PathToHoliness » News

Help Haiti

Chuck — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:14:34 +0000

I was working all last week at a convention in Orlando, FL and only got bits and pieces of information on the devastation from the earthquake in Haiti. The more I learn the more my heart goes out to the people there and those who want to help. A lot of groups are asking for money right now but I would be very careful who you give money to. I feel most confident giving it to the Catholic Church relief services and this weekend the Bishops are asking for donations to the effort. Here’s a video clip from New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan about the situation and a copy of the letter sent to all Bishops from the USCCB. You can make a donation to Catholic Relief Services here.

Your Eminence/Excellency:

Our Church mourns the terrible suffering of our brothers and sisters in Haiti. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that ravaged Haiti on January 12, 2010 has already claimed thousands of lives including the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince. It has destroyed countless homes, churches, seminaries, schools, and other buildings and has left millions without the most basic necessities of life. Our faith compels us to pray for and reach out to our brothers and sisters in their time of suffering.

We invite you to encourage your pastors to take up a second collection for the people and Church of Haiti this weekend, January 16 and 17, 2010. These funds will be used to support the efforts of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Relief Services, the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic Church, as they respond to immediate emergency needs for such necessities as water, food, shelter and medical care, as well as to the long term need to rebuild after widespread destruction, and to the pastoral and reconstruction needs of the Church in Haiti.

Catholic Relief Services is already mounting a major emergency response to this severe disaster and has committed an initial $5 million to fund relief efforts which are likely to go on for some time. Your help and the help of the Catholic people of the United States are urgently needed.

Next weekend January 23-24, many dioceses are scheduled to take up the Collection for the Church in Latin America. This Collection is vitally important for our ability to respond to the pastoral needs of the Church in Haiti and other parts of Latin America in the weeks and months ahead. We urge that you use both of these opportunities to express our solidarity and our loving support for our brothers and sisters in Haiti and ask you not to substitute one collection for the other.

Additional information on the U.S. Catholic community’s response to this emergency and how U.S. Catholics can help can be found at CRS.org and USCCB.org

Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Chicago
President

Most Reverend Timothy M. Dolan
Chairman
Catholic Relief Services

U.S. Vicar of Opus Dei Guest Writes for Washington Post

Chuck — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:13:17 +0000

Monsignor Thomas G. Bohlin, U.S. vicar of Opus Dei, is a guest panelist writer for the Washington Post blog called “On Faith.” Unfortunately you can’t subscribe to just his contributions. However, you can bookmark the link and check it regularly.

Some of his recent contributions include:

Catholic Church says, ‘Welcome home’
Jesus said, “Leave everything and follow me”
You Cannot Force People to Believe
Pope Benedict and the Pursuit of Truth

Film Being Made About St. Josemaria Escriva

Chuck — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:21:19 +0000

A movie is being made about the life of St. Josemaria Escriva. I’m guessing that this will be a very different look at Opus Dei and its founder than that sensationalist but from what I understand poorly made movie that got so much attention. Here’s some information about the movie from the Catholic News Agency.

The film “There Be Dragons” is a film set during the brutal Spanish Civil War in the second half of the 1930s, Catholic San Francisco reports. It is expected to be released in summer or fall 2010 and has a budget of about $30 million.

Joffe also wrote the screenplay for the film. He told an August 23 press conference that he has creative freedom over the project and had earlier rejected an offer to film an Opus Dei-provided script.

Discussing St. Josemaria, he noted that the priest “made no attempt to influence the people he worked with in terms of their politics.”

“At that time, that’s pretty heroic. That’s a time when almost all human beings were faced with making extraordinary choices.”

EWTN Series Focuses on Founder of Opus Dei

Chuck — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:59:36 +0000

There is a new series starting on EWTN beginning Sunday, August 30 that will focus on Opus Dei and its founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá. The program consists of 13 parts. Pictured are co-hosts, John Coverdale, Seton Hall law professor and Damon Owens, founder of Joy-Filled Marriage. Chelsea tells me Damon is a Theology of the Body speaker. BTW, she does a weekly post on her personal blog about Theology of the Body and has a blog devoted to it as well.

Each segment will consist of a half-hour interview. One segment will be broadcast each week and will be shown in the United States and Canada three times during that week: Sunday at 5 p.m., Tuesday at 3:30 a.m., and Friday at 10:30 p.m.

EWTN’s description of the series reads as follows: “Saint Josemaría Escrivá ardently desired to open people to God’s presence in every aspect of their lives, not just Sunday Mass. In this exciting new series Damon Owen and John Coverdale explore the life, mission, and apostolate (Opus Dei) of this great modern saint.”

Damon Owens, from New Jersey, is the host-interviewer for the series. He has appeared in various other EWTN programs. His co-host is John Coverdale, author of Uncommon Faith, a book about the early history of Opus Dei, series. Coverdale worked in Rome from 1961 to 1968 with Saint Josemaría.

Among the other guests in the series are Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, who discusses the role of Opus Dei in the Church; Olga Marlin, who helped start Opus Dei in Kenya; and Terry Hurson, a New York City police officer, who explains how Opus Dei’s spirit has helped him in his work.

Year For Priests

Chuck — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:03:08 +0000

Let us continue to pray for our priests as we near the Year For Priests. To commemorate it, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has created a website:

Pope Benedict XVI has declared a “Year for Priests” beginning with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 19, 2009. The year will conclude in Rome with an international gathering of priests with the Holy Father on June 19, 2010.

With the announcement of this Year for Priests, the Pope has declared St. John Vianney the Universal Patron of Priests on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé d’Ars.

On this website you will find a number of resources to aid your parish’s celebration of the year for priests. There is also information regarding events for priests that will occur throughout the Year for Priests.

Please pray for our priests that they might always be faithful to their sacred calling.

Thirty New Priests For Opus Dei

Chuck — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:27:30 +0000

Here’s some great news. On May 23rd in Rome, Bishop Javier Echevarría ordained thirty new priests for the Prelature of Opus Dei.

On the Opus Dei website you can find a lot of pictures from the ordination as well as video and video testimonials from some of the new priests.

You can also read Bishop Javier’s homily. I like this line from it:

With the words of our Father, I remind you that “the priestly vocation brings with it the need for sanctity. This sanctity is not just any sanctity, a common sanctity, nor is it even an excellent sanctity. It is a matter of heroic sanctity.”

Get Vatican News On Your iPhone

Chuck — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:47:45 +0000

The Vatican continues to develop new social media/networking applications to spread the good news of the Church. This time I found the H2Onews app in the iTunes store for the iPhone. I just downloaded it and haven’t even tried it yet but I will.

The H2Onews application for the iPhone and iPod Touch brings you timely, insightful news about the life of the Church in the world. In collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio, H2Onews connects you with video and audio news from the Vatican.

Through H2Onews, the first video news application dedicated to the Catholic world, you can follow the travels and speeches of Benedict XVI, as well as key international ecclesiastical events.

You can find more ways to connect to the Vatican on Pope2you. Here’s an excerpt of the message from Pope Benedict about using new communications technologies. You can read the full text here (pdf).

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

In anticipation of the forthcoming World Communications Day, I would like to address to you some reflections on the theme chosen for this year – New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship. The new digital technologies are, indeed, bringing about fundamental shifts in patterns of communication and human relationships. These changes are particularly evident among those young people who have grown up with the new technologies and are at home in a digital world that often seems quite foreign to those of us who, as adults, have had to learn to understand and appreciate the opportunities it has to offer for communications.

Flu Facts

Chuck — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:13:49 +0000

I just got home from a trip to our Nation’s Capitol where I was able to attend daily Mass at St. Dominic’s. This is the stained glass window over the entrance to the church with the morning sun streaming through.

It was an interesting time to be in Washington, DC with all the news about the North American flu, also called H1N1 flu. I was in a meeting with our U. S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, who was bemoaning the fact that this has been mis-labeled as swine flu. It is not something that should make you worry about pigs and you can’t get it from eating pork. There are a lot of facts out now although you’re still hearing it referred to by the misnomer. That name is causing havoc with our farmers and not just those raising hogs.

To get some good facts about this new disease check these resources:

Center For Disease Control & Prevention
World Health Organization
USDA

I’ve seen news stories that are taking this whole situation to extremes as they try to scare people in the name of ratings. Regular influenza causes many more problems and to date not enough is known about this strain to make the “sky is falling” comments and convince people to take precipitous action.

Follow The Path On Twitter

Chuck — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:53:44 +0000

Path To Holiness is now on Twitter. It’s about time I got started there.

I’ve got the feed from the website updating the Twitter feed but I’ll also be posting to it separately and more frequently I’m sure.

So feel free to follow along.

BTW. Path To Holiness contributor, Chelsea Zimmerman, is also on Twitter. You can find her here.

Pray For Our Pope

Chuck — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:31:39 +0000

I hope you’re praying for our Pope on his Africa trip. This man is brilliant and he exudes peace and even a sense of joy, even in the face of so much criticism and animosity. I love his statements on aids and the use of condoms. He stated the truth and the reaction from the elements of society around the world who have no respect for human life has been loud. He hit a nerve and I applaud him for it.

What I think is most amusing is how supposedly impartial journalists are offering the Pope advice in their “reporting.” I guess most mainstream journalists of today have abandoned any attempt at ethics in their reporting. For example, just take the headline to this TimesOnline article, “World Agenda: this gaffe-prone Pope should beware the Middle East.” Oh really? So you’ve judged him and offered him advice all in one headline. There’s even more in the article like “But the Pope needs to become, if not infallible, then at least less fallible on worldly matters.” I really don’t think we need any more of this reporter’s advice.

The article really is amusing. Take this statement, “Alain Juppe, the former French Prime Minister, said: “This Pope is starting to be a real problem.” I take that to mean that Pope Benedict is doing exactly what he should do. We need more leaders like him in the world!