"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.
'Our goal should be to ensure that all the priests ordained from our seminaries will possess the flexibility and affective maturity to live and thrive as holy shepherds and spiritual guides.'
Fr. John Kartje at Public Discourse. Among his observations,
"Unfortunately, contemporary American culture does not generally encourage young adults to become self-reflective and aware of the impact that their emotions have on their decisions and relationships. Our society seeks instant gratification and rejects anything that is perceived as critical or challenging. The effects of this atmosphere present new challenges for today’s seminaries. So, too, does the high degree of broken family structure in our society. Many young men who are beginning to discern a priestly vocation are dealing (or not dealing) with the impact of parental divorce. Others have never had a healthy paternal role model in their life."Fr. Kartje, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, has since 2015 served as Rector of Mundelein Seminary, where he also teaches sacred scripture.
Earlier this month Jerry and Bernadette Strand celebrated the priestly ordination of their son, Vincent. However, this was not the first time one of their sons became a priest. Over the past seven years, all three of their sons (Luke, Jacob and Vincent) completed seminary studies and were ordained in service to the Church.continue at Aleteia
While it may be surprising to hear about three brothers becoming priests, their story is not unique. There are countless stories of brothers responding to the same call of God to the priesthood.
There's A Catholic Priest Kayaking Around Houston Saying Mass For Victims Of Harveyhttps://t.co/OcHwNbe1Nh— Kevin Daley (@KevinDaleyDC) August 27, 2017
Slight levity: Houston priest kayaked to store to buy wine for mass before noon. He couldn't bc of blue law https://t.co/QXGGQAxj2v— Josh Blackman (@JoshMBlackman) August 27, 2017
The grilling of Bishop William Callahan went on for 90 minutes Thursday.continue at The Chippewa Herald
“How is God everywhere every second?” The response: “Because he is God.”
“What’s your favorite ‘Star Wars’ character?” The response: Hans Solo. [I'm sure Bishop got it right, but writer may be too influenced by the German culture] Incidentally, Callahan has seen the original “Star Wars’ film 11 times.
“Have you ever met anyone famous?” The response: Yes. “I’ve met Pope Francis. I’ve met Pope Benedict. I’ve met Pope John Paul II.”
“How much coffee do you drink a day? The response: “I probably drink at least 10 cups of coffee a day.”
“Do you like bubbles?” The response: Of course. “I like bubbles. Bubbles are fun.”
Callahan of the La Crosse Diocese took each question in stride at McDonell Central Catholic High School in Chippewa Falls in three sessions from K-12 students from Boyd, Bloomer, Chippewa Falls and Tilden. He also celebrated a Mass at the school as a part of Catholic Schools Week.
Brewers worldwide have been ramping up production, six packs have been flying off the shelves, and priests everywhere are giddy with anticipation. Why? Because International Buy a Priest a Beer Day (IBAPABD) is right around the corner!continue at The Catholic Gentleman
This ancient and joyful feast—dedicated to the celebration of hardworking priests—falls this year on September 7th*!
ORIGINS OF SAID VENERABLE FEAST
This festive holiday traces its origins back to the pious deed of St. Hopswald of Aleyard, the first man to buy his priest a beer. The legend goes that St. Hopswald, a master brewer by trade, was a Teutonic pagan who was converted and baptized by a zealous Catholic priest.
Make-A-Wish requests often involve meeting athletes, attending sporting events or traveling to amusement parks or beaches.continue at St Louis Review
When it came time for 11-year-old Brett Haubrich of south St. Louis County to make his wish, he not only listed none of those things but had no request at all.
"He didn't want anything," explained his mother, Eileen. "They had to keep asking him, 'What would you like to do? Do you want to meet anybody? What do you want to be when you grow up?'"
The answer to the last question became part of his wish — what Make-A-Wish calls "wish enhancement" to complement the main wish. The sixth-grader at St. Mark School wants to be a priest, a doctor or an engineer, in that order.
Priest was No. 1
"I said, 'I really want to be a priest,'" he said.
So, on Holy Thursday, at the invitation of Archbishop Robert J. Carlson, Brett took his place beside the altar at Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis as "Priest For a Day."
What is Minnesotans’ image of a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis today? Many likely think of gray-haired men performing empty rituals for dwindling congregations in the shadow of the recent clergy sex-abuse scandal. They may imagine young men recoiling from the prospect of a life of “thou shalt nots,” leaving seminaries empty.continue at Star Tribune
Folks with this view probably haven’t met the Rev. Andrew Brinkman, 29, assistant pastor of Nativity of Our Lord Church in St. Paul. As a boy, Brinkman dreamed of becoming a professional skateboarder and thought being a priest was “the scariest thing I’d ever heard of.” Today, he still rides his board weekly, doing “360 flips” while wearing his priest’s collar.
Or how about the Rev. Marcus Milless, 27, of All Saints Church in Lakeville? At 15, an acquaintance asked him to help with a child with a disability. “I was 4 foot 11, weighed 85 pounds and had a big mouth,” he says. His first thought was mercenary: “How much money could I make?” But over time, his work of feeding, bathing and caring for children with disabilities taught him the power of love and helped lead him to the priesthood.
Then there’s the Rev. Spencer Howe, 28, of St. John Neumann Church in Eagan. As an adolescent, he says, he was a rebel, searching for something on which to stake his life. On a trip to England at age 18, he was inspired by the English martyrs of the 16th century — priests who risked their lives to bring the sacraments to others in a hostile environment.
“I realized this was a lot more dramatic than I had thought — it was not ‘a church for grandmothers,’ but had a kind of fighting spirit,” he says. “Standing before a cathedral, looking up at that great edifice of faith, I recognized the call extended even to me.”
continue at NY Daily NewsTimothy Cardinal Dolan grew up in Holy Infant parish in Ballwin, Mo. Years before New York claimed him as its own prince of the Catholic Church, Dolan was your average teenager, struggling with normal boyhood problems. As Dolan moved through St. Louis Preparatory South and Cardinal Glennon College on his way to the priesthood, he was greatly influenced by two men: parish priest Father Adolph Schilly, and assistant pastor Father Robert Foley. Schilly was a precise, reserved man of German heritage, whereas Foley was young, newly ordained and passionate about ideas of social justice and civil rights. In this excerpt from “An American Cardinal,” author Christina Boyle describes Dolan’s struggles to justify his human longings with a pastor’s calling.
There were typically two approaches to dealing with celibacy among students in Dolan’s year. There were those guys who went off and secretly got girlfriends or developed close platonic friendships with the opposite sex to explore the idea. And there were those who tried to shut out all female contact as if it didn’t exist. The latter group tended to be the ones who caved in their early twenties at the first glimpse of a fluttering eyelid from a pretty girl. They acted like young teenagers with a delayed crush, while the others had perhaps worked out what it meant to turn these relationships into lifelong friendships. “The whole tension of falling in love with someone and having someone to be very intimate with is attractive and desirable,” Dolan’s classmate said. “But to commit to anything, you’re going to have to give something up. To get married you have to give up being single.” And to become a priest, you had to give up sex.
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| Then-Father Raymond Leo Burke imposes hands on his newly-ordained nephew Father Kevin Louis at Cathedral of Saint Joseph the Workman. July 22, 1989 |
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| +Cordileone in the middle, Bp Joseph Perry on the right, left? |
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| Joseph Grodahl of Richfield prays at the Cathedral of St. Paul on Wednesday, July 9, 2014. "This is where I found a real home,." Grodahl says of the Catholic Church, which he joined in 2009. (Pioneer Press: Ginger Pinson) |
Priests bear witness to the best and worst of times: baptisms and weddings, illnesses, troubled marriages, deaths. Some have become the subject of news because of their crimes. Many others log exhaustive hours for subsistence pay, not perfect but nonetheless committed to walking the talk of Christian ministry.continue at Pioneer Press
This is the story of six of them, as described by those whose lives they have touched.
FOWLER, Mich. — Aside for the mole grazing his right eyebrow, it is difficult to distinguish Gary Koenigsknecht from his identical twin, Todd, four minutes the elder.continue at NY Times
Growing up, the twins, now 26, milked cows side by side on the family farm. They both graduated at the top of their high school class. And with their ordination on Saturday, they have begun careers as Roman Catholic priests, two of 477 men in the United States expected to be ordained this year.
They demonstrate that priestly vocations are not evenly distributed by family or geography: they are among six priests in their extended family, and among 22 from their hometown, Fowler, Mich., population 1,224. They officially tie up the leader board with the neighboring village of Westphalia, population 938, which has also produced 22 priests, making for a robust rivalry in both football and Roman collars.
In an era when the number of priests in the United States continues to dwindle — declining by 11 percent in the past decade and crippling the Catholic Church’s ability to meet the needs of a growing Catholic population — this rural patch of Clinton County offers a case study in the science and mystery of the call to priesthood.
Happy 40th anniversary of priestly ordination to our shepherd Bishop Robert C. Morlino. Let us pray for the good bishop!
— Diocese of Madison (@MadisonDiocese) June 1, 2014
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee will ordain six men to the priesthood in a special Mass at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson St., bringing to almost 50 the number of priests to graduate from its St. Francis de Sales Seminary over the last decade.continue at MkeJS
The Mass is expected to draw more than 1,000 well-wishers from around the nation and around the world. In keeping with national statistics on newly ordained priests, the seminarians include three who are foreign-born — one from Colombia and two from Kenya — and three who grew up in the Milwaukee area. They range in age from 26 to 39. Two have studied at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
St. Francis Rector the Rev. John Hemsing called the 2014 class "wonderful guys."
Founded in 1845, St. Francis de Sales had at its height 500 students in high school, college and seminary programs. Ordinations in the 1950s featured often 50 or more priests. Those numbers dropped dramatically over years but began picking up again in 2000. In 2009, the archdiocese ordained six seminarians, it's largest class in 17 years. Today, Hemsing said, the seminary has 29 students, but ordinations continue to fluctuate.
Cardinal Burke gives a talk at the Priest’s Retreat at the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center in Bloomington, IN. He reflects on the lives of saintly priest, namely St. John Vianney, Bl. Miguel Pro, St. Damien of Molokai and St. Maximilian Kolbe, and how they give a great example to priests in our challenging times. St John Vianney says we need to open up our hearts to the Sacred heart of Jesus revealed in the Holy Eucharist in order to be spiritual fathers.HT TLM of San Fran
.....[Pope] Francis touched off the debate Thursday in Rome when he washed and kissed the feet of two women at a juvenile detention center. No pope had ever washed the feet of a woman, leading some to believe Francis was making a pointed statement about church inclusiveness.
Johanna Hatch via Call to Action
“I was moved almost to tears,” said Johanna Hatch of Verona, a Catholic who is co-president of the board of directors for the Women’s Ordination Conference, a national group that advocates for female priests.
Women make up a majority of church workers, from pastoral associates to Sunday school teachers, and are a majority of the Catholics in the pews, she said. “It’s unfair to exclude them from this ritual,” she said.
At Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish on Madison’s Near West Side, the largest church in the 11-county diocese, Monsignor Ken Fiedler told parishioners he would forgo the ritual because of the men-only rule, according to people in attendance.
“The whole congregation started clapping,” said Austin Lacey, a church member who said he agreed with Fiedler’s position. Fiedler could not be reached for comment.
King said Morlino was aware that Fiedler had decided not to offer the ritual — a position Fiedler also took last year — and that this was fine with the bishop.
The Rev. Stephen Umhoefer, pastor of Nativity of Mary Catholic Church in Janesville, also did not do the foot-washing ritual Thursday or last year. In an interview, he said he felt “conflicted about excluding women.” It was a difficult decision, he said.
I and a friend attended a Sunday, Jan 13, 2013 premier showing of the new documentary film about liberal religious sisters, Band of Sisters at Sinsinawa Mound, the motherhouse of the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters.continue at Laetificat Madison
The film centers on some liberal women religious who are former heads of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, NETWORK progressive political lobby, and some of their friends. Featured in the film: Reiki, “women’s ordination”, animals, plants, rocks and air have rights from the same source as humans have rights and one species shouldn’t be privileged over others, “the whole earth is a manifestation of God”, and the Sisters’ new cosmology apparently doesn’t have a heaven and hell anymore. Jesus is hardly mentioned. The film also shows one or two of their ministries that seem good. But so many of the beliefs highlighted aren’t those of the Catholic Church, and some of the Sisters in the film are key dissident figures, like Sr Theresa Kane in regards to “women’s ordination” and Sr Jeannine Grammick in regards to homosexual behavior. There’s no narration but it does present a certain angle on the story of American women religious and obviously a heavy concentration on some in leadership roles who hold dissenting views.
Although there wasn’t actually a standing ovation, the film was warmly praised by other attendees. I heard Sinsinawa Dominicans say: “I wonder if she went in the Academy Awards for best documentary!” “I saw so many people I knew, it’s like a reunion!” “The film was true to my lived experience. We’ve been part of something growing like yeast, we’ve been on a trajectory. You [filmmaker Mary Fishman] did it the best I’ve ever seen.” In talking with several Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters after the showing, I was sad not to find one who believed, for instance, the infallible Catholic teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.
