archives

In an address to the Clergy of Rome on Mardi Gras, the Pope confirmed the active ministry of the diaconate in all priests, bishops, and even pontiffs! He stressed that the membership in the order of deacons does not fade when one becomes a priests.

For me, this raised the question that if a priests leaves active priestly ministry, why can he not remain then as a deacon, even if he marries? Wouldn't this help in the present crisis if all the priests who left active ministry could still preach, baptize and marry? What a valuable resource it would be to the church to hear the voice of former priests from the pulpit with their new 9 - 5 jobs and possibly wives and families in the pews? What better celebrants of marriage and baptisms could there be or educators and administrators in parish ministries? It could be a win/win situation.

While the subject matter “intrinsic disorder” is under discussion under another strand (Everything under the Sun) it might be helpful to introduce here a discussion of “intrinsic order” from the perspective of social gendering.

Sometimes subject matters become so freighted with ideology that words themselves are distorted by meanings acquired in the context of conflicting ideologies. This may be what is happening in the joined context of “intrinsic disorder” and personal gender, whether, heterosexual, bi-sexual or homosexual.

"If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread, jump off that building, rule the world, worship the false gods of war and greed." The Lenten journey of Gospel nonviolence begins in the desert where Jesus fasts for 40 days, hears these inner temptations to violence, and renounces them in favor of the God of peace, God's word and God's way of nonviolence (Mt. 4:1-11). In this struggle, the Gospel encourages us to renounce our own inner violence so we can follow Jesus in steadfast nonviolence to our own Jerusalems and the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire.

Just sent to me from a Friend as a Lenten meditation on the sins we sometimes miss:

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A young monk arrives at the monastery.

He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.

So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up!