INQUIRER Politics
MANILA, Philippines—Moves in the House of Representatives to set the election of delegates to a convention in October to amend the Constitution confirm the “hidden agenda” behind President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s decision to run for a congressional seat, according to a Catholic bishop.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Czech cardinal warns: Muslims are conquering Europe
It might help also if you pointed out that we don't just have to contend with the pagan culture on the outside, but the modernist, neo-Marxist culture within the Church, which derides, mocks and ridicules everything the Church has ever steadfastly defended in the past.
January 06, 2010
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who has served as Archbishop of Prague since 1991, has warned in an interview that “if Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamized.”
“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims-- which is actually happening gradually,” he said. Muslims “easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”
“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then,” he added. “Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”
Denouncing Europe’s “pagan environment” and “atheistic style of life,” Cardinal Vlk said that “Neither the free market nor freedom without responsibility is strong enough to form the basis of society. Not even democracy alone is a panacea unless it is embedded in God.”
The Czech press is speculating that Pope Benedict will name a successor to the 77-year-old cardinal within days.
Link to original, Catholic Culture...
January 06, 2010
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who has served as Archbishop of Prague since 1991, has warned in an interview that “if Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamized.”
“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims-- which is actually happening gradually,” he said. Muslims “easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”
“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then,” he added. “Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”
Denouncing Europe’s “pagan environment” and “atheistic style of life,” Cardinal Vlk said that “Neither the free market nor freedom without responsibility is strong enough to form the basis of society. Not even democracy alone is a panacea unless it is embedded in God.”
The Czech press is speculating that Pope Benedict will name a successor to the 77-year-old cardinal within days.
Link to original, Catholic Culture...
The Anglo-Catholic reflects on the events Thiberville
The response to the usual ecclesiastical bullying on the part of modernist ordinaries at places like Thiberville has precedent in history. At some point people get fed up and decide to do something against the effrontery of a class of sneering ecclesiastics who wish merely to subvert and destroy. Their sly jibes, administrative demotion of actual Catholicism, petty persecution of its exponents is designed to make Catholicism go away while they wed what remains of its physical plant to the predominant secular vision; it would explain why so many of them are so keen on advocating the same sorts of things throughout the world, as if a mock magisterium were giving some order to their efforts on behalf of the religion of man. Again, it's the part of Catholics to resist these things.
It reminds us of that time when the SSPX stormed and took over a church not so long ago. This is a response they don't expect.
The Anglo-Catholic
The events of Thiberville have provoked me to a reflection about the pastoral ministry in the diocese and the parish. I find parishes and pastoral matters as fascinating as theology and liturgy. I think this issue is highly relevant in our present Anglican communities and the future Ordinariates we hope to become in the near future. I have touched upon the issue of Thiberville, which is not that of the traditionalist reaction, but rather a conflict between two ecclesiologies and pastoral visions. We are moving towards the communion of the Catholic Church and must be open-eyed about what this means, both at the level of the Universal Church and the local diocesan Churches.
We know that what is distinctly Catholic about the Church is the liturgical and sacramental life that owes everything to the Apostolic Priesthood. If there were no priesthood, there would be no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no community or communion. This Catholic notion of the Church is founded upon the presence of the incarnate Christ in the Church on earth.
[cut]
This is the war, the battle, the real enemy we have to fight with spiritual weapons. That is why the Pope needs traditional Anglicans as much as he needs traditional Catholics and the Orthodox. All hands on deck!
Read entire article...
Related Stories:
Arm in Arm in France, Norman townsfolk block Bishop from entering sanctuary, here.
More response on the event in Thiberville here.
It reminds us of that time when the SSPX stormed and took over a church not so long ago. This is a response they don't expect.
The Anglo-Catholic
The events of Thiberville have provoked me to a reflection about the pastoral ministry in the diocese and the parish. I find parishes and pastoral matters as fascinating as theology and liturgy. I think this issue is highly relevant in our present Anglican communities and the future Ordinariates we hope to become in the near future. I have touched upon the issue of Thiberville, which is not that of the traditionalist reaction, but rather a conflict between two ecclesiologies and pastoral visions. We are moving towards the communion of the Catholic Church and must be open-eyed about what this means, both at the level of the Universal Church and the local diocesan Churches.
We know that what is distinctly Catholic about the Church is the liturgical and sacramental life that owes everything to the Apostolic Priesthood. If there were no priesthood, there would be no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no community or communion. This Catholic notion of the Church is founded upon the presence of the incarnate Christ in the Church on earth.
[cut]
This is the war, the battle, the real enemy we have to fight with spiritual weapons. That is why the Pope needs traditional Anglicans as much as he needs traditional Catholics and the Orthodox. All hands on deck!
Read entire article...
Related Stories:
Arm in Arm in France, Norman townsfolk block Bishop from entering sanctuary, here.
More response on the event in Thiberville here.
1.7 Million Attended Papal Audiences Last year
It's interesting stuff, but doesn't begin to compare in numbers with Sr. Joan Chittister's audiences of hundreds.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Women priests will no longer be contained
Priestess Jeaney gets some help from Rip Taylor at a Bacchanalian celebration, where young men, if there are any present, may be sacrificed. Perhaps young men fear the women dominated Church because they fear being subject to the fate of Pentheus?Using spurious scholarship to support their claims, these women on a mission officiate at ceremonies where journalists often outnumber participants. A small number of people really want this to happen, but it's a sure-fire way to empty a church as most of America's main-line denominations are discovering as they sink into irrelevance; unfortunately for them, sneaky PR gadjetry often enhances the hilarity of their position rather than lead them to consciousness of the problem. That's what makes satire so wonderful, is the blissful ignorance of a man, or in this case a woman, about to step into a casm of well-deserved ridicule. Of course, the practice of allowing women on the altar at all is often confusing; as much as we might revere particular women, they don't belong up there any more than the elderly Knights of Columbus guys who insist on "doing" the readings on Sundays in somber colored suit and tie to the deafening tedium of the scant "massgoers" who endure it all, again. From an aesthetic standpoint, it demeans the liturgy, it's part of an overall programme to mashe everything down to the level of pablum which most men don't find very necessary or enervating.
The overweening presence of women in parish life, in liturgical functions is simply more evidence, certainly stronger evidence then their archaeological "evidence" of wymyn Bishops, that there is a common causality between low participation in Church by marriageable adult males. It's an opportunity to take a nap or stay in bed on Sundays.
Archbishop calls priests to holiness and orthodoxy :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Archbishop calls priests to holiness and orthodoxy :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
“The People of God have the right to hear the complete Word from the lips of their priests...They also have the right to receive genuine doctrine from us, without reducing it, in close communion with the Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops."
“The People of God have the right to hear the complete Word from the lips of their priests...They also have the right to receive genuine doctrine from us, without reducing it, in close communion with the Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops."
Vietnamese Communists Threaten Redemptorists
Remember when we were told by George Weigel and Francis Fukuyama that Communism was dead and that we were entering into a new golden age? Don't you believe it.
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) – The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City issued a statement in which it slammed the city's Redemptorist community for going against "the Party's policies and the nation's laws". Catholics now fear more anti-priest violence. Signed by the Committee's chairman Pham Ngoc Huu, the statement was released on 28 December and published by all state media.
The statement accused the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which is located on the south side of the city, of organising mass prayer vigils "with the participation of many priests, religious and lay people from other regions of the country without the permission of local authorities in order to distort, falsely accuse and criticise the government."
The press release also said that the Redemptorists used the church bulletin board to "post articles and images leading believers to misunderstand the Party's policies and the nation's laws".
In the last two years, the Redemptorists' church has indeed held a number of prayer vigils in support of its sister church in Thai Ha (Hanoi), which has been fighting to regain its land, unfairly seized by the city.
Since then the Church and the faithful of Our Lady of Perpetual Help have been under close surveillance by uniformed and plain clothes police, who tape and take picture of those who take part in their activities.
Local authorities have also installed loudspeakers on buildings surrounding the church to disrupt the church's services, including the vigils.
The statement singled out the vigil of 27 July, which was held for two priests brutally beaten up in Dong Hoi (cf J.B. An Dang, "Priest beaten into a coma by police. Catholics Protest throughout Vietnam," in AsiaNews.it, 28 July 2009).
Similarly, People's Committee Chairman Huu singled out Fr Joseph Le Quang Uy, a well-known local pro-life activist, for giving "a hand to hostile forces, and reactionaries to conduct propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam "
Father Le Quang was equally accused of “taking advantage of his role in leading prayer vigils to distort the social, political and economic situation of Vietnam," which in turn gave him an opportunity to "denounce the government for human rights violations” and thus "undermine national unity.”
In the last few months, the clergyman also criticised the government for allowing bauxite mining in areas in central Vietnam inhabited by Montagnards. For this reason, he was attacked by state media, which called for his conviction on charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison (see J.B. An Dang, "Redemptorist priest could be accused of plotting to overthrow Vietnam’s Communist regime," in AsiaNews.it, 2 July 2009).
More broadly, Huu has accused the Redemptorists of failing to heed the Pope's instructions. During an ad limina visit by Vietnamese bishops, Benedict XVI had in fact said that "a good Catholic is a good citizen."
A Redemptorist spokesman, Fr Peter Nguyen Van Khai, responded by accusing the authorities of distorting the sense of the Pope's words, because the Holy Father had also called for "a healthy collaboration between the Church and the State through dialogue.” Unfortunately, the government seems unwilling to accept such collaboration.
For many Catholics, the authorities seem more likely to resort to violence and the campaign against the Redemptorists appears to be but the start of a new anti-priest campaign.
Link to original...
h/t: Pewsitter
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) – The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City issued a statement in which it slammed the city's Redemptorist community for going against "the Party's policies and the nation's laws". Catholics now fear more anti-priest violence. Signed by the Committee's chairman Pham Ngoc Huu, the statement was released on 28 December and published by all state media.
The statement accused the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which is located on the south side of the city, of organising mass prayer vigils "with the participation of many priests, religious and lay people from other regions of the country without the permission of local authorities in order to distort, falsely accuse and criticise the government."
The press release also said that the Redemptorists used the church bulletin board to "post articles and images leading believers to misunderstand the Party's policies and the nation's laws".
In the last two years, the Redemptorists' church has indeed held a number of prayer vigils in support of its sister church in Thai Ha (Hanoi), which has been fighting to regain its land, unfairly seized by the city.
Since then the Church and the faithful of Our Lady of Perpetual Help have been under close surveillance by uniformed and plain clothes police, who tape and take picture of those who take part in their activities.
Local authorities have also installed loudspeakers on buildings surrounding the church to disrupt the church's services, including the vigils.
The statement singled out the vigil of 27 July, which was held for two priests brutally beaten up in Dong Hoi (cf J.B. An Dang, "Priest beaten into a coma by police. Catholics Protest throughout Vietnam," in AsiaNews.it, 28 July 2009).
Similarly, People's Committee Chairman Huu singled out Fr Joseph Le Quang Uy, a well-known local pro-life activist, for giving "a hand to hostile forces, and reactionaries to conduct propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam "
Father Le Quang was equally accused of “taking advantage of his role in leading prayer vigils to distort the social, political and economic situation of Vietnam," which in turn gave him an opportunity to "denounce the government for human rights violations” and thus "undermine national unity.”
In the last few months, the clergyman also criticised the government for allowing bauxite mining in areas in central Vietnam inhabited by Montagnards. For this reason, he was attacked by state media, which called for his conviction on charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison (see J.B. An Dang, "Redemptorist priest could be accused of plotting to overthrow Vietnam’s Communist regime," in AsiaNews.it, 2 July 2009).
More broadly, Huu has accused the Redemptorists of failing to heed the Pope's instructions. During an ad limina visit by Vietnamese bishops, Benedict XVI had in fact said that "a good Catholic is a good citizen."
A Redemptorist spokesman, Fr Peter Nguyen Van Khai, responded by accusing the authorities of distorting the sense of the Pope's words, because the Holy Father had also called for "a healthy collaboration between the Church and the State through dialogue.” Unfortunately, the government seems unwilling to accept such collaboration.
For many Catholics, the authorities seem more likely to resort to violence and the campaign against the Redemptorists appears to be but the start of a new anti-priest campaign.
Link to original...
h/t: Pewsitter
Archbishop of San Francisco supports Pro-Abort CCHD Program
Washington, DC, January 5, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, the American Life League is reporting.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
Link to original...
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
Link to original...
Bishop Yao Liang, 87, Imprisoned in China for Loyalty to the Vatican, Dies
This is another great article by the usually very Marxist New York Times. The new owner of the paper, or the largest shareholder, who kept the paper from bankruptcy might be pro-immigration, but he might also pushign this paper to be more favoreable to the Church as well. This article owns that the Chicoms are persecuting the Catholic Church and it owns the heroic resistance of a saintly Bishop. Here's a life worth celebrating.
Published: January 5, 2010
BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.
Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.
Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.
China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.
For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.
The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.
Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.
Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.
“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”
His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.
Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.
Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.
Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.
Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.
Published: January 5, 2010
BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.
Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.
Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.
China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.
For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.
The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.
Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.
Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.
“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”
His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.
Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.
Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.
Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.
Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.
Rebel Priest James Kavanaugh Received Apostolic Pardon before Death
Father Z. Comments on the death of the rebellious Fr. James Kavanaugh who died recently. Before he died, Father James asked for Apostolic Pardon. This is all the more important, because Father James was a famous dissident priest who was opposed to clerical celibacy and thought the Church had to change to meet the times and not the other way around.
h/t: Comrade Ray at Stella Borealis
h/t: Comrade Ray at Stella Borealis
Remembering a Lasallian Missionary to Central America
Brother James Miller gave his life for God, and now the Roman Catholic Church has begun the process to make the Saint Mary's University graduate a saint.
Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.
Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.
Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.
It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.
Passion for education
Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.
His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.
Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.
As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]
Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.
The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.
“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in
his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”
Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.
“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”
Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.
Trip back home, then a new assignment
Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.
“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.
In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.
“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”
This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.
Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.
Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.
“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”
As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.
And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.
“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”
Gunned down, with no justice for his death
Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.
Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.
Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.
The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.
Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.
“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”
Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.
“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”
Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”
Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward
Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”
Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.
“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.
“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”
The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.
“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.
“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”
Link to original...
h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis
Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.
Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.
Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.
It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.
Passion for education
Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.
His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.
Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.
As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]
Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.
The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.
“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in
his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”
Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.
“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”
Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.
Trip back home, then a new assignment
Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.
“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.
In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.
“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”
This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.
Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.
Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.
“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”
As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.
And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.
“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”
Gunned down, with no justice for his death
Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.
Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.
Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.
The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.
Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.
“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”
Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.
“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”
Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”
Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward
Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”
Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.
“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.
“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”
The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.
“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.
“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”
Link to original...
h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis
Monday, January 4, 2010
Bishop Peric Regrets Cardinal Schönborn's Visit
Unfortunately, despite the praise or begrudging admission that there are good "fruits" with Medjugorje, there is actually a pre-existing shrine to which these mysteries of repentance and "good" fruits are attributable, but that's not discussed here. What is clear is that the Cardinal is not exactly a welcome visitor in town.
Catholic Culture
The bishop of the local Mostar-Duvno diocese has issued a statement expressing concern about statements issued by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a visit to Medjugorje last week and emphasizing that the cardinal’s visit “does not imply any recognition of the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ related to Medjugorje.”
Bishop Ratko Peric-- who has repeatedly warned against the dangers of “the Medjugorje phenomenon” and strongly discouraged confidence in the alleged apparitions—complained that the visit by Cardinal Schönborn had caused new pastoral problems for his diocese. Citing a list of conflicts and irregularities arising from the activities of the alleged seers and their supporters, Bishop Peric voiced “regret” that the Austrian cardinal’s appearance had lent new credibility to their claims.
Catholic Culture...
Kreuznet.de article...
Bishop Peric might be painfully aware of this series of scandalous events as well. He might as well be having a secular film personality to comment on Medjugorje in his Diocese.
Catholic Culture
The bishop of the local Mostar-Duvno diocese has issued a statement expressing concern about statements issued by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a visit to Medjugorje last week and emphasizing that the cardinal’s visit “does not imply any recognition of the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ related to Medjugorje.”
Bishop Ratko Peric-- who has repeatedly warned against the dangers of “the Medjugorje phenomenon” and strongly discouraged confidence in the alleged apparitions—complained that the visit by Cardinal Schönborn had caused new pastoral problems for his diocese. Citing a list of conflicts and irregularities arising from the activities of the alleged seers and their supporters, Bishop Peric voiced “regret” that the Austrian cardinal’s appearance had lent new credibility to their claims.
Catholic Culture...
Kreuznet.de article...
Bishop Peric might be painfully aware of this series of scandalous events as well. He might as well be having a secular film personality to comment on Medjugorje in his Diocese.
Freezedried Hippie Priest Arrested Protesting Nuclear Weapons
This is so 1980s. First the UK Bishops are opposing Nuclear Weapons and now this sort of activity. This hasn't been in the news for a long time, perhaps the true masters of these men have urged them to renew their tired agendas again?
An Oblate priest who has long protested against America’s nuclear weapons arsenal was found guilty Dec. 21 of criminal mischief and trespassing on government property at the site of a nuclear missile silo in northern Colorado.
Father Carl Kabat, 76, was sentenced by Weld County Court Judge Dana Nichols to time served — 137 days — after his Aug. 6 arrest at the silo near New Raymer, Colo.
Nichols also imposed court costs totaling $254.50 and is allowing prosecutors to file a notice of restitution to Warren Air Force Base for damages. Father Kabat vowed not to pay either bill.
Testifying during the two-day trial, Father Kabat admitted he had cut a fence and entered the property, his most recent action to oppose the nation’s nuclear weapons policies. He had argued that his action was mandated by God’s law in order to oppose a greater evil. However, Nichols instructed jurors to limit their deliberations to whether the priest broke the law in entering the silo site.
The conviction was the 18th for Father Kabat in his prayerful quest to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He has served more than 17 years behind bars since his first protest in 1976.
The trial concluded in time for Father Kabat to return to the Catholic Worker house in St. Louis where he lives and spend the holidays with family and friends.
You can read an earlier post about his arrest here.
Filed under: CNS
Link here...
Fr. Kubat says that you have to put your actions and words together. His acts are strange enough, he likes to dress up as a clown and hammer on nuclear silos during the worst years of the Carter Administration. It's a sure sign of Marxist involvement and of course, he's assocated with the Catholic Worker, another Marxist front group.
Imemorial Mass of Ages to be Said at Rome Priest's Conference
CNS
ROME — Top officials from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments will be principal celebrants at Tridentine liturgies during a conference in Rome this week. The Tridentine rite, in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, is also called the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Vatican congregation, will celebrate solemn pontifical vespers and benediction in the extraordinary form at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located inside the Vatican walls, Jan. 6.
On Jan. 7, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the worship congregation, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary form at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The conference is being co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to mark the Year for Priests.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court, will be the main celebrant at the concluding liturgy of the conference Jan. 8. He will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the ordinary — or new – form in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Archbishop Burke celebrated a Mass in the extraordinary form in St. Peter’s Basilica last October.
Link to original...
ROME — Top officials from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments will be principal celebrants at Tridentine liturgies during a conference in Rome this week. The Tridentine rite, in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, is also called the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Vatican congregation, will celebrate solemn pontifical vespers and benediction in the extraordinary form at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located inside the Vatican walls, Jan. 6.
On Jan. 7, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the worship congregation, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary form at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The conference is being co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to mark the Year for Priests.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court, will be the main celebrant at the concluding liturgy of the conference Jan. 8. He will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the ordinary — or new – form in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Archbishop Burke celebrated a Mass in the extraordinary form in St. Peter’s Basilica last October.
Link to original...
Sister Keehan is Destroying Catholic Hospitals
No doubt, Sr. Carol Keehan is running a multi-million dollar boondoggle of Catholic Healthcare (into the ground), got a firm talking to which forced her to reverse her initial and customarily unwavering support for leftist causes and pro-abort politicians like former Sen to South Dakota, Tom Daschle. If you have agents acting consistently against the stated goals and principles of an organization, pretty soon, it will seriously undermine that organization and event destroy it, but that's the idea. Her sole mission must be to preside over the disestablishment of Catholic Hospitals in the United States.
We remember when Archbishop Burke, formerly of St. Louis, took Catholic Hospitals to task just for this reason and shortly after was summoned to Rome for a "promotion" or a kick upstairs.
CHA president Sister Carol Keehan had issued a statement that said, “now that a public health insurance option is no longer on the table” in the Senate’s health care reform bill, the CHA is “increasingly confident” that a compromise formulated by Catholic Democratic Sen. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.”
Pro-life activists call Casey’s proposal phony. National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson, for example, said the Casey language “apparently would make it the default position for the federal government to subsidize plans that cover abortion on demand, and then permit individual citizens to apply for conscientious objector status.”
A year ago, Keehan defended ill-fated Obama HHS nominee Tom Daschle and his choice for deputy health care director Jeanne Lambrew, both abortion rights supporters.
Most Catholic Americans wrongly assume that Catholic hospitals are dedicated to fighting abortion. In fact, many of the most important people running those hospital systems, and representing them before government, have spent fortunes supporting some of the most powerful pro-abortion politicians in America.
Link to original...
Tolerance for Diversity and Intolerance
Tiberias Haredi Jews want segregated bus lines so that "males and females may sit on seperate sides of the bus" and that they may be generally seperated from non-religious Jews. We like this. We hope the religious Jews beat the non-religious ones, as one interviewee feared would happen, on the head with the Torah.
Someone in Liberal Oregon can't understand, or appreciate cultural diversity, at least not the domesticated kind of diversity one might appreciate on a planned and disneyfied cruise and tour of Uganda. It irks him that somewhere, someone else's truth isn't the same as his for the Ugandan government is getting a democratic law passed which will punish homosexuals with death. It's not exactly the kind of democracy we had in mind though here at the epicenter of cultural niceness where some values are more equal than others.
Perhaps what we need is to get newly Knighted Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on an away team to discuss tolerance and diversity to the Ugandan people, that is, even before economic sanctions hit and Ugandan children might starve in order that the 5-10% of our population that really values these things can feel less impotent than they usually do.
Then perhaps they will understand. Even the usually morally moribound Anglican Church is supporting this legislation which was once, more or less, a standard in European societies, at least until the French Revolution came along.
Uganda has banned radio adverts by witches but before you go around criticizing and getting all superior on the poor Ugandans, we do too, except we tend to call them psychics or palm readers.
Our enthusiasm for Uganda increases when we see that the government not only takes swindlers like fortune tellers to jail and prevents them from preying on ordinary people, but it even takes care of false versions of Catholicism, like the Brazilian Catholic Church, which permits its ministers to marry. Like the Old Catholics in Europe, they have quite a few problems with adult supervisions. By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, though considerably less corrupt than the cannibal conference of the United Nations, and all of the heresy we talk about that it does suffer from, is nothing.
Someone in Liberal Oregon can't understand, or appreciate cultural diversity, at least not the domesticated kind of diversity one might appreciate on a planned and disneyfied cruise and tour of Uganda. It irks him that somewhere, someone else's truth isn't the same as his for the Ugandan government is getting a democratic law passed which will punish homosexuals with death. It's not exactly the kind of democracy we had in mind though here at the epicenter of cultural niceness where some values are more equal than others.
Perhaps what we need is to get newly Knighted Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on an away team to discuss tolerance and diversity to the Ugandan people, that is, even before economic sanctions hit and Ugandan children might starve in order that the 5-10% of our population that really values these things can feel less impotent than they usually do.
Then perhaps they will understand. Even the usually morally moribound Anglican Church is supporting this legislation which was once, more or less, a standard in European societies, at least until the French Revolution came along.
Uganda has banned radio adverts by witches but before you go around criticizing and getting all superior on the poor Ugandans, we do too, except we tend to call them psychics or palm readers.
Our enthusiasm for Uganda increases when we see that the government not only takes swindlers like fortune tellers to jail and prevents them from preying on ordinary people, but it even takes care of false versions of Catholicism, like the Brazilian Catholic Church, which permits its ministers to marry. Like the Old Catholics in Europe, they have quite a few problems with adult supervisions. By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, though considerably less corrupt than the cannibal conference of the United Nations, and all of the heresy we talk about that it does suffer from, is nothing.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Laotian Vocations Growing Slowly
BANGKOK (UCAN) -- Laotian seminarians face formidable challenges, but their enthusiasm and perseverance in their priestly studies helps them overcome obstacles, says their formator.
One major challenge is seminarians' "low level of education compared with those from other countries," said Thai Redemptorist Father Anthony Wiboon Limphanawooth. He is in charge of nine young men, aged 19-23, at St. Teresa Middle Seminary in Thakhek, central Laos.
Most of the students in their first year "can't read the Lao language fluently," he said.
Furthermore, all the seminarians come from farming families and are not used to following an academic routine. "They have to train themselves to follow the seminary timetable," said the priest.
Despite the challenges they face, the seminarians "are very enthusiastic about studying," said Father Wiboon. "They are slow but they give you 100 percent."
St. Teresa Middle Seminary is one of two intermediate seminaries in the country. The other is in Pakse, southern Laos.
Father Wiboon, 41, said that as there are no minor seminaries in the country, local nuns and catechists recommend high-school students who are active in church to be personally taught catechism and prayers by priests.
When these boys finish high school, they enter an intermediate seminary where they study the Bible, spirituality, catechism and English. They then proceed to St. John Vianney Major Seminary, the only major seminary in the country, also in Thakhek, for philosophy and theology studies.
Apart from teaching at St. Teresa's, Father Wiboon also instructs 18 other young men, the oldest of whom are in their late 20s, at the major seminary.
The seminarians' perseverance is manifested in the low drop-out rate. At St Teresa's, only two dropped out last year, and in the major seminary no one has left in the past year.
Father Wiboon says vocations are promoted "quietly" in Laos and the numbers are slowly increasing. Last year, he received three new seminarians at St. Teresa's. Of the nine in his care, five are with the Redemptorist congregation.
According to Father Wiboon, the country has fewer than 20 priests. Several are studying overseas.
The next priestly ordination is expected only in about two years' time, he said. "In Laos everything is done slowly."
Link....
One major challenge is seminarians' "low level of education compared with those from other countries," said Thai Redemptorist Father Anthony Wiboon Limphanawooth. He is in charge of nine young men, aged 19-23, at St. Teresa Middle Seminary in Thakhek, central Laos.
Most of the students in their first year "can't read the Lao language fluently," he said.
Furthermore, all the seminarians come from farming families and are not used to following an academic routine. "They have to train themselves to follow the seminary timetable," said the priest.
Despite the challenges they face, the seminarians "are very enthusiastic about studying," said Father Wiboon. "They are slow but they give you 100 percent."
St. Teresa Middle Seminary is one of two intermediate seminaries in the country. The other is in Pakse, southern Laos.
Father Wiboon, 41, said that as there are no minor seminaries in the country, local nuns and catechists recommend high-school students who are active in church to be personally taught catechism and prayers by priests.
When these boys finish high school, they enter an intermediate seminary where they study the Bible, spirituality, catechism and English. They then proceed to St. John Vianney Major Seminary, the only major seminary in the country, also in Thakhek, for philosophy and theology studies.
Apart from teaching at St. Teresa's, Father Wiboon also instructs 18 other young men, the oldest of whom are in their late 20s, at the major seminary.
The seminarians' perseverance is manifested in the low drop-out rate. At St Teresa's, only two dropped out last year, and in the major seminary no one has left in the past year.
Father Wiboon says vocations are promoted "quietly" in Laos and the numbers are slowly increasing. Last year, he received three new seminarians at St. Teresa's. Of the nine in his care, five are with the Redemptorist congregation.
According to Father Wiboon, the country has fewer than 20 priests. Several are studying overseas.
The next priestly ordination is expected only in about two years' time, he said. "In Laos everything is done slowly."
Link....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)