Today is Friday in the fourteenth week of Ordinary Time in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church.
From the Liturgy of the Hours, from a letter to the Corinthians by Pope Saint Clement I:
From Adam down to the present time all generations have passed away; but those who were perfected in love by God’s grace have a place among the saints who will be revealed when the kingdom of Christ comes to us.
Little is known about the pontificate of this early Pope, beyond a surviving letter prompted by a schism in the church at Corinth. The excerpt above is from that letter.
Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, has written a long article at On The Square on The Cost of Father Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ and its lay arm, Regnum Christi.
The article concludes:
The [Vatican] bureaucracy has attempted public relations and done it badly. And the bureaucracy has attempted interior review, for the edification of its people and the good discipline of its priests, and that, too, has not been done particularly well. The faithful are saddened, responding to the news accounts with a sigh and mumble, and the clergy are disheartened and confused.
For either purpose, a figure such as Cardinal Sodano has to be removed from his current position and told to serve the Church in prayer. Everyone inside the Church needs to be taught that there are consequences for scandalous mistakes. And, for the outside world, Catholicism needs a story to tell, a narrative that can convey the simple truth: Despite the sins of its members, the Church remains what it has been—a light in dark places, a force of charity for the weak and the poor, and a hope for humankind on its way to the saving truth that is God.
Cardinal Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, appears to have been paid off by Father Maciel to deflect scrutiny of both himself and his foundation.
The entire long article is well worth reading — eyes should not be averted from the evil or it will persist. Scandal should not be tolerated, or it will spread.
Pray for Father Maciel’s victims, and pray for Father Maciel, now dead, although it’s hard to see how he might have died in a state of grace that would enable him to eventually enter Heaven. Judgement is God’s. His mercy is infinite. So is His Justice.
Pray also for the swift removal of Cardinal Sodano to a secluded life of prayer, where his ability to abet evil will be fenced in by solitude and contemplation of his own sins.
Today is the first Saturday of the new calendar year, a good occasion to offer an explanation of the Roman Catholic First Saturday Devotion.
In honor of the Virgin Mary’s steadfastness and love after the death of her Son on Good Friday and before His resurrection Easter morning, Catholics practice a devotion based on visions by Sister Lucia, the longest surviving visionary of Fatima.
As with many Catholic devotions, the First Saturday devotion requires persistence and repetition: the actions must be carried through on five consecutive First Saturdays. Were you to start today, on the First Saturday of January 2010, you would need to repeat the actions on the First Saturdays of February, March, April and May to complete the devotion.
The actions to be repeated:
receive Reconciliation (also known as confession and absolution);
attend Mass and receive Holy Communion; and
pray a complete set of Mysteries of the Rosary while meditating on their meaning.
A practicing Catholic should find this devotion a light burden eagerly taken up.
This devotion has a political aspect — its intention is to make up for injury to Mary from those who deny her as Mother of God (among other attacks against her). Muslims recognize Mary as the mother of Jesus, but deny the divinity of Jesus and thereby deny Mary as Mother of God (Theotokos). Following the discipline of First Saturday devotions, therefore, defies sharia (Muslim law).
