Barry Hudock's Blog, page 8

Good deal

Liturgical Press is offering a nice deal on my new book, which will be available in three weeks. Order now and get 30% off, plus free shipping. Wow! Click on the image below to enlarge for details. Or just go here to order or to get more details on the book. To get the discount with you order, use the promotion code MURRAY.

‘There’s something about Francis’

Well there’s an eye-catching headline: How Pope Francis awakened the faith of a CNN anchor. The anchor in question is Carol Costello, who currently hosts CNN Newsroom every weekday morning. The opening line is a grabber, too: “I remember the day I stopped praying.”

The day in question came when Costello —��born and raised Catholic but, at 27, lapsed — experienced what most folks would agree was a minor slight, a bit of an interpersonal fumble on the part of a parish secretary who clearly was off her game that day. But it came in the context of Costello’s intense grief from the death of her young brother by cancer, and what goes on in the heart and psyche during times like that does not always follow rules of reason and logic. (It reminded me of a wise maxim I occasional mention to my kids and remind myself: “Always be kind — you never know what someone else is going through at a particular moment.”)

A quick Wikipedia check tells me Costello is 53 years old today. So she quit praying over a quarter century ago, and had stopped going to church before that. And now, apparently, she’s doing both again, thanks to Pope Francis.

There’s lots to say and explore about this, of course. But one thing that caught my eye and that I think is well worth mentioning is this: Costello’s account of her return to faith, prayer, and liturgy makes clear that she is not in the least under the impression that Francis has or is trying to change a single doctrine or approve a single act that previously has been considered a sin. She writes: “There is something about Francis that’s reawakened my faith. And it’s not because he opened the floodgates to allow sin in the eyes of the church. He still argues against things I passionately support, but I find myself — like many other lapsed Catholics — enthralled.”

We all — particularly “conservative” Catholics who have been most critical of Francis — should take note. The stirring in Costello’s soul has happened despite this. Francis’s humility and Francis’s tone did the work of evangelization, and it broke through her intellectual differences with him.

This reflects comments I have heard over and over again (often by media commentators): “Francis isn’t changing any doctrine, and yet…” “Francis is a conservative in many ways, and yet…”��They belie the empty criticism that Francis is confusing the faithful or approving sin.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, perhaps those who have been making such false accusations should do a little repenting.

Young priests aren’t poor

A new article��published at La Stampa‘s Vatican Insider website notes that ordinations to priesthood are up almost 25% this year over last year. That’s cause for thanksgiving.

I was a little amused, though, to read about this aspect of the issue in the article:

A uniquely American problem, however, is that of the debt from the ���student loans���, money leant to them to help them pay their tuition fees and living costs and that is only repaid after graduation. ���More than 26% of the priests ordained have student debt, at the time of entering the seminary the average owed per capita is 22,500 dollars���, explained Father W. Shawn McKnight, executive director of the Secretariat. He said that in the future they will need to find a way of helping future priests reduce their debts.

Sorry, but if the concern is repaying student debt, I’d say priesthood is the way to go. I’d be willing to bet that most young diocesan priests are paid more (when you factor in the free housing, insurance, groceries, etc) and have more disposable income than most other young people in their first 5 or 10 years out of college or graduate school.

In OSV: What’s a Jubilee all about?

Pope Francis has declared the celebration of an extraordinary holy year, a jubilee of mercy, to begin November 8, 2015. A new article I’ve written on the long and rich history of jubilee years — from the book of Leviticus to the ministry of Jesus to our own century — is now in Our Sunday Visitor. You can read it here.

Upper Big Branch, five years on

As we all celebrated Easter Sunday yesterday, 29 families observed the fifth anniversary of the death of their loved ones in one of the biggest mine disasters to happen on U.S. soil in decades. The Upper Big Branch Mine explosion happened April 5, 2010. It was the day after Easter that year.

In the days and weeks that followed, we learned that mine owner Massey Energy had been cited repeatedly for safety violations at the mine, and that these citations had resulted in absolutely no change in any operating procedure that almost surely could have averted the tragedy.

Coal boss Don Blankenship — who at the time was a powerful, larger-than-life figure who dominated West Virginia business and culture like a titan — is currently awaiting trial, set to begin April 20. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to violate safety standards, falsifying coal dust samples and defrauding federal financial regulators.

I’ve blogged before about Blankenship and the Upper Big Branch disaster, here. Let’s pray for the families of the 29 miners who died five years ago.

God has a message, via miracle, for traditionalist (& all!) Catholics this weekend

So the blood of San Gennaro (or Saint Januarius, as he is often called in the English-speaking world) liquefied yesterday in the presence of Pope Francis, during his visit to Naples. I have to admit, I’m a bit of an enthusiast for the annual San Gennaro miracle. I check every September 19 for the news that the miracle has happened again, and then typically point it out to my family, our RCIA people, etc. (Though I guess if I were more of an enthusiast, I’d have been aware that it also happens on two other dates annually, as the article linked to above points out.)

Such a��miracle is something that more traditionally-minded folks (rightly) dig. It’s all about saints and relics and miracles and yeah, surely a bit of Catholic triumphalism, the stuff that more progressive Catholics often turn up their noses at, right?��And now, this time,��throw in the very presence of the Holy Father as the instigating event of the miracle, and wow, what a Catholic package.

So my fun little theory this morning is this: By this remarkable miracle, the Lord is telling our traditionalist brothers and sisters to lay off His Pope and get with the (very orthodox, very Catholic, and very challenging) program that he is laying out for us these past two years. Enough, says the Lord, with the silly “Can a Pope Be a Heretic?” stuff, the stupid “dark and false church” stuff. The question is: is our Catholic faith strong enough, are we bold enough, to allow him to form us into a better, stronger, more��truly Catholic��Church?

Questioning the status quo on the economics of family life

Our Sunday Visitor has posted a new column I wrote for its Daily Take blog, on the economics of raising a family today.��In the piece, I��question the choice that most young families are forced to make in a society structured to accommodate a two-working-parent home:��we must either choose to have both parents work —��in which case��the��family suffers��in a variety of ways associated with regular childcare outside the home —��or one parent stays home, in which case the family suffers in a whole other set of ways.

My main point is that lay Catholics — who belong to a Church whose social teaching insists on the centrality of family life, not only for the��well-being of each family and the individuals who make it up, but for the good health of society — should push harder for a conversation about better solutions.

I’m well aware, by the way, that my piece does not even mention single-parent families, which are of course quite common today. I has a hard time sticking to the word count I was given for this column even without getting into that aspect of the question. But the fact is, the fact of single-parent families only makes my point stronger and more urgent.

Read the whole post here.

New in OSV: on Romero, Grande, the man behind the best Romero blog, and more

Just in time for yesterday’s announcement of a date — May 23, 2015 — having been set for the beatification of Oscar Romero, not to mention the upcoming — March 24 — 35th anniversary of Romero’s martyrdom and today’s 38th anniversary of the martyrdom of��his friend Fr. Rutilio Grande, OSV Newsweekly has published a series of articles I’ve written exploring the whole matter.

Right here you will find a lengthy article, “The Martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero,”��that offers an overview of Romero’s life, conversion, ministry, and death. At the same link is a sidebar article, “Who was Rutilio Grande?”, offering a brief portrait of the man without whom there would likely be no Blessed Oscar. Also at that same link, toward the bottom of the page, are a couple of other shorter articles, one on the factors that have made the Romero beatification such a controversial question, the other on the disturbing but important��social and political context in which Romero worked and was killed.

Finally, there’s still another new��article here��— an interview with Carlos Colorado, the man behind��the previously obscure blog that has been getting a lot of attention lately: Super Martyrio, on all things Romero.

All together, perhaps a good way to prepare for the upcoming beatification. Check ‘em out!

Quote of the day

���I was never hurt by listening to people. Even if you don���t agree with them, they���ll give you something or they���ll put you in a position to re-think things. That enriches you.���

– Pope Francis

 

Worship: The new issue rocks

My favorite academic journal has always been Worship — and that was��the case decades before I was fortunate enough to come work for the press that publishes it. The latest issue (March 2015) is out now, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working my way through it — cover to cover.

First there’s an interesting article by Robin Jensen on the placement of the altar in churches of��early Christianity. We learn — as historical studies of liturgy have taught us so often — that what was done was not nearly so uniform and consistent as we might have thought or even hoped. Professor Jensen demonstrates the likelihood that many churches, particularly in northern Africa, where Christianity thrived in the early centuries, featured an altar at or near the center of the building. That goes contrary to the assertion that it was always facing the back wall. She even offers reason to believe that St. Augustine celebrated Mass with the congregation gathered around the altar with him in the cathedral at Hippo where he served as bishop.

Then comes a brand new article from the recently deceased David Power (whom I had as a professor when I studied at Catholic University of America in the late 1990s).��It’s on the intersections between care for the poor and Christian worship in the sixteenth century, especially in the thinking and practice of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Catholic confraternities that were so popular at the time. Aside from the important historical material, Power’s article is a powerful reminder of how strongly the Eucharist is connected with service to the poor — or to put it another way, the interconnections sacramental theology and social ethics.

The next article is my favorite of the bunch — Timothy Brunk’s fascinating��“Summorum Pontificum and Fragmentation in the Roman Catholic Church.” It is sharply argued, and its conclusions are important to both liturgical theology and the lived experience of everyday Catholics. Someone should mail it to the Vatican. (This article was also a fun read for me because it includes several quotations from Andrea Grillo’s recent book, Beyond Pius V: Conflicting Interpretations of the Liturgical Reform; that’s my English translation of Grillo’s Italian that Professor Brunk is quoting there.)

Since cosmology is a favorite topic of mine, Robert Daly’s “Ecological Euchology” also grabbed by attention — offering an example of what a Eucharistic prayer might look like if it took into account modern understandings of the universe we live in and its history.

Coming in a close second, after Brunk’s article, as my favorite in the issue is more fascinating stuff:��Gail Ramshaw’s article on St. Catherine of Siena and the praise that she offers to the Holy Trinity in her prayer. Here we get some great insight’s into Catherine’s spirituality — as well as into the nature of God and how we have understood God and thought about who God is, in the past and still today��— and what that says about both God and us. Ramshaw challenges us not to fail to undertake “the continuing theological quest: are there other trinitarian terms that speak orthodox faith”? Catherine of Siena, a Doctor of the Church,��makes clear there were in the past and that there still are��today.

And then there are the book reviews — one of the great parts of every issue of Worship.

We (certainly I) have too often allowed our fast-paced, digital culture to deprive us of a pleasure like I have had this week: reading the new issue of Worship cover to cover. It only confirms for me why the journal was my favorite all along.