New Catholics ‘ on fire’ for faith

Cradle Catholics preparing for Easter might not be familiar with one Holy Week celebration: the preparation rites on Saturday morning for those who will be received into the church that evening.

Those who will receive sacraments at the Easter Vigil, and the Catholic community that supports them, gather to share stories of their faith journeys. The bishop touches their ears and their lips, symbolizing they hear God’s call and proclaim the Gospel with their lives.

Some 700 candidates and catechumens – candidates are Christians baptized in other denominations and catechumens have never been baptized – were received into full communion with the Catholic Church this past Easter [within the Archdiocese of Baltimore].

Some 400 of them met at three sites in the archdiocese on March 22: St. Bernadette, Severn; St. Ann, Hagerstown; and New All Saints, Baltimore. The bishop for each vicariate presided over his respective geographic area.

Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, eastern vicar, who was at St. Bernadette, said he always finds the preparation rites exciting because of the shared journeys.

“ It’s just wonderful to see so many candidates and catechumens and those who support them,” he said. “ They represent so many parishes and so many different journeys and so many different calls by the Lord, and it all leads up to the Easter Vigil.”

Those sacraments at the Easter Vigil, he said, “ bring Christ’s life to those received into the church, and by the graces they receive they’ll bring new life to the church.

“ Personally, it’s so edifying to me to realize the journey they have come to the new life and excitement they bring to the church,” he said. Bishop W. Francis Malooly, western vicar, led preparation rites for the western vicariate at St. Ann. He called the service “ very enjoyable” and “ inspiring.”

He said he was struck by the large number of people who said they were drawn to the Catholic Church by the example of others.

“ The beauty of our church is that the faith is passed from one generation to the next,” said Bishop Malooly. “ A day like Saturday is a good reminder to all of us that we have a golden opportunity to help other people to share in our faith.”

Bishop Malooly noted that many of the people received into the church are so on fire for their faith they tend to become actively involved in their parishes especially in the area of working with others interested in joining the church, he said.

“ It’s such a blessing for the archdiocese and the church at large to welcome new members,” he said.

Want to talk about how many Catholics were killed by Protestants - burned, drawn and quartered, crushed to death, hanged, tortured to death - in England, Ireland and France? Way more than 3-5,000. Or how about the many Spanish and Portuguese Catholics in little villages on their coasts who were killed by Huguenots who would land at night, kill everybody in the town, destroy the statues and strip everything of value out of the churches, and then set fire to them, usually with the priest inside? Or the attacks by British Protestant colonists in what is now the US on the Spanish Indian missions in Florida - again, one of their favorite techniques was to herd the Indians and priests into the parish church and set fire to it.

No one said anything about them being offered a trial...

If you say "inquisition" you are saying "trial". That's what an inquisition is.

Though the actual numbers are far less (3,000-5,000), these fiery deaths were quite real and regrettable.

That's all? Are those deaths Protestants involved with inquisitions or is it the total body count of inquisitions generally, witches, heretics generally, and Protestants as well?

Were the penalties (as distinct from the verdicts) pronounced and carried out by the state or by the inquisition.

You do know that in Spain some of those accused of secular offenses, like burglary, tried to get charged with heresy because they hopes for a fairer trial and gentler sentence from the inquisitors than for the secular courts?

And more generally, in the 17th century Protestant England treason was punishable by being castrated, hung by the neck -- but NOT until dead, being cut down from the gallows, being gutted while alive and THEN being quartered, we might want to stipulate that punishments tended to be a tad more brutal just a few hundred years ago than they are now.

Serious and thoughtful people, trying to be virtuous and even charitable, consented to such acts! If we are going to "Get into the heads" of people who thought that burning those with divergent religious opinions was a pious act, we need to try to understand how they thought such a horrible, disgusting, and brutal death was reasonable.

We complain, or some do, that felons lose the right to vote. Just a few centuries ago they used, routinely, to lose the right to breathe.

I assume you are almost as opposed to slavery as you are to the Catholic Church's treatment of heretics. May I justly conclude that you find Washington, Jefferson, and the other slaveholding Founders to be so tarred by their owning of slaves that whenever they are mentioned we should consider this piece of viciousness and discount any possible good in which they might have been involved?

In general, I'd say D-fendr is right. What good will come of going over the outrages performed by members of one group on another?

Is www.catholiceducation.org reliable?

I have no idea. It wouldn't hurt if I had a more precise URL to check what they say about inquisitions. But the questions that matter are not only the body count issues but the larger context. It is easy to look down on the crimes of our predecessors. It is not always useful, and sometimes, I think, it is downright sinful. And if I'm wrong about that, I'm still right, I think, in saying that judging 16th century treatment of one bunch of Christians by another with the standards of a later age is jejune.

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