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Monthly Archives: March 2011
GILM 83-84: Choices for Saints’ Celebrations
In these detailed prescriptions for readings proclaimed on saint days, most of these principles we’ve already covered. First, if there are proper readings for a saint, they should be used if these illustrate something biblical about the saint or about … Continue reading
GOP Opposed Pro-Life Legislation: Who’s Surprised?
Retired Rep Bart Stupak tells it. Curious: Senate Republicans killed a “technical corrections bill,” leaving the executive order the only way to go. Here’s a question: does a good Catholic have to uphold the right to life at every opportunity, … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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GILM 82: Choices in Weekday Readings
Priests and liturgists are confronted with choices at daily Mass, usually the intersection of the cycle of saints with the readings of ordinary time: 82. The arrangement of weekday readings provides texts for every day of the week throughout the … Continue reading
The Adoption Wedge
I could respect a decision of conscience like this or this if either diocese were willing to own up to the real reason old-style adoption services were being dropped. In my own diocese, a Catholic Charities counsellor reported helping in … Continue reading
Posted in Adoption, Commentary
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GILM 81: Choice of Alternate Texts
81. When a choice is allowed between alternative texts, whether they are fixed or optional, the first consideration must be the best interest of those taking part. It may be a matter of using the easier texts or the one … Continue reading
Longing For God
The line from today’s psalm is perhaps one of the ten most familiar passages in the Psalter: As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. (Ps 42:2) But this lament, probably a … Continue reading
GILM 80: Long or Short Texts?
Another area where ministers have “freedom of choice,” as the GILM says, is in the option of longer or shorter versions of texts: 80. A pastoral criterion must also guide the choice between the longer and shorter forms of the … Continue reading
On Virtue and Justice
On the legal front, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has some complaints. Defense counsel getting into shouting matches with a judge: how’s that bluster working for them, I wonder? I thought we only saw that stuff on tv. “Blistering” is how … Continue reading
Posted in Church News, Commentary
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GILM 79: Two Readings Before the Gospel
In the US, this is hardly ever an issue, but the GILM discusses what is to be done if, for pastoral reasons, one of the two readings before the Gospel must be omitted. 79. In Masses to which three readings … Continue reading
Belief Through Her Word
The first apostle beyond Judah? It wasn’t Paul. It was the companion of Jesus from today’s gospel reading: Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He … Continue reading
Posted in Scripture, spirituality
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The Well
From the pen of Karol Wojtyla: It joined us together, the well; the well led me into you. No one between us but light deep in the well, the pupil of the eye set in an orbit of stones. Within … Continue reading
Posted in spirituality
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GILM 78: Freedom of Choice With Some Texts
78. The Order of Readings sometimes leaves it to the celebrant to choose between alternative texts or to choose one from the several listed together for the same reading. The option seldom exists on Sundays, solemnities, or feasts, in order … Continue reading
Business Spanks Arizona Republicans
There’s a lot to lament in the whole tale of the movement to put a wall up around Arizona. Immigrants, regardless of legal status, have always enhanced our country’s strength. Newcomers provide fresh vigor and ideas. Shuttered Catholic parishes have … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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GILM 76-77: Difficult Texts and Omitted Verses
76. In readings for Sundays and solemnities, texts that present real difficulties are avoided for pastoral reasons. The difficulties may be objective, in that the texts themselves raise profound literary, critical, or exegetical problems; or the difficulties may lie, at … Continue reading
Catholic Sensibility 
A Bishops’ Bungled Book Review
I’m sure Elizabeth Johnson’s publisher is happy at the prospect of a sales uptick with Quest for the Living God: Mapping the Frontiers in the Theology of God. I’m not well-read on Elizabeth Johnson. Maybe I should take Jim Martin’s … Continue reading →