Religion and Resistance:'

'The Ukrainian Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches in Resistance Efforts in the War Against Russia'

The 26th Annual Templeton Lecture on Religion & World Affairs, given by Dr. Heather S. Gregg on November 1, 2022, Foreign Policy Research Institute, video and transcript.

Priests and Cars in Milwaukee:

"The popularity of the car reshaped Catholicism in the city, forcing churches to adapt their worship practices to attract newly mobile parishioners."
Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily on "Riding with St. Paul in the Passenger Side": The Archdiocese of Milwaukee Enters the Automobile Age, 1920-1965" by Peter S. Cajka, American Catholic Studies, Vol. 121, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 65-93.

The Moral Limits of Medical Research and Treatment

Address by Pope Pius XII to the First International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System, September 14, 1952, published in The Linacre Quarterly.

"...the Holy Father also described certain abuses in psychoanalysis and warned against the so-called 'pansexual' approach in this field."

Rembert G. Weakland Services at Saint Vincent Archabbey

Last Thursday at the Archabbey,

"... The body of Archbishop Weakland will be received at 3 p.m. Thursday, September 1 in the north transept of the Saint Vincent Archabbey Basilica. Visitation will occur between 3 and 5 p.m. in the north transept. The monastic community will pray evening prayer at 5 p.m. A concelebrated Mass of Christian Burial will take place at 7 p.m. in the Basilica with Archabbot Martin Bartel as principal celebrant and homilist. A private committal service will be held Friday at Saint Vincent Cemetery."

Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland will be honored with a funeral Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist

Sophie Carson reported at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"The current archbishop, Jerome Listecki, will celebrate a funeral Mass at 4:30 p.m. Aug. 30 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson Street, Milwaukee.

"Visitation will be held at the cathedral from 12 to 4 p.m. that day."
Presumably followed by interment in the Cathedral crypt.

Update: Sophie Carsons's report, above, has been updated .

"Weakland will be buried in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at St. Vincent Archabbey, where he attended high school, college and seminary and eventually became archabbot."
Bishop Haines's surmise that Archbishop Weaklands remains would likely end up in the Cathedral crypt turned out to be wrong.

Meanwhile, Bruce Murphy, at Urban Milwaukee, reminds us,

"In 2014, he [Weakland] sought to move to the St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he began his seminary studies as a boy in 1940 and later ran it as the archabbot, but the plan was opposed by the current archabbot, who feared this would cause negative publicity."

Old Religion in the New World

'Many Catholics are in a state of uncertainty about their relationship with the American regime.'

Gerard V. Bradley reviews Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America, by Michael Breidenbach, at the Claremont Review of Books.