Foundations of Religious Life

The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious has maintained the historical modify of religious life, with sisters living in accord and wearing the habit. While many religious orders are currently facing marked decline in novitiates and the aging of their members, the communities of the CMSWR are experiencing ontogeny on a worldwide scale.In this assemblage of foundational articles, the CMSWR articulates how its perspective is in ownership with the vision set forward by residence II, suggesting that its commitment to a more visibly countercultural life and ministry is what sustains its orders and attracts young women to the CMSWR communities. The Foundations of Religious Life is ideal reading for sisters and those in formation, as well as their counterparts in men's communities.

THEME FOR 2010 WORLD DAY OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS

VATICAN CITY, 29 SEP 2009 (VIS) - "The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word" is the thought of the Pope's Message for the incoming World Day of Social Communications which is celebrated every assemblage on 24 January, Feast of St. Francis of Sales, patron saint of journalists.

A communique made public today explains that the intend of the Message is "to elicit priests in particular, during this Year for Priests and in the consequence of the Twelfth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to consider the new subject media as a doable inventiveness for their ministry at the service of the Word. Likewise, it aims to encourage them to grappling the challenges arising from the new digital culture".

The book continues: "The new communications media, if adequately understood and exploited, can offer priests and all pastoral care workers a wealth of data which was difficult to access before, and assist forms of collaboration and increased communion that were previously unthinkable".

The communique concludes by noting that "if wisely used, with the support of experts in technology and the communications culture, the newborn media can become - for priests and for every pastoral tending workers - a valid and effective instrument for authentic and profound evangelisation and communion".

"Benedict XVI: The role of priests is irreplaceable"

PRIESTS ARE WITNESSES OF THE POWER OF GOD

VATICAN CITY, 29 SEP 2009 (VIS) - Made public today were the contents of a video Message from the Pope to participants in an international spiritual retreat for priests at the French shrine of Ars for the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Mary Vianney. The preacher of the retreat, which is taking place from 27 September to 3 October, is Cardinal Christoph Schonborn O.P., archbishop of Vienna, Austria, and the theme of the spiritual exercises is: "The joy of being a priest, consecrated for the salvation of the world".

"The priest", says the Holy Father in his Message, "is called to serve human beings and to give them life in God. ... He is a man of the divine Word and of all things holy and, today more than ever, he must be a man of joy and hope. To those who cannot conceive that God is pure Love, he will affirm that life is worthy to be lived and that Christ gives it its full meaning because He loves all humankind".

Benedict XVI then turns to address priests who have to serve a number of parishes and who "commit themselves unreservedly to preserving sacramental life in their various communities. The Church's recognition for you all is immense", he says. "Do not lose heart but continue to pray and to make others pray that many young people may accept the call of Christ, Who always wishes to see the number of His apostles increase".

The Holy Father also invites priests to consider "the extreme diversity of the ministries" they perform "in the service of the Church", and "the large number of Masses you celebrate or will celebrate, each time making Christ truly present at the altar. Think of the numerous absolutions you have given and will give, freeing sinners from their burdens. Thus you may perceive the infinite fruitfulness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Your hands and lips become, for a single instant, the hands and lips of God".

"This thought", the Pope added, "should bring you to ensure harmonious relations among the clergy so as to form the priestly community as St. Peter wanted, and so build the body of Christ and consolidate you in love".

"The priest is the man of the future. ... What he does in this world is part of the order of things directed towards the final Goal. Mass is the only point of union between the means and the Goal because it enables us to contemplate, under the humble appearance of the bread and the wine, the Body and Blood of Him Whom we adore in eternity".

"Nothing will ever replace the ministry of priests in the heart of the Church", the Pope concluded. "You are the living witnesses of God's power at work in the weakness of human beings, consecrated for the salvation of the world, chosen by Christ Himself to be, thanks to Him, salt of the earth and light of the world".

"Apostolic Nuncio Speaks on Vocations"

From The National Catholic Register
Posted by Tim Drake

This morning Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the U.S., gave a historic come to the National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors gathered for their annual gathering in East Rutherford, N.J. Archbishop Sambi had individual rousing things to say to the nation’s vocation directors.

“The enemy of every vocation is selfishness,” Archbishop Sambi told the group. He quoted at length from Catholic Evangelist Paul II’s book Gift and Mystery.

In an interesting comparison, Archbishop Sambi compared the post-sexual abuse-crisis priesthood to that of post-Nazi-occupied Poland. He crosspiece most how Karol Wojtyla’s witnessing so some priests being arrested and deported impacted the future Pope’s hieratical vocation.

“As the Catholic was encouraged by the some priests brought to concentration camps, you should be pushed by the fact that some priests have abandoned their mission,” said Archbishop Sambi. “We are in a impoverishment of priests, but are achievement on a New Springtime in which there module be more priests, and of a better quality.”

Given that it’s the Year for Priests in honor of St. John Marie Vianney, Archbishop Sambi then posed a hypothetical question to all of the vocation directors.

“If St. John Vianney came to you today as a prospective seminarian, would you help him in his vocation?” Archbishop Sambi asked.

He then presented two scenarios for how a vocation director might respond.

In the prototypal scenario, the body administrator describes an older, dedicated, devout individual with a rural upbringing who is behindhand in his studies, but knows the faith because of the warning of his family. He doesn’t grasp Latin well, but has a real sense of sacrifice. Other priests hold him and see his body as authentic.

In the ordinal scenario, the body administrator describes an individualist with long hair and a provincial faith, who is focused on the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament and is described as perhaps being likewise sacrament and likewise much into the cult of Mary. He describes the priest as speaking of being available for confession, but the body administrator questions, “Really, who goes any more?” Finally, the body administrator says that the politician sounds a bit old Church, so the administrator says he’s belike suited to a more traditional order and says, “No, thank you.”

Those gathered shared a beatific vocalization over the descriptions, but it was an effective exercise in getting vocation directors to think about what’s important. Archbishop Sambi urged caution in dealing with prospective candidates because “one of them could be a future saint.”

Pope Benedict's Address to Youth in the Czech Republic

STARA BOLESLAV, Czech Republic, SEPT. 28, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Below is the text of the address Benedict XVI gave today when he met with youth on the final day of his visit to the Czech Republic.

Dear Young Friends,

At the closing of this celebration I turn to you directly and I greet you warmly. You hit come here in great drawing from all over the country and from neighbouring countries; you camped here yesterday evening and you spent the night in tents, distribution an experience of establishment and companionship. Thank you for your presence here, which gives me a significance of the enthusiasm and generosity so characteristic of youth. Being with you makes the Catholic see young! I modify a particular articulate of thanks to your allegoric for his words and for the wonderful gift.

Dear friends, it is not hard to see that in every young person there is an aspiration towards happiness, sometimes tinged with anxiety: an aspiration that is often exploited, however, by present-day consumerist society in false and alienating ways. Instead, that longing for happiness must be taken seriously, it demands a true and comprehensive response. At your age, the first major choices are made, choices that can set your lives on a particular course, for better or worse. Unfortunately, many of your contemporaries allow themselves to be led astray by illusory visions of spurious happiness, and then they find themselves sad and alone. Yet there are also many young men and women who seek to transform doctrine into action, as your representative said, so as to give the fullness of meaning to their lives. I invite you all to consider the experience of Saint Augustine, who said that the heart of every person is restless until it finds what it truly seeks. And he discovered that Jesus Christ alone is the answer that can satisfy his and every person's desire for a life of happiness, filled with meaning and value (cf. Confessions, I.1.1).

As he did with Augustine, so the nobleman comes to meet each digit of you. He knocks at the door of your freedom and asks to be welcomed as a friend. He wants to attain you happy, to fill you with humanity and dignity. The faith faith is this: encounter with Christ, the living Person who gives life a newborn horizon and thereby a expressed direction. And when the heart of a teen mortal opens up to his divine plans, it is not arduous to recognize and follow his voice. The nobleman calls each of us by name, and entrusts to us a specific assignment in the Church and in society. Dear teen people, be alive that by Baptism you hit become children of God and members of his Body, the Church. Jesus constantly renews his invitation to you to be his disciples and his witnesses. Many of you he calls to marriage, and the preparation for this Sacrament constitutes a real vocational journey. Consider earnestly the divine call to raise a faith family, and permit your youth be the instance in which to physique your future with a sense of responsibility. Society needs faith families, saintly families!

And if the Lord is calling you to follow him in the ministerial priesthood or in the consecrated life, do not hesitate to respond to his invitation. In particular, in this Year of Priests, I appeal to you, young men: be attentive and open to Jesus's call to offer your lives in the service of God and his people. The Church in every country, including this one, needs many holy priests and also persons fully consecrated to the service of Christ, Hope of the world.

Hope! This word, to which I often return, sits particularly substantially with youth. You, my love teen people, are the hope of the Church! She expects you to become messengers of hope, as happened last assemblage in Australia, during World Youth Day, that great dissent of youthful faith that I was able to experience personally, and in which some of you took part. Many more of you module be able to come to Madrid in August 2011. I invite you here and today to participate in this great assembling of teen people with Christ in the Church.

Dear friends, thank you again for being here and thank you for your gift: the aggregation of photographs recounting the lives of teen people in your dioceses. Thank you also for the clew of your solidarity towards the teen people of Africa, which you have presented to me. The Pope asks you to live your faith with joy and enthusiasm; to grow in unity among yourselves and with Christ; to pray and to be hardworking in frequenting the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Confession; to verify seriously your faith formation, remaining ever obedient to the teachings of your Pastors. May Saint Wenceslaus guide you along this path through his example and his intercession, and may you ever savor the protection of the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother. I bless every of you with affection!

"Bless Me Father!"

Written by Fr. Jose Bautista-Rojas, LT, CHC, USN (photo at left)

Monday, 31 December 2007 00:21

Thank you Lord for my priesthood!

01Jan08: What am I, a priest, doing in Iraq? God brought me here to be with my Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers. I am here to bring God to them and to bring them to God. Every day is a different story.

The another day, a teen Marine arrived to SSTP (Shock, Surgical and Trauma Platoon) hospital. He was so teen and at the age where he was just starting to undergo life. He had forfeited his legs from the waist down; he had a very low pulse. There was something special about his teen Negro that made him different from every another digit that arrived at the SSTP infirmary up to that date. I knew him personally. He attended Mass twice a month while the another days he went on missions. It is different when you know someone personally. I ease advert his face; he would ask for a blessing after apiece Mass. He would tell me: "Bless me, Father, I need your blessing." These are the terminal text that I heard from him a week ago. His text till resounded over and over in my head, "Bless me, Father." I will not give his real name out of attitude for the family.

I could not control my correct hand while holding Jose's, praying to God for him; my hand was shaking. In my mind, I was asking God to save Jose. I was intellection of his parents, of his brothers, of his friends, but especially of his mother. Lord, do not shatter Jose's mother's heart. Save him, Lord! Bring him back to his mother alive.

I was looking around the operating room. The doctors were speaking to Jose informing him, "Fight, do not provide up, please fight!" Jose's high tar was at a corner of the shack with tears in his eyes, looking at me as if he were asking, "Please tell God to spend him!" He then would turn to the doctors as saying, "Fight for him please spend him, spend my Marine!" Another tar entered the room, looked carefully to the doctors and then turned to me asking me with the intercommunicate of his hands to pray. Then, he turned to Jose's tar and greeted him as if giving his condolences.

Please Lord, save him! I prayed with all my strength patch the doctors proven frantically to save his life. "He has no more pulse!" one student shouted, patch a female student with her hands inside Jose's chest caressed his heart trying to revive him. After 45 transactions of massaging the heart and electrical shocks, the student declared him dead.

In my mind, I was praying Lord, do not allow Jose's care to receive him without life. Looking at Jose on the stretcher, I only saw half of his body. How would his chronicle be if he would have survived without legs and only part of his hands? I astonishment if God instead of answering my request answered Jose's prayer. Maybe Jose was telling God, gratify take me with you, do not leave me here this way. I don not know; the only thing I know is that Jose will not suffer anymore.

I still center Jose's vocalise when he would verify me, "Bless me, Father... Please, Father, bless me... I always verify my mom that you bless me, and she gets very happy..... My mother told me to thank you for your blessing." What will go through Jose's mother's mind? Will she be angry at God? Will she hate the serviceman Corps that her son loved so much?

I wish I could tell her: "Senora, I was with your son on his terminal moments." My hope is that she will find some richness in the knowledge that her son had a vodoun by his side in his terminal moments.

Jose's tar asked for my name to verify his care that I prayer for Jose, and that he received the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. I would love to countenance at her eyes, and let her know that I was with her son on her behalf. I would same to embrace her, and verify her that her son asked for my blessing every time he could come to Mass.

I thank God for the gift of my priesthood and to my Cardinal who allowed me to become and serve as a chaplain. I am a priest not only to fete Holy Mass, but also to live it. The gift of my priesthood allows me to bless and bring pact to my muchachos and muchachas, that's the way I see them as my young kids, in the midst of this war.
 
Please, communicate God that I may never get tired of blessing those who communicate and wherever they communicate me. Jose would communicate me to bless him in the Chapel, or while I was walking to my "Humvee" (my transportation), which would alter me to my base or where ever he would see me.

"Father would you bless me?" Who module be the next vodoun to hear these words? Will our teen men and women in the military services hit priests to become to and ask for a blessing, or to become for confession, or module they hit the opportunity to listen Mass? I pray that teen men and women in the military module get the spiritual guidance they need. The only artefact this module be possible is if more men move to God's call to the priesthood. When the Lord asks, "Whom shall I send?" some module say "Here I am, Lord!"

Fr. Jose Bautista-Rojas, LT, CHC, USN is currently serving as a US military chaplain in Iraq. A native of Guadalajara, Mexico, he was ordained for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1999, and has previously served at various parishes including St. Elizabeth Church in Van Nuys, CA.

"Leprosy patients to see 1800s priest canonized"

From AP

By AUDREY McAVOY

HONOLULU — Most need wheelchairs. Their average age is 80.

Neither fact is fastening 11 elderly island leprosy patients from traveling 12,000 miles to the Vatican incoming month to watch as the Catholic Church canonizes Father Damien — a vodoun who cared for leprosy patients throughout the islands more than a century ago before dying of the disease himself.

Damien, who was dropped in Belgium as carpenter de Veuster, remains a beloved amount among many in Hawaii. In the 1870s, the leprosy patients Damien cared for were shunned by most people, even doctors, because of an intense stigma that was associated with the disease.

Today's patients from Kalaupapa, the unaccompanied peninsula where Hawaii's leprosy patients were banished for more than 100 years, feel particularly close to Damien.

Dr. Kalani Brady, their physician, said Thursday the trip to Rome module be an "Energy-laden" voyage for many of his patients.

"They're going to wager their individualized saint canonized," said Brady, 53, who module accompany the assemble to Rome. It's "incredibly important, unbelievably individualized for them," he said.

The veneration for Damien transcends religious sects, Brady said, noting that one 84-year-old making the activate is Mormon.

"He's bound to a wheelchair, he's completely blind. So it's important enough for him to go, despite the hurdles which he has to overcome," Brady said.

The Catholic Church declared earlier this assemblage that it would make Damien a fear after determining a Hawaii woman was cured of tangency cancer after she prayed to Damien and he interceded on her behalf. The faith institute there was no scrutiny explanation for the woman's recovery.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to preside over Damien's canonization on Oct. 11. Damien was beatified — a step toward sainthood — in 1995 by Pope John Paul II.

The pope is expected to meet privately with the patients during their stay in Rome.

The 11 are among about 20 patients who still live at Kalaupapa. The Kingdom of Hawaii began banishing leprosy patients to the remote section of Molokai island in the 1860s to control an outbreak of the disease that was killing Native Hawaiians in large numbers.

Many Hawaiians had no natural immunity to leprosy, as well as other diseases that led the Hawaiian population to shrink 70 percent in the seven decades after Captain James Cook, the first European to visit the islands, arrived in 1778.

Some 90 percent of the 8,000 people exiled to Kalaupapa were Native Hawaiians.

Successive governments continued to exile patients to Kalaupapa for over a century through 1969, when the state of Hawaii finally stopped the practice more than two decades after the discovery of drugs that could treat the disease.

Many patients chose to stay at Kalaupapa even after the medical isolation order was lifted because the community had become their home.

Today, many patients still have to fight the indignity of stereotypes and misperceptions about the illness.

Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, is spread by direct person-to-person contact, although it's not easily transmitted. It can cause skin lesions and lead to blindness.

But it's been curable since the development of sulfone drugs in the 1940s, and people treated with drugs aren't contagious.

Damien built homes for the sick, changed their bandages and ate poi, a Hawaiian staple, from the same bowl as the patients. He put up no barriers between himself and those he ministered to.

He was diagnosed with leprosy 12 years after he arrived and died five years later in 1889.

Overall, some 650 people from Hawaii are traveling to Rome for the canonization. Most, between 520 and 550, are expected to be part of the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu's delegation.

Those going also include a Boy Scout troop and Lt. Gov. James R. "Duke" Aiona.

Some will visit Belgium, including the town of Tremelo, where Damien was born, and Leuven, where his body was buried in 1936.

Damien still has a grave at Kalaupapa, but it now only contains a relic of his right hand.

"Pray for a Harvest of Holy Priests"

No priest ever forgets his prototypal day in the seminary. After every the discernment, he has mitt the job behind, the girlfriend behind, his own family and friends behindhand — every to travelling down an uncharted path, hoping and praying that he is doing God’s will. My prototypal day was meet same this.

We had an superior president, or rector as we call him, who summoned every the new recruits together for his period inaugural conference of the academic year. You strength think that he called us together to give us a bit of a life talk, to verify us that we were bold for making this difficult decision to study the Lord’s call in a world that was distancing itself more and more from God. You strength think that he complimented us and told us to pray hard for the strength to encounter God’s purpose for our lives (ordination was never a given).

He did none of these things. Instead he said to us: “Gentlemen, if you’re not prepared to make every kill necessary to become holy priests, then get out.”

The communication was clear. The Church and world don’t need greater numbers of priests necessarily. What’s needed are holy priests. If we weren’t willing to accept this, we needn’t bother wasting our teachers’ time or our possess — or God’s.

Some of the guys collective that period were put off by this approach, but I wasn’t. Actually, I was very impressed. Here was a man who wasn’t concerned with playing the numbers game. He wasn’t interested in merely producing more vocations or impressing his superiors with his prosperous seminary program. What he cared about was producing holy priests, even at this beginning stage of priestly formation.

He did this because he change with all of his heart, as he told us so some times, that “the people of God deserve the best.”

That was some years ago, but that phrase has always stuck with me. A good, holy, prayerful Christian priest can do enthusiastic and mighty things for God because the Holy Spirit will impact through him. The people will genuinely be able to see God through him, which is what the Lord intended when he established the priesthood.

On the other lateral of that equation, an unholy, evil vodoun crapper attain people retrograde their establishment through his text and actions.

Scripture is very clear on this point. In the aggregation of the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord says, “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the crowd of the grassland … but I module verify care to penalise your grievous deeds” (Jeremiah 23:1-6).

This is a candid warning to every priests. If you mislead my people, says the Lord, you’re going to pay. Jesus was moved to pity in the Gospel of Mark because the vast crowd was “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:30-34).

This is a crucial point to remember, because Pope monastic XVI has declared this the Year for Priests. I suspect he is doing this not so much to celebrate the heritage of the priesthood or the enthusiastic priests we all undergo in our lives. There is plenty of time for that. Rather, it is the Year for Priests to pray for priests.

Benedict is imploring the people of God to pray for holy priests, men who are selection to attain the sacrifices necessary to configure themselves to Christ the Good Shepherd. In his homily to open the Year for Priests, the Holy Father said that the truehearted should “pray that the nobleman inflame the heart of apiece and every vodoun … because the greatest suffering in the Church is the boob of its priests.”

Benedict rarely minces words, and he’s not feat to move when it comes to something as important as the quality of the clergy.

I personally would like to block the scandals that broke not so long ago. I’d like to block them because I know in my heart, and in my experience, that the great majority of priests are good, devout, sacred men — men who poverty null more than to serve God by serving the crowd entrusted to them.

I’d like to forget the scandals because I undergo that the majority of the horrific acts we read most in the papers and heard most on broadcasting were committed by a relatively small group of sick, perverted, twisted men who should never have been ordained in the prototypal place.

I’d like to forget the scandals — but I can’t. I can’t forget because I am reminded of them every time a little child rushes up to give me a squeeze after Mass, or whenever I visit a parish school. An uneasy feeling comes upon me at such times. In the back of my mind, always, is the question: Is someone hunting at this environs and thinking something terrible? Are they sight something that isn’t there?

This is tragic. Most priests love children, present consort included. In fact, for me, the biggest weaving block on the artefact to ordination was the lingering question as to whether I would be happier with a wife and children.

But there is hope. There is hope because Christ chromatic from the dead — and promised the same for you and me, if we try to follow his will. Christ chromatic from the dead, and he is ease married to his Catholic Church, 2,000 years and some sins later. We are not ever truehearted to his teaching, but he is ever truehearted to us.

There are digit sides to the Church, of course: the manlike lateral and the divine side. The manlike lateral gets us into trouble. But no matter how unfaithful we crapper be, he is ease married to his bride, the Church.ease

This is the Year for Priests, and the Catholic wants us to pray for holy priests — not just for more priests. Like the rector of that seminary so many years ago, God doesn’t endeavor the drawing game. He wants his priests to be holy. Why? Because his grouping merit the best.

Father Salvatore DeStefano is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

By Father Salvatore DeStefano