Free Republic

THE SPONTANEOUS and ardent devotion, beloved sons and daughters, with which you flocked here on his day of penance could not better interpret Our intentions nor fulfill with greater satisfaction for Us the desire of Our Heart confided to you on the vigil of the opening of the Holy Door, when We exhorted you to give life and strength to a fervent spiritual movement of expiation during this Jubilee Year. On this particular Sunday, the Church opens the sacred time of the Passion and with the sorrowful note of its rites causes the drama of the Divine Expiator of human...

With Fear of God and Faith and Love Draw Near By Bishop THOMAS (Joseph), Peter Schweitzer, and Marshall Goodge These are the words proclaimed by the priest as he translates the holy Gifts from the altar table to the faithful. They are instructive for each us, for they both are a command and reveal the disposition with which we commune the holy Gifts. I will address the command first - “Draw Near.” Many holy fathers encourage frequent communion as it is the path to repentance, illumination, and deification par excellence. Saint John Chrysostom writes, I entreat you: a royal table...

Primary Election Day--.like almost every Tuesday throughout the academic year---began in its customary manner of assembling with other Lutheran clergy of various judicatories to pray Matins. The lessons for that day, the Fifth Tuesday of Paschaltide had a penitential tone. Leviticus 16:20-34 details the ritual for the annual Day of Atonement, in which the sins of the people were laid on the head of a goat which was to be banished from the camp, and the holocaust offerings. Then the Epistle to the Thessalonians warned of the sudden snare of the day of the Lord, with the exhortation to take...

MEATLESS  FRIDAYSand  theOfficial  Church  Law The National Conference of Catholic (American) Bishops - NCCB Studies Returning Meatless Fridays        The vast majority of Catholics today do not know that there is an existing obligation to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year. While it is true that the Code of Canon Law allows for the substituting of another penitential practice, authorized by the NCCB, one has not been defined. As a consequence the abiding custom of the Church has been set aside. Neither bishops nor priests, with rare exception, inform the faithful of their obligations....

Not eating meat on Fridays used to be synonymous with being Catholic. Restoring abstinence would not only revive tradition but signal solidarity with the poor.THE RENEWAL inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council sprang in large part from the liberating discovery of the depth and variety of Catholic tradition. Yet paradoxically the post-conciliar reforms were sometimes implemented in a spirit of philistine dismissal of “tradition” as nothing more than the dead hand of the past. In shedding a past perceived as sterile and oppressive, much that was profound and life-giving was also lost. One of the saddest casualties of that process...