Catholic News 2
GREENVILLE, Miss. (AP) -- Clarke Reed and Billy Mounger still sound like they want to spit when they talk about each other - 40 years after the contested Republican National Convention where the Mississippi delegation split between President Gerald Ford and smooth-talking Ronald Reagan....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An astonishing Republican presidential primary season has taken another unusual turn, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announcing Carly Fiorina as his running mate - even though he's mathematically unable to become the GOP nominee through the regular voting process....
BEIRUT (AP) -- A series of airstrikes hit a hospital and nearby buildings in the rebel-held part of Syria's contested city of Aleppo overnight, killing at least 20 people - including two doctors and three children - as the U.N. envoy for Syria appealed early Thursday on the U.S. and Russia to help revive the Syrian peace talks and a cease-fire he said "hangs by a thread."...
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A Minnesota judge appointed a corporate trust company on Wednesday to temporarily oversee Prince's multimillion-dollar estate, saying the emergency appointment was necessary because the superstar musician doesn't appear to have a will and immediate decisions must be made about his business interests....
JACKSON, Ga. (AP) -- Georgia executed a man Wednesday who was convicted in the 1998 killings of a central Georgia trucking company owner and his two children during a home burglary....
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's central bank opted Thursday not to expand its massive stimulus policies to boost growth, apart from channeling extra support for financing disaster recovery efforts on the earthquake-stricken southern island of Kyushu....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- By his own admission years ago, Donald Trump likes to speak with "truthful hyperbole" at times. Here's what that mix of reality and exaggeration looked like in the Republican presidential contender's foreign policy pronouncements on Wednesday....
Kansas City, Mo., Apr 27, 2016 / 04:52 pm (CNA).- A new album from the chart-topping community of Benedictine nuns in rural Missouri has an intimate selection of the songs they sing when they gather for Eucharistic Adoration at their monastery.“We pray that the music on this album will contribute to a more profound belief, adoration, hope and love…in the Blessed Sacrament among many, many souls,” Mother Cecilia told CNA.She is prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, whose album Adoration at Ephesus is newly available.Jesus My Lord, My God, My All from Benedictine Sisters on Vimeo.“This new album contains much of the music we sing for Eucharistic adoration,” she explained. “The Sisters gather for Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament every Sunday, Thursday, and Solemnity for just over an hour. As the priest first places Our Lord in the monstrance, we sing a hymn to greet Him.”Eucharistic Adoration at the community then proceed...
Kansas City, Mo., Apr 27, 2016 / 04:52 pm (CNA).- A new album from the chart-topping community of Benedictine nuns in rural Missouri has an intimate selection of the songs they sing when they gather for Eucharistic Adoration at their monastery.
“We pray that the music on this album will contribute to a more profound belief, adoration, hope and love…in the Blessed Sacrament among many, many souls,” Mother Cecilia told CNA.
She is prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, whose album Adoration at Ephesus is newly available.
Jesus My Lord, My God, My All from Benedictine Sisters on Vimeo.
“This new album contains much of the music we sing for Eucharistic adoration,” she explained. “The Sisters gather for Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament every Sunday, Thursday, and Solemnity for just over an hour. As the priest first places Our Lord in the monstrance, we sing a hymn to greet Him.”
Eucharistic Adoration at the community then proceeds with a moment of reverent gratitude for the Lord's presence in the Blessed Sacrament, chanted Vespers, and often a communal rosary.
“Then there is time for silent prayer, as we converse heart to Heart with the One whom we love.”
Just before Benediction, Mother Cecilia said, “we sing a Tantum Ergo,” the hymn which traditionally concludes communal Adoration.
“After Benediction and the Divine Praises, as Our Lord is placed back in the tabernacle, we chant a final reposition hymn in His honor. There are a variety of these 'farewell' hymns on the disk, and (we) were sure to include two of the most well-known, Holy God, We Praise Thy Name and Adoremus in Aeternum.”
Adoration at Ephesus includes 24 tracks, in both Latin and English, that the sisters sing in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. Ten of the tracks, which were recorded this spring, were arranged by the sisters.
In addition to the times of communal Adoration, Mother Cecilia explained that “on the vigil of the Feasts of the Apostles, the Sisters take turns adoring during the day and all through the night.”
“Our main intention during these hours is for our bishops - that they will have great fortitude and fidelity to the Faith, especially amidst growing persecution from all sides.”
Though the community practices limited enclosure, their music albums have brought them international renown and popularity – they have been Billboard's Best-Selling Classical Traditional Artist for three years in a row, and their albums have topped Billboard's Top Traditional Classical Albums.
Life in the community is marked by obedience, stability, and “continually turning” towards God. They have Mass daily according to the extraordinary form, and chant the psalms eight times a day from the 1962 Monastic Office. They also support themselves by producing made-to-order vestments.
The proceeds from the sales of Adoration at Ephesus will help to fund the sisters' new monastic church.
“The chapel in which we now pray was conceived as a temporary one,” Mother Cecilia said. “As the community grows and the hospitality apostolate expands, the necessity of undertaking the design and building of a new church has become a pressing reality.”
“In releasing Adoration at Ephesus, it is our hope to use the funds raised for the construction of a house of prayer – a new edifice where the Lord may truly be adored in spirit and in truth,” she added.
“We have been so touched thus far by the generous response our friends have shown in adding donations for the Church to their pre-orders. It has been tremendously inspiring.”
The sisters' new chapel “is being built up by faith in the charity of our friends and spiritual family spread across the country,” Mother Cecilia said. “Their faith provides the living stones with which we press on, striving to raise up a beautiful house for God.”
The prioress concluded by reflecting on the link between the album and the apparitions at Fatima, noting that “this very month is the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of the Angel to the three little shepherds near Fatima.”
“I was simply astounded that our album corresponds so perfectly and intimately with the message he brought to the children and the world. If one word had to be chosen to summarize that message, it would be: adoration.”
“We pray that all souls will adore our Eucharistic Lord with great faith, love, reverence and thanksgiving!”
Washington D.C., Apr 27, 2016 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on love in the family presents a special challenge to laypeople to evangelize, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington said Wednesday at the Catholic University of America.One finding of the recent synods on the family was that “we have a lot of catechesis to do, a lot of sharing the faith,” Cardinal Wuerl said April 27 in his address to university students and professors on Amoris laetitia, and the synods which led up to its publication. The exhortation presented both a “beautiful gift” and an “extraordinary challenge” to the Church, the cardinal maintained.Catechesis is needed because many people “only have a vague idea” of Church teaching on “marriage, morality, family, even something as basic as the obligations of the commandments,” he noted.Cardinal Wuerl spoke as a special presentation in the class of university president Jo...
Washington D.C., Apr 27, 2016 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on love in the family presents a special challenge to laypeople to evangelize, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington said Wednesday at the Catholic University of America.
One finding of the recent synods on the family was that “we have a lot of catechesis to do, a lot of sharing the faith,” Cardinal Wuerl said April 27 in his address to university students and professors on Amoris laetitia, and the synods which led up to its publication. The exhortation presented both a “beautiful gift” and an “extraordinary challenge” to the Church, the cardinal maintained.
Catechesis is needed because many people “only have a vague idea” of Church teaching on “marriage, morality, family, even something as basic as the obligations of the commandments,” he noted.
Cardinal Wuerl spoke as a special presentation in the class of university president John Garvey on “The Virtues.”
A rupture from tradition in catechesis has resulted in many Catholics needing to be evangelized themselves, the cardinal said, and he challenged the university students to evangelize: “I would like to see all of us accepting the personal obligation to be an evangelizing disciple.”
“There’s a whole catechetical deficiency that’s the result … of that ‘hermeneutic of discontinuity’ of the '70s that led to several generations of people who simply don’t know the faith; and if they don’t know it, then they can’t grow to appreciate and embrace it.”
“For many, many, many people, lifting up marriage and lifting up the importance of the family is for them something new,” Cardinal Wuerl added.
Laypersons can evangelize through “the witness of their own life,” he said. “How do you manifest that belief that you are a true disciple of Jesus, that he’s risen and walks with you?” he asked.
Then when the opportunity is right, someone can take the initiative and evangelize through their words, he said, telling the students, “you can’t overestimate the impact you have” by saying something “countercultural” and with “conviction.”
Renewal was at the heart of the Second Vatican Council, and this theme continues in Amoris laetitia in a call for a renewal of understanding what marriage is, Cardinal Wuerl stated.
“There’s a sense in which one can see in this exhortation a renewal, a renewal to recognize our Catholic identity, our connectedness to the Church, and how our ministry is validated precisely in our participation in and our adherence to the articulated magisterium of the Church,” he explained.
The exhortation “draws deeply and richly” from the magisterial teaching of recent popes reflected in the “astounding number of citations” from the pontificates of Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II, and Bl. Paul VI, and as well as Vatican II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he noted.
“The Council called for a renewal of our pastoral ministry, a renewal of our moral theology. And this document is taking the priority of charity and mercy, articulated in the papal encyclicals beginning with Paul VI, and placing them at the service now of pastoral ministry,” he said.
He exhorted the students to take part in this renewal of the Church. “The role of each one of you on this campus, the role of every young person in the Church is the renewal that’s going to be the Church’s renewal of the future,” he stated.
“We can’t go back and undo what was done in the '70s and '80s. It’s done. But we can build for the future, and we can build if we have that confidence” that “what the Church teaches us is truly relevant.”
An evangelizing disciple knows Church teaching and what Christ said, and has the “quiet confidence that it’s true,” he concluded.
IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy RTEBy Nick BramhillDUBLIN (CNS) -- An IrishCatholic street cleaner, who was filmed by a TV documentary crew as hetemporarily swapped his job in the Irish capital for the poverty-strickenPhilippines, has pledged to spend the rest of his life helping the strugglingfamily he lived with.Mark Crosbie, a street cleanerwith Dublin City Council, told how his perspective on life has changed foreversince he spent a few days cleaning the streets of the Philippines' densely populatedcapital, Manila, for an Irish TV documentary, "Toughest Place To Be."As part of the program, whichwas watched by 330,000 viewers when it was screened in mid-April ago on RTE, Ireland'sstate broadcaster, the 47-year-old father-of-two stayed with the family of alocal street cleaner, Mel Macaereg, who earns $15 a week to support himself,his wife, Merney, and their six children.But since filming ended inJanuary, Crosbie has maintained weekly contact with his host family andhas set up a charity...
IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy RTE
By Nick Bramhill
DUBLIN (CNS) -- An Irish Catholic street cleaner, who was filmed by a TV documentary crew as he temporarily swapped his job in the Irish capital for the poverty-stricken Philippines, has pledged to spend the rest of his life helping the struggling family he lived with.
Mark Crosbie, a street cleaner with Dublin City Council, told how his perspective on life has changed forever since he spent a few days cleaning the streets of the Philippines' densely populated capital, Manila, for an Irish TV documentary, "Toughest Place To Be."
As part of the program, which was watched by 330,000 viewers when it was screened in mid-April ago on RTE, Ireland's state broadcaster, the 47-year-old father-of-two stayed with the family of a local street cleaner, Mel Macaereg, who earns $15 a week to support himself, his wife, Merney, and their six children.
But since filming ended in January, Crosbie has maintained weekly contact with his host family and has set up a charity drive to raise funds for the wider community that took him in.
Crosbie, who sweeps the cobbled streets of Dublin's Temple Bar district for a living, said: "The poverty I saw over there was on a level I'd never seen before, and I struggled to adjust to life back in Dublin when I came back. I was scarred by it, but it was a positive scar.
"The people I met had literally nothing, yet they embraced me and looked after me like I was one of their own. They were probably the warmest and most generous people I've ever come across.
"I felt very emotional when I said my goodbyes to the family and I left them everything I had brought over with me, because I felt it was the least I could do. That wasn't shown in the documentary, but I left my possessions on the bed I'd been sleeping in -- clothes, toys for the kids, biscuits, coffee and about $450 in cash. I'm not looking for any credit for that, it was just the right thing to do.
"If I'd have had $10,000 with me, I'd have left them that too," he added.
Crosbie said he would love to help everyone he met in the Philippines, "but obviously I can't make things better." He added he planned to do a sponsored climb of the holy mountain Croagh Patrick in August to raise money for the community.
Manila is home to 25 million people, 4 million of whom live in slums.
In the documentary, Crosbie witnessed firsthand the daily hardship facing thousands of people. He visited a city dump, where hundreds of impoverished people spend their days searching through rubbish for items they could sell.
"Going over there was probably the best thing I've ever done. It opened my eyes in a way I could never have imagined," Crosbie said.
"I found it very hard for the first couple of weeks when I returned to work in Dublin. The things people were moaning about really didn't seem to matter in comparison."
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