Litany of Praise

A friend of mine wrote to share the news that she had received ecclesiastical approbation for a prayer litany she had composed, the Litany of Praise. In her letter she said I could distribute it at my discretion. Given an impramatur from none other than Cardinal Dolan, how could I not?

Here's a sample:

Praised by Jesus in His Transfiguration, now and forever.
Praised be Jesus in His Institution of the Eucharist, now and forever
Praised be Jesus in His agony in the garden, now and forever

Pray and download the whole thing with this link. Share and enjoy!

RIP: Fr. Benedict Groeschel

In  the quiet of the afternoon of the feast of St. Francis I got the news that Fr. Benedict Joseph Groeschel, CFR, had passed from this life.

I met Fr. Benedict a few times over the years: a couple of times at Capuchin events, once on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the CFR novitiate in Newark, and once at a celebration of Confirmation at The Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York, at which Cardinal Dolan presided.

As I prayed for Fr. Benedict's eternal rest last night, a couple bits of gratefulness came to mind in particular. The first was for a television series he had on EWTN in the early 90s. If I remember rightly, it was called The Truths of Salvation. I don't remember if I was watching it while still a 'seeker' or if I was already baptized, but that show provided a lot of my early catechesis. The other thing I thought of was Fr. Benedict's book, The Courage to be Chaste, which was a great help to me at one time.

Requiescat in pace.

President Dolan

In honor of his election yesterday, some of my favorite Archbishop Dolan posts:

Installation Mass in New York

The Clergy Cookout

On the Immaculate Conception

Serving Confirmation Mass

Confirmation with Archbishop Dolan

Yesterday Archbishop Timothy Dolan offered Mass and confirmed almost thirty young men at The Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York. One of our friars works there and had prepared the boys for the sacrament. Two of them also received their first Holy Communion at the same Mass. My confrere was pleasantly surprised to have the Archbishop accept the invitation, and called on me to serve the Mass. (I'm known for my love of the ministry of acolyte and ability to stand on formality when necessary.)

The Archbishop's instruction to the boys was short and very well done. He acknowledged right away that they had already known hard struggles and violence in their lives. He invited them to engage the real battle of the spiritual struggle within, and assured them that God was ready for fight on their behalf.

The small chapel was packed. There was hardly enough room to do what needed to be done for the ritual, but we all managed. The Archbishop's secretary was exceedingly gracious to me; several times he anticipated troubles or missing equipment and saved us from crisis and embarrassment. I had one inspiration to play with him, but I suppressed it: when I was invited to assist with Holy Communion, "after His Excellency gives Communion to the confirmandi," I wanted to ask if they weren't confirmati at that point.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR concelebrated. (He began working at The Children's Village fifty years ago as his first assignment after ordination) Both he and the Archbishop gave me academic advice, warnings, and contacts when they heard I was on my way to Boston College.

May those who were confirmed yesterday continue to grow in the fullness of the Spirit. Amen.

Tim Dolan on the Immaculate Conception

Last night, on the vigil of the Immaculate Conception, here in the Yonkers vicariate of the Archdiocese of New York, we had our official visit by our new archbishop, who came to offer Mass with his priests, deacons, and people in the mother church of Yonkers, dedicated to Mary under that same title.

Archbishop Dolan gave a homily that was at once encouraging, entertaining, scriptural, good catechesis, and included a vocal solo.


Our first parents, though they had been given everything, refused divine love through disobedience and said "no" to God. After that God could have said to them, literally, "go to hell." But He didn't. Instead, our God is so good and so generous that He "won't take no for an answer." God refused to take our 'no' as a final response. So, as soon as our first parents had sinned, God began to sing a song...



And so began the long Advent, the long wait for the Savior. God prepared the New Eve to be the mother of this New Adam, and her fiat, her "let it be done to my according to your word," became the 'yes' that reversed the 'no' of our first parents. How was she able to make such a total assent to the work of God within her? She had been preserved from the corruption of sin from the first moment of her conception, making her free to conceive the Word of God in all spiritual freedom.

Our God won't take 'no' for an answer, and he takes the 'yes' of sinless Mary as the beginning of the new creation. Amen.

It was an enjoyable and encouraging evening. I'm happy for the Archdiocese of New York, and I offered the Mass for the ministry of our new Archbishop. May God furnish him with every good gift and grace and he bears the burden of shepherd and teacher.


_______________________________
Extra feast day credit for mendicants and mendicant sympathizers: Anybody care to rehearse St. Thomas's trouble with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (see ST 3,27,2) and/or describe how it might be used as a reductio ad absurdum for the implicit Christology above? What then is the alternative?

Tastykake

The archbishop was just being interviewed by the large priest who is covering the bishop's meeting on the Catholic TV of the diocese of Rockville Centre. They were speaking about how Cardinal Rigali had given each bishop a Tastykake to settle a bet over the World Series.

Large priest: "Well, today I may have my first Tastykake."

Archbishop Dolan: "I find that hard to believe."

Watch the bishop's meeting here.

Book Review: The New Men

One of the brothers passed on to me Brian Murphy's The New Men: Inside the Vatican's Elite School for American Priests. It's not a new book, but I liked it so much that I want to recommend it.

I started the book because I thought I might learn something about the mysterious high echelons of the diocesan priesthood here in America, or at least something about what it's like to be a seminarian. As a religious, especially one who studied not in the seminary but at a "school of theology" where a lot of my most interesting and intellectually challenging classmates were Catholic laywomen, I'm pretty ignorant of both topics.

If you are also interested in a glimpse into these hidden worlds, I don't think this is the book for you. I didn't feel like I learned much about seminary life or the elite clerical world. Fortunately, though, The New Men does something much more valuable and interesting.

The chapters, set loosely around the liturgical year, follow the lives of a handful of first-year seminarians at the North American College in Rome. We also meet their rector, Timothy Dolan, now archbishop of New York. They are grateful, prayerful, and in love with God. Their lives illustrate the very varied backgrounds and personalities out of which the Holy Spirit draws vocations.

They also struggle mightily. They pray and reflect as they wonder if they can accept priestly celibacy, or if they can even 'do it.' One works through the question of being called not to the diocesan priesthood but to the life of a monk. Another tries to make a responsible discernment about where he is meant to be, only to run afoul of some the ugliness of church politics. Not without some agony, each works to know what of himself he needs to bring to his vocation, and what of his former life must be left behind and cut off. They work on their prayer. To see this last element, which most of us (quite rightly) keep so private, is one of the real treasures of the book.

I would recommend the book to anyone who would appreciate an insight into the joys and struggles that go into the discernment of a vocation in the Church. Priests and religious do not just fall out of the sky or hatch somewhere fully formed. These seminarians knew much joy and wonder, but some wrenching struggles as well.

As I finished the book on the bus today, I found myself wanting to pray for the men I had met, to thank God for their willingness to be on the journey with the Lord. I suppose that most of them would be priests now, though some not. Probably at least one of them will reappear as a bishop one day. Whatever it is they are up to in the Lord, I thank God and them for the humanness, honesty, and love of God. To be a witness of these is the real gift of The New Men.

I Don't Get It

Sometimes I feel like I don't understand what's going on in the Catholic Church here in the U.S.A. From certain points of view, things look healthy and encouraging. From other angles, though, it looks like things are falling apart in a catastrophic way.

On the one hand certain things I see and hear make me think the Catholic Church is full of life and zeal: the pastoral visit of Benedict XVI, the installation of Archbishop Dolan here in New York, religious orders growing because they are willing to reject indifferentism and relativism and embrace the values of traditional religious life, Catholic blogs and internet evangelization full of zeal and erudition, converts entering the Church from separated ecclesial communities and even from godlessness, martyrdom increasing in the world, etc.

But from other points of view the state of the Church can seem pretty dire: There are general problems, such as church closings and their attendant troubles here in the Northeast and the Midwest, our continuing embrace of denial about the root cultural problems of clergy sexual abuse, a lack of zeal for souls and pastoral answers as populations shift and economic problems become spiritual dangers to individuals and families, etc. There are also very disturbing aspects of my own individual experience, such as presiding at funerals time after time in which it is clear that few of the mourners have been to Mass any time recently--and for which I sometimes receive the most discouraging comment I can imagine, "Mom (or whoever) would have loved that." *sigh*--as well as "eulogies" that make a mockery of the Lord's sanctuary with foul language and drinking stories, how only a very small proportion of families with whom I celebrate infant baptism are ever seen again, practicing Catholics whom, when you actually get to know them, seem to lack even the most basic catechesis, etc.

So sometimes I feel like I have one foot in a devout and energetic Church and the other in a Church in a tailspin of decadence and decline. Would the real Catholic Church in the United States please stand up?

Timmy Dolan's Backyard Barbecue

Yesterday I went to one of archbishop Dolan's "cookouts" for the priests of the Archdiocese of New York. Of course it wasn't outside, because it was a rainy and gloomy day, but in the big room in the seminary gym where we are occasionally summoned for meetings and presentations.

It's a little bit intimidating to walk into a room full of a few hundred priests (including a few bishops, too.) To me, priests--by appearance--seem to fall into a handful of types, so each one looks like you know him or must have met him somewhere along the way. We were instructed to dress casually, and most seemed to have complied. You can always tell which priests generally wear clerics all the time and which religious their habits, because their casual clothes will be really out of date or terribly mismatched. Others, of course, are as stylish as could be. Following his own advice, the archbishop soon appeared wearing a Milwaukee Brewers shirt and a baseball cap from the Yonkers police. He worked the room, using one hand to shake hands with each priest and other to hold his beer. He made a forceful and encouraging impression, I have to admit.

There were long tables covered with picnic gingham and set with silver colored plastic cutlery. There was a lot of food: hot dogs, hamburgers, corn, chili, chicken, ribs, sausage and peppers, and potato salad. The woman serving the hamburgers turned out to be a Salvadoreña and another friar and I talked to her a little about El Salvador. Seeing that he didn't have one, I told the bartender to put out a tip cup. Priests are almost invariably cheap this way, but that was no reason to give up, I said.

All in all, it was very enjoyable. There's another one coming up for lay religious, and some of our friars are going. Do you think I could get away with it if I went too?

Archbishop Dolan's Installation

I went to the installation with three other friars, taking the subway to Rockefeller Center. Approaching the Palace Hotel behind the Cathedral, there were all kinds of great photos to be missed: a young man in a beautiful cassock eating a giant sandwich, a canon regular in full regalia guffawing on his cell phone.

At the hotel the vesting room was like a clerical mosh pit littered with black jackets and briefcases. From there we were herded onto 51st St. on the north side of the Cathedral and lined up in several columns of two by two. At this point we stood for a while, and it was here that you saw everybody: more deacons and priests than I had ever seen in one place before, canons regular, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Knights of Malta, the Knights of Columbus, and others that I couldn't identify.

Eventually the procession began, and we were led past archbishop Dolan, who was greeting everyone from the north side entrance of the Cathedral. Behind him the many cardinals who were in attendance sat like a kind of entourage. We turned onto Fifth Ave. and entered the Cathedral. We were led around the north side of the sanctuary to chairs that were set up in front of St. Louis's altar. (If you know St. Patrick's, this is the altar just to the ad orientem left of the Lady Chapel.) From there you couldn't see much, but there were TV monitors for us.

Once the procession was finally over, it seems to me that Cardinal Egan made a little speech before Archbishop Siambi made a long one, which he read in the pulpit from a folded set of papers held right in front of his face. Finally the apostolic letter of transfer was read and taken to the altar to be notarized. Dolan was led to the cathedra and then the Mass began in earnest with the Gloria and we were on our way.

The first reading was proclaimed in Spanish, the psalm was beautiful, and then the same deacon who had read the Gospel at the Chrism Mass got up to do it again. He sang it this time, and good for him; it was Luke's account of the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and that's a long one.

Dolan did very well preaching. He was friendly, reverent toward both the past and present of New York in many ways, spoke to his mother and called her "Mom," and when he came to the pro-life part he got a standing ovation. Continuing on his pro-life theme, calling the Church the "mother bear" who would fight for her cubs in danger, we all applauded again. Dolan didn't deny the challenges before us, though, which he identified as the presence of the death of the Lord within his Church, but urged us all together to turn all the highways and streets of the archdiocese into the road to Emmaus on which the Lord himself draws near and walks with us.

The intercessions were proclaimed in several languages, beginning with one in Irish that wasn't in the program. The offertory went quickly, and Dolan prayed the first preface of Easter, in which he said, "...in this Easter season" instead of the "on this Easter Day" appropriate for the whole octave. He whipped through Eucharistic Prayer II and we were at the Communion Rite.

After Holy Communion, many ciboria ended up in the tabernacle behind us on St. Louis's altar. Trouble was, the mensa was too wide and the tabernacle too high for the average priest to reach it. So, lifting a transitional deacon onto a folding chair, the Blessed Sacrament was safely reserved. Later, a very tall priest was impressed into service so that the Sacrament might be reposed with a little more dignity. A vigil light was brought, but because nobody smokes anymore, there was no way to light it. The dissapointed server left and returned a little later with a light that was already lit.

For us random presbyters, there was no procession out, so we left through the back door, returned to the mosh pit of now unvesting clergy and knights, returned to our parish by 207th St., and went out for a beer.

It was a very happy day. We are grateful to God for our new Archbishop, and pray for every gift of the Holy Spirit as he begins his ministry among us.

Timothy Dolan is Following Me

I made my novitiate outside Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in the northern reaches of the archdiocese of Milwaukee. As Alice Cooper taught us all, Milwaukee means "the good land." During that year, Timothy Dolan appeared as our new archbishop. Now, as I work as a parish priest in the Archdiocese of New York, he is announced again as my new archbishop. Of course this means that His Excellency Archbishop Dolan will soon be His Eminence Cardinal Dolan.

Even though today is the stress of gearing up for Ash Wednesday, I'm already looking forward to the installation on Easter Wednesday.

Check out this great photo of him over on Whispers. Not only is it cool that he's throwing a pitch at Miller Park, where I once saw a game with a mysterious man known only as "Uncle Runkel," but it gives me great comfort to have an archbishop who sort of knows how to grip a fastball.