1. A few parishes in midtown Manhattan have Eucharistic adoration during the day. Lots of people flow in and out. Others stay for a while. I sometimes think it’s a miracle how many people do and maybe even sometimes without intending to – especially at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
If you’re a Catholic in New York and you’re angry and disappointed and disgusted and brokenhearted and not knowing who can be trusted, maybe consider joining me at 3 p.m. Friday in one of those churches (or anywhere there is a tabernacle with an open door)? St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the Mary chapel, St. Agnes by Grand Central, St. Francis Assisi by Penn Station all have afternoon adoration times. If you’re in a big city somewhere else, I suspect you’re likely to. (D.C. option: 4:15-5:15 at the Dominican House of Studies.) This is often a good place to start if you don’t know where to go (but it’s often good to check against a parish’s website or make a phone call).
If your parish doesn’t have such hours, get a group to volunteer to start up a weekly holy hour for reparation for evil in the Church (and perhaps, too, for the courage and holiness of priests). Every Friday evening? Every Saturday morning?
2. In that spirit:
Please join me this Friday, August 17th, in a fast in reparation for the sins of clergy who have preyed on the vulnerable and those who have protected and enabled them. We also pray for justice and healing for the victims.
— Sr. Theresa Aletheia (@pursuedbytruth) August 15, 2018
And this prayer guide is offered if you’re organizing something.
[UPDATE: That link has now been fixed. My apologies.]
3. Another prayer and fasting idea:
From now until Christmas I am going to fast daily from sundown to noon the next day for the souls of those who have been harmed by apostate priests and bishops who have despised the love of Jesus, desecrating temples of the living God.
— C. C. Pecknold (@ccpecknold) August 15, 2018
4. The U.S. Catholic bishops today on the “moral catastrophe.”
5. And from Rome:
Declaration of Greg Burke, Director of the Holy See Press Office
re: Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report
Regarding the report made public in Pennsylvania this week, there are two words that can express the feelings faced with these horrible crimes: shame and sorrow. The Holy See treats with great seriousness the work of the Investigating Grand Jury of Pennsylvania and the lengthy Interim Report it has produced. The Holy See condemns unequivocally the sexual abuse of minors.
The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible. Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur.
Most of the discussion in the report concerns abuses before the early 2000s. By finding almost no cases after 2002, the Grand Jury’s conclusions are consistent with previous studies showing that Catholic Church reforms in the United States drastically reduced the incidence of clergy child abuse. The Holy See encourages continued reform and vigilance at all levels of the Catholic Church, to help ensure the protection of minors and vulnerable adults from harm. The Holy See also wants to underscore the need to comply with the civil law, including mandatory child abuse reporting requirements.
The Holy Father understands well how much these crimes can shake the faith and the spirt of believers and reiterates the call to make every effort to create a safe environment for minors and vulnerable adults in the Church and in all of society.
Victims should know that the Pope is on their side. Those who have suffered are his priority, and the Church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent.
6. Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.: Cleansing the Church of Clerical Sacrilege
7. Fr. Gerry Murray: Some Home Truths about the McCarrick Case
8. Megan McArdle on the bureaucratization of evil.
9. Sohrab Ahmari wants to see some St. Paul.
By the way, Sohrab is a convert and has written a memoir about how that came about. I was honored to read a galley copy and it is beautifully done and I think will inspire people maybe even especially in the midst of this. It’s upcoming from Ignatius Press.
1o. This is in the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer of the church, today from Gregory of Nyssa on Christian perfection:
When we consider that Christ is the true light, having nothing in common with deceit, we learn that our own life also must shine with the rays of that true light. Now these rays of the Sun of Justice are the virtues which pour out to enlighten us so that we may put away the works of darkness and walk honorably as in broad daylight. When we reject the deeds of darkness and do everything in the light of day, we become light and, as light should, we give light to others by our actions.
If we truly think of Christ as our source of holiness, we shall refrain from anything wicked or impure in thought or act and thus show ourselves to be worthy bearers of his name. For the quality of holiness is shown not by what we say but by what we do in life.
ALSO:
Part of a conversation I had with Terry Polakovic, founder of a Catholic women’s apostolate called ENDOW.
I keep reading St. Catherine of Siena and here she is writing in 1376 to an abbot:
Your unworthy daughter Caterina, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, sends you greetings, longing to see you bathed and drowned in the blood of God’s Son. That blood will make every bitterness seem sweet to us and every burden light. It will enable you to follow in the footsteps of Christ, who said he was the good shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. So, father, my soul longs to see you a true shepherd, stripped of all self-centeredness. I would have you courageously keep your wide-open eyes fixed on God’s honor and the salvation of other people. And do keep a good watch, lest the devil rob you of your sheep.
How pleasing and sweet it will be for both of us if I see you unconcerned about death or life, honor or shame, or any scorn or injury or harassment the world or those in your care might inflict on you – but vigilantly concerned about offenses against God. Here concentrate your solicitude, to prove yourself a shepherd and a true gardener—a shepherd by correcting, a gardener by turning over the soul. I mean turning up disordered living beneath an apparent order, rooting out vice and planting virtue in its place as much as you can with the help of gentle divine grace, grace that comes in abundance to those who hunger and long for God.
A little more from her here.
You may be interested in Fr. Thomas Berg’s Hurting in the Church. (When it came out last year, he told me “We still need a cultural revolution in our chanceries.”)
I have a social-media habit of tweeting out lines from homilies. Usually one a day. Something striking that might be helpful to anyone hungry for a little spiritual nudge/nourishment in a perhaps unlikely place. Anyway,
I was last in Rome in February at during a homily at a Missionaries of Charity house near the Vatican, the homily was about spiritual warfare and I tweeted this. It’s been a daily meditation and obviously ought to be more urgently.