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[Catholic Caucus] Statement of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in defense of Reverend Mother Prioress, Teresa Agnes, o.c.d., and of the Carmel of the Most Holy Trinity of Arlington, TexasThe persecution of the Carmel of Arlington by the Bishop of Fort Worth, Michael Olson, shows no signs of abating.We have witnessed a crescendo of aggression, verbal violence, abuse of power, institutional cover-up, intimidation, and outrages carried out against a religious community that is firmly determined to return to Tradition. The targeted victim of this vile operation is the Mother Prioress, Teresa Agnes of Jesus Crucified, who has been publicly defamed in...

[Catholic Caucus] On Bp. Michael Olson (of Ft. Worth, TX)Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson is an alcoholic and a self-admitted homosexual, vengeful, troubled, so prone to rage he's even contemplated torturing and murdering a priest. That's the collective sum of multiple lawsuits and complaints laying bare a revolt against Olson's reign in the Texas diocese.Emerico Perez: "He's like a bully, you know. If you don't agree with him, it's his way or the highway."Vivian Wolf: "He gets angry like this; he just flips and he just ... ."Yolanda Hendon: "He has hurt so many priests, so many parishioners."Steve Knobbe: "This...

Archaeologists at a city dig site have uncovered a medieval tiled floor dating back to around the 13th Century. The discovery was made in Gloucestershire at the location of the new £107m development, The Forum. The floor, made of glazed white and green tiles, belonged to the cloister of the city's medieval Whitefriars Carmelite Friary and was unearthed by the Cotswold Archaeology team. Archaeologist Anthony Beechey described the find as "extra special". Mr Beechey explained that the "beautiful tiled floor is in remarkably good condition". "Most of our Whitefriars findings are fragments of the original structure while this floor is...

The French Revolution reveals the titanic struggle between good and evil. During the terror, over 40,000 Frenchmen were executed just for holding fast to the Catholic Faith and objecting to the worst excesses of the Committee of Public Safety. The blood lost in the years of 1792-1794 staggers the imagination even in the retelling and the campaign against the Church was as diabolical as it was cruel. Contemplative religious communities had been among the first targets of the fury of the French Revolution against the Catholic Church. Less than a year from May 1789 when the Revolution began with the...

BREAKING: OCD Carmelites of Philadelphia abandon their cloister; flee to Nebraska for unknown reasonsAs far as I know, this story is being broken right here. Following is a guest post from a reliable source, with personal knowledge of the situation, who wishes to remain anonymous:For reasons not totally known at this point, the Carmelite Sisters of Philadelphia have abruptly abandoned their monastery.According to sources close to the monastery, the sudden move took place over this past weekend. On Friday, after the daily Mass, a van was noticed by the entrance to the monastery used by the cloistered sisters. Later that...

The Final Days of the Carmelites of Compiegne On February 13, 1790, France, the eldest daughter of the Church, forbade the taking of religious vows.A little over two years later, in September 1792, a Carmelite convent about 50 miles north of Paris was seized. The nuns were forced to live separately, and to abandon their habits. In his book To Quell the Terror, William Bush tells us that the revolutionaries deemed habits “offensive to republican eyes,” an echo of Protestant reformers some 300 years earlier: “The reformers focused especially on religious habits, ripping them to shreds or burning them, ordering...

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us in this hour of darkness. I have been contacted by a community of Carmelites who have seen the document, and are desperate to try to warn the remaining faithful Carmels of the Teresian reform.Today’s piece for the Remnant contains some of their remarks:Today I received an email from a monastery of cloistered Carmelite nuns about the new document from the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious. They’re helping me examine this document, having kindly volunteered to serve as consultants, to help me understand it from an inside position. These, I might add, are not what...

Featured Term (selected at random):MOUNT CARMEL A mountain projecting into the Mediterranean Sea along the coast of Palestine near the present-day city of Haifa. It was here that Elijah defied the hundreds of pagan prophets in the presence of King Ahab and proved to the people that Yahweh was the true God (I Kings 18:20-40). All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Sister Bernadette is among 16 sisters in a contemplative community at Mount Carmel Convent in Nairobi. (CNS/Nancy Wiechec) By Barb FrazeCatholic News Service NAIROBI, Kenya (CNS) -- For several of the cloistered Carmelite Sisters at Mount Carmel Convent, their life of prayer began in their families, when they were children. "My dad taught me to pray for others," said Sister Bernadette, one of the younger sisters. She said her father told her he knew sisters who prayed for everyone, and she asked if they could pray for her, too. She said she began corresponding with the sisters and was...

The Carmelites of Wyoming are looking to expand their present facilities, and McCrery Architects have come up an ambitious design for the Carmel. James McCrery, the architect, offers this statement: The vision for the New Carmel is for an authentically Catholic, Carmelite Monastery that embraces the French tradition of gothic architecture. This is the architecture that the Catholic Church truly owns! It developed in the 13th century in response to the strong growth of monastic life at that time. 800 years later, in this 21st century of Our Lord, these Holy Monks live a rich monastic life that is...

Printer Friendly Format Nation Monks’ thriving coffee business helps attract young men to monastery By Sheila Archambault Posted: 11/16/2009 WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A small Carmelite monastery in Clark, Wyo., has seen its coffee sales take off in the last couple of years, and the growing awareness of its coffee business has brought an added benefit to the community -- more members. "In the past two years, the monks themselves have grown from six to 15 monks and all the new monks are under 25, some right out of high school," said Susie George, a neighbor of the monks who...

The new set of nuns has moved from Nebraska to inhabit the Elysburg Monastery, which had been home to a revered group of Carmelite nuns who moved to Danville in January 2008.... ...Mother Stella expressed the nuns' happiness and excitement in living in the Elysburg community. "We are very privileged to be able to come back and open this monastery," she said, noting the close bond the nuns have formed with former Elysburg Carmelites, who are now referred to as the Danville Carmelites.... At the chapel, an Extraordinary, or Latin Mass, will be celebrated Monday through Friday at 7 a.m....

We recently had a chance to talk with Brother Simon Mary of the Cross, a monk at the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Clark, Wyoming. Fr. Daniel Mary of Jesus Crucified, the Prior of the monastery, offered us this rare occasion to speak with Br. Simon Mary, in the hope that the story of his vocation would help other young men in their discernment, and inspire the prayers and generosity of our readers to preserve this monastic way of life and provide for the young men God is calling. Br. Simon Mary took us from his early,...

We recently had a chance to talk with Brother Simon Mary of the Cross, a monk at the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Clark, Wyoming. Fr. Daniel Mary of Jesus Crucified, the Prior of the monastery, offered us this rare occasion to speak with Br. Simon Mary, in the hope that the story of his vocation would help other young men in their discernment.... Br. Simon Mary: I was born in 1984. I grew up in Cambridge, a small rural town in New York on the Vermont border. NOR: Only 24 years old -- you're still a...

In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Communist troops murdered three Carmelite nuns at Guadalajara, Spain. They were: Sr. Maria of the Angels of St. Joseph (born Marciana Valtierra Tordesillas), thirty-one years oId; Sr. Maria Pilar of St. Francis Borgia (Jacoba Martinez Garcia), fifty-eight; Sr. Teresa of the Child Jesus (Eusebia Garcia y Garcia), twenty-seven. On July 22, with soldiers roaming the city, the eighteen nuns of the Monastery of St. Joseph scattered through the streets disguised in secular clothes. Some found shelter with Catholic families, and Srs. Maria of the Angels, Maria Pilar, and Teresa, along with two other...

The "rules of enclosure" that have isolated Carmelite sisters in Schenectady from the outside world for 82 years have been relaxed lately.Mother John of the Cross, prioress of the Monastery of St. Teresa of Jesus, described helpers trooping into the monastery to pack boxes into vans and drive them to Pittsford, New York -- the sisters' new home."What's necessary must be done," Mother John shrugged -- an adage that also fits the Discalced Carmelite community's move to the Diocese of Rochester.Time to leaveIt's been three years since the sisters at the cloistered monastery began discerning whether to leave the Albany...

COIMBRA, Portugal, FEB. 21, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Sister Lucia was the "jewel" of the Carmelite convent of Coimbra, but within its walls she lived exactly like the other women religious, says the prioress. "Age had made her very frail and the doctor advised her not to catch cold, so she heard Mass from her cell and we took her Holy Communion," said the prioress, Sister Maria Celina of Jesus Crucified, in an interview on the program "Ecclesia" broadcasted by the agency of the same name. Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart, the last witness of the apparitions of...

From the crusades in the Holy Land came the desire to follow Christ in his homeland by living a life of solitude and service. One such group settled on Mount Carmel, a place inspired by the figure and spirit of the Prophet Elijah. They wanted a life of prayer, and work that would enhance their spiritual life. At times, these original hermits found themselves at service to the pilgrims who sought their hospitality and spiritual direction. The Church officially recognized their Rule of life as an Order in 1206. . . Carmel in Europe In the 13th century the...

BODY OF CLOISTERED U.S. NUN WHO DIED IN 1939 FOUND 'INTACT' WITH GREEN PALM The spokesman for a monastery in Pennsylvania has confirmed that the body of a nun who died 63 years ago -- in 1939 -- appears to be "intact" and holding a palm that remains green. The discovery was made last August during renovation of a mausoleum in Coopersburg, about seven miles southeast of Allentown, where the nun, Mother Therese of Jesus, founded the Carmelite Monastery of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi. While there are a number of instances in...