Barry Hudock's Blog, page 6

New Romero article

The September/October edition of The Catholic Answer magazine features an article I wrote on Oscar Romero, called “‘No to Violence!’ Who Is Oscar Romero?” You can find that article online here.

Loving Islam taught her to love Catholicism all the more

If you’d like to be inspired by a bright, young adult Catholic, you’ll want to meet Jordan Denari. Jordan is a 24-year-old research fellow at The Bridge Initiative, a new project at Georgetown University to promote Muslim-Christian understanding. U.S. Catholic magazine has just published a profile of her that I wrote.

This is the story of a woman who grew to embrace and love her own Catholic faith the more she came to understand and respect Islam. A snippet:

Denari developed friendships with Muslim students while attending Georgetown as an undergrad. This led to conversations and experiences that motivated her to learn more about both their faith and her own. “I saw how committed Muslims are to prayer and also to community,” she says. “It pushed me to be better with my prayer life.” She went on an Ignatian prayer retreat, signed up for classes on Christianity, and joined a scripture reflection group. “I wanted to know why Catholics do what we do and believe what we believe. The answers I got were very powerful.”

The full article is here.

Reviewed in NCR

A review of my new book was posted yesterday on the National Catholic Reporter website Written by New York Theological Seminary professor Marian Ronan, it also appears in their current print edition.  I enjoyed Ronan’s opening lines:

After four Fortnights for Freedom and multiple Catholic lawsuits over the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, an observer might well conclude that religious freedom is a fundamental tenet of the Catholic faith. In Struggle, Condemnation, Vindication, Barry Hudock sets readers straight about how recently the Catholic church came to accept religious freedom at all and the fierce battles that preceded such acceptance.

Hudock weaves several plotlines into his narrative of the months and years leading up to the passage of Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on Religious Freedom at the Second Vatican Council.

And then there’s the gracious closing line of the review: “Somebody should send a copy of this book to each of the U.S. bishops.”

You can read everything in between here. (And you can get yourself a copy here or here. Thanks for considering it!)

U.S. exceptionalism indeed

Catholics in many countries have been receptive to Laudato Si, “but the United States was one of the exceptions.” That’s the word from who I would presume to be Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, since this article describes the speaker as “the cardinal who delivered Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment.”

Of course, it comes down to politics (since American Catholics prove repeatedly that they put far more faith in their political party’s platform than they do in any catechism or pope). The article notes: “The partisan divide over how to respond to carbon emissions contributing to climate change continues, making it more difficult for the pope’s message to resonate with Americans, said Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.”

The full article is here.

The Pope to Americans: “We are created for friendship in society”

What a joy it was to watch Pope Francis and the People, a virtual audience in which Pope Francis was connected by satellite video with several Catholic communities in the United States, aired September 5 by ABC News. Over the course of an hour, the Pope visited with people in Los Angeles, Chicago, and McAllen, Texas. You can find full video of the entire broadcast here.

Of course, what we saw was decided in large part by the organizers who chose locations, specific communities, specific people to speak. I’d be interested to know how much input the Vatican had on the choices. But one couldn’t watch the event without a very clear sense of the Hispanic face of the Catholic Church in the United States. It’s a part of the Church in this country that is often treated as a less important add-on, a visitor in someone else’s house. This broadcast tells us, it is, in many ways, a Hispanic Church.

I was struck by the way the Holy Father absolutely went out of his way to single out the religious sister in the audience in Texas. The moderator was going to make passing reference to her and move on. The Pope literally interrupted, called the sister forward, and emphatically expressed his admiration for her work, explicitly citing also the work of all religious sisters in the United States. To think that just a year or two ago, those same religious sisters in the United States were considered to be under suspicion by Vatican. A remarkable shift of tone, decisively closing the door on that process of investigation.

But what struck me most was that the overarching theme of the Pope’s comments during this virtual audience was surely human solidarity, key concept of Catholic social teaching. It was perhaps expressed most clearly in his comments to the young man when he said “We are all created for friendship in society. All of us bear responsibility for everyone else.” That’s human solidarity in a nutshell. And it was part of his comments to almost all of the other people to whom he spoke.

That’s a message that Americans need to hear. It’s not a bright shining aspect of the American ethos, which is too strongly dominated by a sense of rugged individualism. There’s much to be said for hard work and personal initiative, and those ideals are part of what made America great. But we’ve too often singled them out to the exclusion of other ideals, which have also contributed to America’s greatness and promise to make us greater. And by singling them out so strongly, we’ve allowed them to too easily warp into selfishness and cold-heartedness.

Indeed, the vision of human solidarity we heard from the Pope last night is almost the opposite of what we’re hearing in much of today’s political rhetoric. If I were one of those who have gone out of their way in recent months to see who can be toughest on border control and illegal immigration, for example, I’d feel chastened and embarrassed this morning. If I likewise were among those who have gone out of their way to defend the work of Planned Parenthood, I’d feel the same.

That virtual audience is well worth watching almost prayerfully, listening to the struggles and the brokenness of the people who make up our Church, our humanity, and soaking in the responses that the Pope offers. If we all did that, we’d become a better Church and a better nation.

In OSV: Living Laudato Si

When it comes to the doctrine and theology of the Catholic Church, there’s always plenty to say and to learn about from academic, theoretical point of view. But what is both most beautiful and most challenging is always the living of it. That’s where “the rubber meets the road,” where the world is made better, where lives are changed and enriched, where grace and salvation is received and experienced.

So it was a joy to take on the task of preparing a set of articles for Our Sunday Visitor on the theme of “Living Laudato Si” — Laudato Si, of course, being Pope Francis’s recently released encyclical letter on our call to care for the created world. I chose to approach the task from four important directions:

What might it mean to live Laudato Si in one’s family life?
How about in the life of a typical American Catholic parish?
What does the encyclical offer to the spiritual lives of Catholics?
And finally, what is this concept of consumerism that is so prominent in the Pope’s teaching, and what does it mean to each of us?

These are questions addressed by the four articles that make up the “In Focus” section of the brand new issue of OSV.

And I’d also point out a couple of other important Laudato Si-related articles in the same issue. Be sure to check out Brian Fraga’s article “Is Clean Power Plan Compatible with Laudato Si?” and also Matthew Bunson’s “Pill’s Pitfalls Create Contraceptive Conundrum.” (Someone had fun creating that latter headline.)

You can find all these articles here — the link is to a .pdf that contains the entire new issue.

And as a side note, it’s good to see what amounts to coverage of OSV’s coverage of the encyclical from Mark Silk at Religion News Service this morning. “If you want to know how an encyclical like Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ works its way through the Catholic Church,” Silk writes, “take a look at the latest number of Our Sunday Visitor, the venerable weekly newspaper for the church’s American rank and file.”

I gotta say, it’s a great thrill to play a little part in helping Francis’s remarkable new encyclical “work its way through the Catholic Church.”

Mother Celestine of the United States

Back in 2013, Pope Francis formally recognized the heroic virtues of the U.S.-born woman, Celestine Bottego (thus officially making her a candidate for canonization). Known as Mother Celestine, she founded the order known as the Missionaries of Mary when she was 48 years old, rejecting the advice of her confessor that she was just too old for that sort of thing. This month marks the 35th anniversary of her death.

OSV has just published an article I’ve written on her. You can find that here. Here’s a snippet:

From the beginning, the Missionaries of Mary did not wear a religious habit, for the sake of simplicity and convenience in view of the difficult mission work that lay ahead. This was a significant innovation at the time, two decades before it became common in the wake of the reforms in religious life that followed the Second Vatican Council. In a 1954 letter to Father Spagnolo, Mother Celestine wrote, “I spoke with Bishop Fulton Sheen. He encouraged me and said that he was enthusiastic about the idea of our having a lay habit. He said we are the only congregation of this kind until now. He added, it was about time to change.”

Sister Rosetta recalls an early meeting that the Missionaries of Mary attended in the United States with members of other women’s religious orders. She said their absence of a habit drew curious looks from others sisters until finally one person said, “Do you know that this is a meeting of nuns?” “Yes, we are nuns, too,” came the reply, and it made for interesting conversation among those present.

Now recognized as “Venerable” by the Vatican, that puts her one step away from beatification.

In good company

Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB, who teaches liturgy, liturgical music, and Gregorian chant at St. John’s University School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, has posted the reading list for his Sacraments of Initiation course. Included on it is my book, The Eucharistic Prayer: A User’s Guide. I was excited to see it there, of course, and then exceedingly humbled when I saw all the other great stuff on the list. What remarkable company to be in!

Fr. Anthony’s list is here.

“They called him the electric eel”: St. Philip Neri

I’ve loved St. Philip Neri for a long time. So when I noticed that his 500th birthday is approaching on July 22, I couldn’t resist the chance to prepare an article about him. Our Sunday Visitor has graciously published it. The article is now on their website, and it will appear in the July 12 print edition, too. The article opens:

They called him “the electric eel,” because just being around him often was enough to jolt your lazy conscience and make you want to live a better life, without ever feeling alienated or condemned. This year, the 500th anniversary of St. Philip Neri’s birth offers Christians a good opportunity to look again at his life and to be jolted anew by his inspiring witness.

Keep reading here.

“They all called him the electric eel”: St. Philip Neri

I’ve loved St. Philip Neri for a long time. So when I noticed that his 500th birthday is approaching on July 22, I couldn’t resist the chance to prepare an article about him. Our Sunday Visitor has graciously published it. The article is now on their website, and it will appear in the July 12 print edition, too. The article opens:

They called him “the electric eel,” because just being around him often was enough to jolt your lazy conscience and make you want to live a better life, without ever feeling alienated or condemned. This year, the 500th anniversary of St. Philip Neri’s birth offers Christians a good opportunity to look again at his life and to be jolted anew by his inspiring witness.

Keep reading here.