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The laity must get more involved in the governance and operations of the Catholic Church, leading theologian says The Roman Catholic Church is at a critical juncture, one that requires radical and fast-moving reform, according to an American theologian. "I think we have 20 years and then we've lost everybody," said Paul F. Lakeland, who was interviewed by phone from Fairfield University in Connecticut, where he is professor of Catholic Studies. On Thursday, Lakeland brought his message to Buffalo for the conference "The Liberation of the Laity," also the title of his book, named by the National Catholic Press Association...

Muslims pray in Catholic centre When the planning authorities ruled that the room in a restaurant they were using to pray was a fire hazard they had to find another place. They temporarily decamped to a living room of someone's home where evening prayers were held every day during the holy month of Ramadan. Now Jersey's St Thomas' Church has offered the use of its community centre for Friday prayers. Mosque hope Canon Nicholas France, said: "We are a universal Catholic church and our church has taught very much in recent years the importance of respect and the healing of...

DANCE EXPRESSES RELIGION by LaTrice Lary Published Friday, February 11, 2005 Tom Kane, Ph.D., priest-liturgist and videographer, held a video lecture entitled "Celebrating Our Faith, Our Culture, Our Diversity" last Thursday in the Strom Thurmond Institute. Kane received his schooling from the University of Notre Dame and his doctoral degree in Liturgy and Culture from Ohio State University. He became an ordained Catholic priest in 1975. After receiving his doctorate, Kane traveled to Africa for eight months as well as various other continents to produce documentaries on rare liturgical dance. "We will experience through video how different churches express their...

Austrian Catholic Church declines Members are leaving in record numbers after porn scandal The Associated Press Jan 23, 2005 VIENNA, Austria -- Austrians are leaving the Roman Catholic Church in record numbers, according to statistics released last week. Church officials attributed the 44,852 dropouts during 2004 to a scandal involving the discovery of child and other pornography on computers at a seminary in the diocese of St. Poelten, the Austria Press Agency reported. The number is expected to rise further, because the St. Poelten Diocese has yet to report its 2004 statistics. The seminary where the pornography was found was...

One famous liturgical historian has described the quality of liturgical celebration in the middle ages as a time of “dissolution, elaboration, reinterpretation and misinterpretation.” This unfortunate situation was due to a number of factors. There was very little conscious and active participation on the part of the assembly. The Mass was celebrated in Latin, which only the tiny majority of the educated might understand. And the Mass had really become simply the priest’s Mass. People were silent spectators. As one historian explains, people were indeed pious, but theirs was not a liturgical piety; they did not pray the Mass, but...

Vt. diocese faces historic changes January 9, 2005 By KEVIN O'CONNOR Staff Writer How do you staff 130 parishes with 55 priests, settle yet another round of clergy misconduct lawsuits and replace a retiring bishop? For Vermont's 148,000 Catholics, the new year promises historic challenges and change. Members of the state's largest religious group will start work Saturday on their chief concern when as many as 300 priests and parishioners meet privately to discuss how to consolidate churches to deal with a clergy shortage. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Vermont projects the number of priests will drop by half in...

Father Nick (left, in the photo below) maintains a listing of America's most gay-friendly parishes, as well as other links that demonstrate his concern for the Faith. The Archdiocese of Baltimore, to which Fr. Nick and St. Bernadette's belong, obviously applauds his style of outreach. Certainly he doesn't put his light under a bushel. For example, he posts an Easter Homily that serves as a bold challenge to the dangers, so rampant today, of Jansenism: "Now you can admit your faults and not hide them. You can face who you are, because God says its okay. God is no longer...

BISHOP TAKES QUEEN Raymond Burke is highly traditional. That's why he received the final vows of a transgendered nun. By Malcolm Gay Archbishop Raymond Burke might be a favored son of the Vatican, but interviews with more than a dozen priests reveal that as father to his former flock in La Crosse, his neo-conservative eccentricities alienated a large number of the clergy and the laity alike. "He's left a presbyterate that's demoralized and divided," says one former diocesan priest who spoke to Riverfront Times on condition he not be named in print. "For many years the priests in La Crosse...

VATICAN CITY -- He made saves as a soccer goalkeeper in his high school years in Poland, skied and kayaked in Europe and swam laps in the papal pool. Now Pope John Paul II has set up a sports department to give the Vatican a kind of new playing field in its drive to spread Christian values around the world.

CHURCH-MUSIC Jul-20-2004 (770 words) xxxn Theologian calls music ministers trailblazers of Vatican II church By Catholic News Service PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- Music ministers are trailblazers leading lay people to their proper role in the church following the Second Vatican Council, a leading theologian told a gathering of pastoral musicians in Philadelphia July 8. Few Catholics realize the "sacramental significance" of the entire congregation of worshippers giving themselves to God in a collective song of praise, said Dominican Father Paul J. Philibert, one of the main speakers at the Eastern Regional Convention of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. "Who draws...