Dante Is Going To Need Another Level of Hell

PORTLAND, Oregon, August 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – So-called “progressive” worshippers at a Catholic parish in Portland, Oregon, shouted down an African priest celebrating Mass who had tried to bring his congregation more in line with Catholic teaching.

Fr. George Kuforiji, a native of Nigeria, was just commencing the celebration of the Mass on June 20 at St. Francis of Assisi parish when he was interrupted by elderly parishioners wearing white and bearing protest signs. The loud, grey-haired protesters filed into the central aisle and marched forward while Fr. Kuforiji tried to continue the celebration from behind the altar. Some banged tambourines or shook rattles in the church.

An amateur video recorded parishioner Melissa Pittman, who held a large photograph above her head that she displayed to the congregation as she protested: "We are following the voice of Jesus, of love. Jesus of inclusion. Jesus of resisting the authorities because when we resist the law, we are in the Spirit of God." At least one member responded with an “Amen!”

Pittman then went to the pulpit to air grievances against Archbishop Alexander Sample and Fr. Kuforiji. "I have asked Father for dialogue; I said that for the last year," she said. "We have been wanting real dialogue. I said that we are being abused." Continuing her harangue, Pittman said, "We are being abused in the Catholic Church by this priest and by this archbishop."

The video also shows that one man responded to Pittman with a “boo.” He then gestured to Fr. Kuforiji, who had retired to the back of the church, and said, "This is a holy priest." However, the protesters shouted him down. 
The video showed several of the mostly female parishioners confronting Fr. Kuforiji at the back of the church. One woman approached him and said, "How can you be a priest? I've been here for over 15 years. You've been here a year." 
Fr. Kuforiji responded: “Do you have reverence for God?” as the woman turned her back on him in apparent disgust. Finally, the protesters ended their disruption of the liturgy by locking arms and singing the Civil Rights-era anthem, "We Shall Overcome." 

According to a report in The Oregonian, members of the parish council and other parishioners questioned Fr. Kuforiji’s leadership and reforms. One of his innovations was to ban “inclusive language” in Scriptural readings used in the parished. His predecessors had avoided references to God as “Lord,” “king,” or “he.” Other reforms that Fr. Kuforiji introduced when he took over the parish in 2018 was to remove a hand-woven Guatemalan cloth that had been used on the altar, replacing it with a plain white altar cloth as prescribed for use in the Catholic Church. 
Fr. Kuforiji also removed photographs of supposed homeless people that had decorated the interior walls of the church. He had discarded some of the photographs, as well as vestments that previous priests had used, into a trailer.

Among the items discarded was a cloth decorated with rainbow colors.

"Falsehood Flies, And the Truth Comes Limping After It"

The media will never tell you this, and the professional victims' groups will outright lie. But facts are facts.
Bogus abuse accusations against Catholic priests are rampant. The fraud being perpetrated against the Church is now off the charts. But don't take our word for it. Here are the numbers:

● In 2011, a declaration submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court asserted that a former FBI investigator examining abuse claims against priests in Los Angeles had determined that "ONE-HALF of the claims were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse." (The capital letters are in the original document.)

● In 2016, in a church of 70 million people in the United States, 25 current minors came forward alleging that a current priest had recently abused them. Some of the cases still remained under investigation a year later, but of the 13 allegations in which a determination was made, only two were found to be "substantiated," while the remaining 11 (or 85%) were found to be completely bogus.

● According to independent annual audit reports, as little as 15% of all accusations against Catholic priests in any given year are even deemed "substantiated" by the very lenient standards of diocesan review boards, with the majority of accusations deemed either "unsubstantiated" (indeed false*), "unable to be proven," or still under review.

● The Archdiocese of Boston – arguably the most publicly transparent with regards accused priests – has published the names of 68 priests who have been determined guilty of abuse by either canonical of civil proceedings. Yet it has also concluded that 35 priests have been falsely accused. In other words, more than half of accused priests in Boston are determined innocent after a complete investigation. Let that sink in.

It's all about the Benjamins.

An Irish Priest Walks Into a Cowboy Bar...

 I am reading this book, so the story below was of particular interest...

Cheyenne, Wyo., Apr 6, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- “I am the last F.B.I.: foreign-born Irish,” Father Tom Sheridan, a retired priest of the Cheyenne diocese, told CNA.
Sheridan speaks with an Irish accent mixed with the slow drawl of a longtime Wyoming resident. The rural state is the least populated in the country. Its 570,000 residents, spread across the state, would reach a density of less than six people per square mile.
The 80-year-old priest is himself from rural Ireland, five miles outside Cavan town in County Cavan. He grew up just miles from the border with Northern Ireland, during the decades in which Ireland became self-governing and independent. He attended Cavan’s St. Patrick’s College, as did some 12 of the Irish priests who served in Wyoming.
Sheridan remembered from his childhood two priests who served in Wyoming but would return home to Ireland to visit.
“They’d come home when I was young, and take out a jug of whiskey and take my dad fishing,” the priest recounted.
“Needless to say, they didn’t catch any fish,” he quipped. “They were great men.”
About 34 Irish or Irish-born priests from different parts of Ireland have served in Wyoming. Three of them were Sheridan’s cousins.

Glenn Poshard, Call Your Office

Washington D.C., Feb 25, 2019 / 02:47 pm (CNA).- A Canadian priest who apologized last week for plagiarism has resigned from the governing board of a Catholic college affiliated with the University of Toronto.
“As a sign of contrition and acknowledgement of the error, I freely submitted my resignation (Feb. 24) to the Collegium of the University of St. Michael’s College,” Fr. Thomas Rosica told The Catholic Register Feb. 25.
“It has been a privilege for me to serve that excellent university for many years in various capacities. I did not want my errors to cloud over the university governance and offer a bad example to students, educators and staff. We know that plagiarism is wrong, especially when it is practised deliberately. Please note that my actions were never deliberate. Nevertheless they were wrong.”
In a statement Monday, Fr. Don McCleod, CSB said that “Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB made significant contributions while serving the St. Michael's community as a member of its Collegium,” adding that he had “respectfully accepted his resignation from the Collegium.”
McLeod is the chairman of the Collegium, or governing board, of The University of St. Michael’s College, which was founded by the Congregation of St. Basil, the religious community of which McLeod and Rosica are members. The college has nearly 4,000 students.

 It was sooo bad that even the Jesuits bailed on him!


Rosica was scheduled to be honored in April at the annual Provincial’s Dinner of the Canadian province of the Society of Jesus. The province withdrew its invitation Feb. 25.
“The Jesuits of Canada have followed the recent media reports regarding plagiarism by Father Thomas Rosica, CSB, actions for which he has taken responsibility and offered a full apology. Plagiarism is a grave offense against intellectual honesty and the community of scholarship. At the same time, many of us know Fr. Tom personally, and celebrate his genuine service to the Church in Canada and around the world. It is with great sorrow then that we have written to Father Rosica and withdrawn our invitation to him to receive the Magis Award on April 24, in the context of the Annual Provincial’s Dinner,” the province said.

Hopefully, It's Satire

 Pope to Purge Priests Who Drink from Plastic Straws

(2018-09-02) — On the heels of a boldly urgent sermon decrying plastic waste in the world’s oceans, Pope Francis I today announced “zero tolerance for priests who drink through plastic straws, and those in the church hierarchy who cover up these filthy acts.”
“The Lord sees and will judge those in His church who take advantage of the helpless little ones — the baby fishes, precious anemones and even the tiny plankton — by defiling marine habitat with their plastic straws,” the Pontiff wrote in an official decree from the Vatican.
The Vicar of Christ made clear that the Roman Catholic Church is complicit if it shields such sinners from consequences.
“Be assured,” Francis wrote, “that if a Bishop or a Cardinal, or even the Holy Father himself, knows that a fellow priest has committed this mortal sin, and he conceals the matter, he is no better than a man who personally casts a straw into the sea.”

They Don't Require Math in Journalism School

In 2018, the highly retrospective nature of most of the allegations still gets lost in the deserved and appropriate public wrath at each new wave of revelations. Those revelations are about sexual abuse that hundreds and perhaps thousands of priests in the United States committed over a long period but overwhelmingly in the 1960s through the 1980s. Gray notes that, in the John Jay report of 2004,

the most common decade of birth for alleged abusers was the 1930s and the most common decade of ordination was the 1960s. This profile has not changed in allegations that emerged in the 14 years that have followed — including the recent [Pennsylvania] grand jury report. No new wave of abuse has emerged in the United States.

“Wave,” of course, doesn’t mean “incidence.” CARA counts 22 cases of abuse that priests in the United States are alleged to have committed in 2015–17. That’s an average of about seven cases per year. Still too many. For perspective, however, compare that with the annual average of 271 cases of abuse that, since 2004 alone, has been alleged to have been committed by priests during the 1970s. Are the figures for the past few years so dramatically lower because accusers tend to come forward only many years after an incident? Will we have to wait until 2050 to have an adequate picture of what the rate of abuse might be now? Probably not, according to Gray...

SEVEN per year. Meanwhile in the Chicago Public School System....

They were top athletes and honor-roll students, children struggling to read and teenagers seeking guidance.
But then they became prey, among the many students raped or sexually abused during the last decade by trusted adults working in the Chicago Public Schools as district officials repeated obvious child-protection mistakes.

 To better quantify the frequency of abuse in Chicago’s schools, reporters obtained and analyzed Chicago police data on such crimes from 2008 through 2017. Police investigated 523 reports that children were sexually assaulted or abused inside city public schools during that 10-year period, or an average of one report each week, the data show.

 In all, the Tribune closely examined 108 cases and identified 72 school employees as alleged perpetrators in the last decade. The rest were student-on-student sexual attacks.


FYI -there are over 13,000 school districts in the United States.

Maybe the Bishops Can Put the Priests' Photos on the Carton de Laits

When Fr Joseph Longo arrived in France from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2003, he planned to stay just a few months to complete a philosophy doctorate. Today, having run large parish clusters in different dioceses, he has become one of many resident African priests helping to sustain the French Church.

Bishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo of Katiola (Getty)

It was hardly surprising that Fr Longo was prevailed upon to stay. Over the last half century the number of priests in France has been reduced by three quarters. Within six months of studying at Toulouse University’s Catholic faculty, Fr Longo had been asked to take over the medieval St Barthelemy’s Church at nearby Lauzerte, which also involved looking after 18 other parishes.
He is one of 1,800 foreign priests officially ministering in France, mostly from former colonies in Africa. The figure is nearly a fifth of the total number of diocesan clergy – 11,500. An unknown number of priests are also here without authorisation. And recently there have been signs of discontent at what some African bishops see as a new “ecclesiastical migration”.
In May, the Ivory Coast’s bishops’ conference complained that more and more priests were going missing in Europe and ignoring instructions to return after completing study and pastoral assignments. (It’s not just France: in Italy, for instance, up to 40 per cent of parishes are run by foreign-born clergy.)

The Elephant in the Room

 

I'm talking to you, pervert

It is time for clergy and laity to begin a movement for the purification of the Church. The shameful sexual sins and crimes of clergy—including cardinals, bishops, and priests—can no longer be tolerated. Tolerance is precisely what has allowed these problems to multiply for decades and persist up to today. 

As Fr. Thomas Berg recently explained, the issue is sexually active priests and bishops. In the main, the persistent problem is with homosexually active priests.  Fr. Roger Landry argues—rightly, I think—that most priests who persist in infidelity with women eventually leave the priesthood, but priests who cheat on their vocation with men often continue to live a double life. Most of the issues stem from this kind of duplicity. Networks of active homosexual priests have developed: They protect and promote their own and others who will tolerate them. They become a major problem when they insinuate themselves into positions of power (in a seminary, in a chancery or diocese, in a religious order, in the Roman curia)—as occurred in the case of Theodore McCarrick. 
The sins here are more grave than adultery or homosexual acts because they besmirch what is holy. Properly speaking, this is sacrilege, the perversion of Holy Orders, and the defilement of a person solemnly and publicly consecrated to God in chastity. The sin is even more serious when a bishop, a seminary formator, or a priest uses the authority of his office—an office instituted by Christ for the sanctification of the faithful—in a perverse way, in the service of shameful and selfish passions. The higher the abuse of authority in the Church, the more grave is the sacrilege. These are not private sins of individual Christians, and the victims suffer more because they are abused not by “private individuals,” but by priests. These crimes dishonor and offend God, and they wound the Church in a unique way.

I Guess Australia Is Too Far

Chicago, Ill., Jul 20, 2018 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fr. C. Frank Phillips, former pastor of St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago, has been asked by his religious superior to move to St. Louis, the priest informed his supporters Wednesday.
Phillips, 68, has been accused of misconduct involving adult men. He was removed as pastor of St. John Cantius March 16, and prohibited from public ministry in the Archdiocese of Chicago by Cardinal Blase Cupich.

In 1998, Phillips founded the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, with the approval of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago and of the Resurrectionists.
“From the founding of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, I have instructed the men how to live the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. One of those vows, obedience, may especially challenge Religious because it is difficult to submit your will to a superior,” Fr. Phillips wrote July 18 to Protect Our Priests, a group formed to support and assist him.
“As you know, the Canons are requested not to have contact with me, which is difficult for them and for me as their Founder. Also, I have been asked by my superior to relocate to St. Louis. I am requested to do this not under formal obedience but willingly in the virtue of obedience. Is this difficult? Yes, it is,” he wrote.

Looks Like I'm Not Confessing About Jimmy Hoffa

Father Z has some thoughts....


I was sent the link to a short film that, apparently, won and award at the International Catholic Film Festival in 2017.
Fail.
It starts with some good point.  Never mind that the priest is not wearing a purple stole: validity of absolution doesn’t depend on a stole or its color.  Fluctus in simpulo.  There are some good moments in the short.
That said, there are some disturbing elements in this film.
I know that it is a short film and that short means that not every possible angle can be resolved.
The priest lies to the guy, a couple of times, in telling the penitent that he didn’t commit murder.  However, even if “murder” isn’t quite the right technical term for what happened, even if the lie that the priest told was true, the guy would still have committed a horrible sin, several, in fact.
As to the penance, it isn’t always possible to “compensate” a victim.  However, giving something to someone who is not the victim doesn’t strictly satisfy justice.   There is a twist in this case, but that remains.
What I am afraid happened here is that sentimentality trumped reason and, once again, we saw the exaltation of false mercy which betrays truth.  A “mercy” which is apart from the truth is no mercy at all.
Moreover, the film seems to make the the point of the priest’s mercy, rather than God’s mercy.   It is, essentially, about the priest, not God.

I'm pretty sure that this wasn't murder, but I am not a lawyer.  Doesn't murder require premeditation? Lying to make someone feel better is bad, especially coming from a priest in confession.

Mexicans in Central Africa

Bangui, Central African Republic, May 3, 2018 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Gunmen killed at least 15 people, including a priest, and left dozens more wounded, in an attack on a Catholic church in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Tuesday.
The May 1 attack took place at Our Lady of Fatima parish in the capital Bangui, on the outskirts of the PK5 neighborhood, a largely Muslim area known for violent clashes.

Witnesses told Reuters that gunmen armed with grenades attacked the church during Mass, trapping churchgoers inside. Some were able to escape through a hole in the church wall made by police.

At least 15 were killed, including a priest identified as Fr. Albert Toungoumale Baba, and as many as 99 others were wounded

Not My Shocked Face

Washington D.C., Apr 21, 2018 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A strong majority of the 430 men who are about to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood in the United States come from families where both parents were Catholic, and had several friends encouraging them in their vocation.

The findings were from the annual survey of new ordinands by CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate out of Georgetown University. Out of the 430 men to be ordained to the priesthood, 334 responded to the survey, including 252 ordinands to the diocesan priesthood and 78 ordinands to the religious priesthood.

While this year’s priesthood ordination class is slightly smaller than last year’s class of 590, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said the report provides “reasons for hope and areas for growth.”
"Although the overall number of ordinations to the Priesthood is lower this year, the information gathered from this survey and the generosity of those to be ordained continues to inform the important work of vocations ministry for the future,” Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, Chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, said in a statement. 

 According to the survey, nearly nine in ten responding ordinands (86 percent) reported being encouraged to consider the priesthood by someone in their life - usually by a parish priest, friend, or another parishioner. On average, respondents said about four different people in their lives encouraged them to consider a vocation to the priesthood.

All Our Problems WIll Be Solved When Priests Are Allowed to Marry

Indianapolis, Ind., Mar 1, 2018 / 04:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A married Catholic priest in the Indianapolis archdiocese faces several criminal domestic violence charges after he allegedly assaulted his wife in September 2017.

The priest serves the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, a special church jurisdiction set up for Anglicans who wished to enter the Catholic Church, often as a group, while retaining many of their customs. Because they come from the Anglican tradition, some priests in the ordinariate are married.

The ordinariate said in a statement that it is “committed to collaborating with authorities to ensure justice is provided for all concerned, and affirms the Catholic Church’s clear teaching that domestic violence is never justified,” the Indianapolis television station FOX59 reports.

He Coulda Been Somebody

Sounds Like Missouri Could Use a Few More, Too.

 An interesting juxtaposition of stories at the Catholic News Agency....

St. Louis, Mo., Jan 24, 2018 / 06:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pro-life laws in Missouri have drawn the ire of members of the Satanic Temple, which has filed a lawsuit claiming the laws violate their religious freedom.
State law requires abortion providers to distribute a booklet from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services which includes the statement: “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”
This law and others drew objections from the Satanic Temple and one of its members, whose lawsuit claims the restrictions violate her religious freedom. The politically active group, based in Salem, Mass., was founded by self-described atheists who profess disbelief in a literal Satan.
The plaintiff goes by the name Mary Doe in the lawsuit, not using her name due to fears of personal attack. In 2015 she traveled to a St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic from southeast Missouri for the abortion. 
 The plaintiff’s complaint says her professed tenets include a belief that a woman’s body is “inviolable and subject to her will alone” and that she makes health decisions regarding her health “based on the best scientific understanding of the world,” according to her complaint. The complaint says a pregnancy is “human tissue” and part of her body that “she alone” can decide to remove.

Dublin, Ireland, Jan 24, 2018 / 11:08 pm (CNA).- An Irish priest and exorcist is asking the country's bishops for more support after noticing a dramatic increase in demonic activity in the country.
In a recent interview with The Irish Catholic, Fr. Pat Collins said he has been overwhelmed with the number of requests for exorcisms from the faithful in Ireland. In an open letter, he has urged the Irish bishops to train more priests to deal with the demand.
“(I)t’s only in recent years that the demand has risen exponentially,” Collins told The Irish Catholic.
Collins’ comments are on par with those of other exorcists throughout the world, including the International Association of Exorcists (IAE), a group of 400 Catholic leaders and priests, which has reported a dramatic increase in demonic activity in recent years.

Priests for Trump

Mexico City, Mexico, Aug 11, 2017 / 11:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For the ninth year in a row, Mexico is the most violent country in Latin America for priests, said a report from the Catholic Multimedia Center.

The report covers 2012 to 2017, which aligns with the presidency of current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. During this time, 19 priests and two lay persons were murdered, and two priests reported as missing.  

“This year, 2017 specifically, has been disastrous for the priesthood in Mexico,” the Catholic Multimedia Center reported. “Four murders, two thwarted kidnappings, two iconic attacks, one at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City and the other at the Offices of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference, as well as hundreds of threats and extortions of priests and bishops.”

In Heaven, There is no Beer

A group of trainee priests were surprised to be turned away from a pub after a member of staff thought they were on a stag do. The seven seminarians were initially barred from the City Arms in Cardiff on Saturday despite insisting their clothes were not fancy dress.

But they managed to get their celebratory pints on the house after the bar manager realised they were the real thing. Father Michael Doyle said the seven went to the pub in Quay Street to celebrate the ordination of Father Peter McLaren at Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral of St David near Queen Street. He said it was a double celebration because Fr McLaren was the second to be ordained to the priesthood in a week. He added that the City Arms was a favourite of his colleagues including the Archbishop of Cardiff, George Stack. Fr Doyle said: “They arrived at the City Arms and they were dressed wearing the clerical collar.

The doorman basically said something along the lines of, ‘sorry gents, we have a policy of no fancy dress and no stag dos’.”

The doorman was good-natured but firm, and the students had started to leave when they were approached by the bar manager. “He basically said, ‘you’re real, aren’t you?’,” said Fr Doyle. “He invited them back in and when they walked back in the entire pub burst into a round of applause, and they had a free round off the City Arms.”

Good Bye, And Thanks For...Something Or Other

He started his Charlotte career in 1974 as the first priest ordained in the brand new Catholic diocese here. He ends it this month as pastor of St. Matthew, the largest Catholic parish in the United States.

At 75, Monsignor John McSweeney will soon leave affluent Ballantyne – where this parish named for the patron saint of bankers was built – and move to Jamaica or Haiti, where he hopes to spend his retirement years living with and ministering to the poorest of the poor.

“I’m going to try to walk in the sandals of the Lord,” he says.

Sounds like a great guy, huh? Read on....

Echoing Pope Francis – the fifth pontiff to reign during McSweeney’s time as a priest – he’d like the church and the diocese to be more about hospitality and less about judgment. That means, he said, being more welcoming: Of divorced-and-remarried Catholics, of LGBTQ persons, and of others who have long felt excluded by the church.

With too few diocesan priests, including in Charlotte, where the Catholic population is booming, McSweeney said he’d also support the church re-opening the door to married priests by making celibacy optional – as it was the first 1,000 years of Roman Catholicism.

And...

McSweeney said he’s also “very concerned” that many of the priests graduating from seminaries these days are too conservative and could spur a revolt by Catholics in the pews against the priests’ efforts to stifle the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Also known as Vatican II, this council in the 1960s embraced church reform, including expanding the role for lay Catholics and celebrating the Mass in the local language more so than in Latin.

Because Vatican II has done wonders for Church participation.

Prayer for Vocations

From the  Irish Times:

Masses will not be said at any church in the Diocese of Limerick next Tuesday, April 25th – the first time since Catholic Emancipation in 1829 that this has happened in any Irish diocese.

Instead, there will be only lay-led liturgies of the Word (readings) and public prayers in churches, with no Mass and no Communion on that day. The lack of services in the Limerick diocese is directly related to the fall-off in priestly vocations, despite major efforts by the diocese to best use existing priests.

Communion will not be distributed on Tuesday, but this is not to suggest it might never be so distributed at future lay-led liturgies, especially, for instance, on Sundays in nursing homes, said a diocesan spokesman.

Father Z responds:

There is no lack of priestly vocations where bishops and priests project solid clerical identity and where they teach perennial Catholic truth in charity and in clarity.

Moreover, in this matter of priestly and religious vocations, no initiative will succeed unless we have a top down and bottom up revitalization of our sacred liturgical worship.

He recommends that this prayer be said every Sunday after the homily:

Chrism Mass

Today Bishop Braxton  celebrates the Chrism Mass at the Cathedral in Belleville.

On Holy Thursday morning (in some dioceses it may be another morning during Holy Week), the bishop, joined by the priests of the diocese, gather at the Cathedral to celebrate the Chrism Mass. This Mass manifests the unity of the priests with their bishop.

Here the bishop blesses three oils — the oil of catechumens (oleum catechumenorum or oleum sanctorum), the oil of the infirm (oleum infirmorum) and holy chrism (sacrum chrisma) — which will be used in the administration of the sacraments throughout the diocese for the year. This tradition is rooted in the early Church as noted in the Gelasian Sacramentary (named after Pope Gelasius I, d. 496), but was later absorbed into the Holy Thursday evening Mass; Pope Pius XII issued a new Ordinal for Holy Week, which reinstituted a special Mass of the chrism distinct from the evening Mass.

There is nothing that I can find on the Diocesan website, but priests are also renewing their vows at the Mass.

He Wore His Collar

I wish more would in public. And cassocks.


How fun is this? Fr. Bill Matheny from Bridgeport, West Virginia, just won it big on the TV game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire! And better than that, he’s giving away every penny of his prize money.

Talk about persistence. The 61-year-old priest from All Saints Church had been trying to be a contestant on Millionaire for 17 years. It was a personal goal of his to be on the show, knowing his love of trivia could pay off. He’d been watching the show ever since it debuted. This year he wasn’t going to bother trying out again, but a friend convinced him to give it another try.

Not only did he win $250,000, but he announced he’s giving it all to his alma mater, St. Francis of Assisi near Charleston, West Virginia.