A bartender explains:

Just like a priest, a bartender serves a congregation and, at their best, bartenders can create community. They welcome each guest into the bar and provide food, drink and conversation. They become a guide to the city or connector to other people within the bar. There have been more than a few times at my bar when strangers have become friends, seeing each other off at the end of the night as if they have known each other for years.

Each sees or is told the seamy side of life too, as the man explains . . . via Confessions of a Catholic Bartender | America Magazine

It’s about the book he co-authored with the pope emeritus defending the celibacy requirement in the face of the pope’s seeming publicly to think it’s an open question.

But then it segues into discussion of big changes coming as officials hand in the required resignations on their 75th birthdays. All termed “reform,” by the way. Alleged or intended reform maybe?

As for Sarah, one of the 75-year-olds, the writer leads with that (as grabber, of course) and makes an interesting point about what’s “typically” done and what isn’t.

Though unprecedented is perhaps the wrong word to describe the bizarre episode, it was certainly odd, as Sarah, an active sitting cardinal who heads the Vatican’s liturgy office, took to social media to defend his credibility, issuing several statements and publishing correspondence between himself and Benedict – things that heads of Vatican departments don’t typically do.

Indeed not. But in the reign of a pope who does things almost every day that popes don’t typically do, right?

via Sarah’s last hurrah? 2020 could see major Vatican shakeups

To much to-do about it, says the bishop-elect.

The Roman Catholic bishop announces, with “great sadness”:

It is with great sadness that I have received a letter from Bishop-Elect Susan Haynes stating that, due to the controversy of the proposed use of St. Bede Catholic Church for her consecration as the bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, she has decided to find another location for the ceremony to take place.

In granting permission for this ordination to be held at St. Bede, we were welcoming, as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council encouraged, those who have in common with us “the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Decree on Ecumenism, 3). We were following the example of St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis who enthusiastically engaged in ecumenical outreach and hospitality.

Editorial note: If I can’t match the Catholic bishop’s sadness in this matter, I still find a respect for the Episcopal bishop-elect, whom I find typical of Episcopals, based on decades of sporadic contacts with them. If they are unduly easy-going in matters of doctrine and discipline, they are also, I have found, easy to deal with. So God bless the bishop-elect and may she find some other venue for her consecration.

via Bishop Knestout Statement Following the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia’s Decision to Change Consecration Location

Two men speak for many:

At the end of our reflection, we feel the need to confess our love for the Church. We have wanted to give our lives to her as Christ offered his own. We will never abandon her ever! On our right hand we wear the ring which reminds us that we are bound to her in a definitive covenant.
It is solely our love for the Church that led us to pick up the pen in order to write to all of you.

We live in the sadness and suffering of these difficult and troubled times. It was our sacred duty to recall the truth of the Catholic priesthood. For through it, all of the beauty of the Church is implicated. The Church is not only a human organization. She is a mystery. She is the Mystical Bride of Christ. This is what our priestly celibacy unceasingly recalls to the world.

It is urgent and necessary, that everyone – bishops, priests and laity – no longer allow themselves to be impressed by the bad arguments, staged theater, diabolical lies, and fashionable errors that want to devalue priestly celibacy.

It is urgent and necessary, that everyone – bishops, priests and laity – rediscover a perspective of faith on the Church and on priestly celibacy which protects her mystery.

This perspective will be the best bulwark against the spirit of division and politics but also against the spirit of indifference and relativism.
In these difficult times, the only fear that each one of us ought to have is hearing the Lord say one day “that hard word of reproof […]: ‘Accursed are you because you kept silent.’ Alas! Keep silent no longer! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that, through keeping silent, the world is depraved, the Bride of Christ has gone pale, her color is gone, because her blood has been sucked out of her; that is […] the Blood of Christ, which is given through grace […]. Sleep no longer in negligence; do what you can with the present time.
§§§
Originally published on Marco Tosatti’s blog., Jan. 16, 2020.
Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino

via Antonio Socci Readers

I have a problem with this sentence, in a Sun-Times story:

The 2014 documentary “A Murder in the Park” reexamined the case and tried [but failed, apparently] to cast doubt on the motivations of and methods employed by Protess and his students in the Medill Innocence Project.

Tried? What if you dropped “tried to”? Or was the documentary a complete flop? No one entertained doubt after watching it?

The writer hints at something he’d like to say. He should come out with it.

via Chicago Sun-Times

I can hear a guy saying to a clumsy character, “Do me a favor and get off my back, OK?”

I mean, come onnnn . . .

via Spectator USA

Getting organized, Communist style.  Background for previous story  about bishop evicted etc. five months later.

Members of the Party and [its agency] United Front, university professors and patriotic [state-approved] bishops have transformed formerly “underground” priests into perfect “state officials”.  A report by the Patriotic Association.

Reaction:

Rome (AsiaNews) – “Is this still the Catholic Church?”: This is the reaction of a young Chinese man to the text we publish below today in full translation, concerning the “formation courses” held in Beijing for the priests of the diocese of Mindong (Fujian) who joined the [government’s] Patriotic Association.

As already reported Mindong – which was to be the “pilot project” for the Sino-Vatican agreement – was given a new ordinary bishop, Msgr.  Zhan Silu (formerly excommunicated, reconciled by the pope) while the underground bishop Msgr.  Guo Xijin [later evicted] agreed to be demoted to auxiliary bishop at the request of the pontiff.

Despite this, [Guo] was never officially recognised by  the government because Beijing requires him to formerly adhere to an “independent” Church.  Many priests – mostly from the underground branch – have not agreed to sign.

However, a few dozen have.  From July 21 to 27, the Party, together with Msgr. Zhan Silu [“patriotic”] organized an “internship” in Beijing for these men, where Party members, professors, and United Front cadres introduced them to the work of priests who have to carry forward socialism, sinicize the Church, love their country first and  then religion, to develop “an independent, autonomous and democratic Church”. [Italics added throughout]

A captive church, expected to leave Jesus out of it, to go by the government’s report, as here:

What is most striking is that the Gospel is mentioned only once, the word “Jesus”, never.  As many experts have highlighted in recent months, the Party and the United Front are transforming the official Catholic Church into a State Church and the priests into “officials”. 

Is this what Francis had in mind?

Read the rest here: In Beijing, the “patriotic” formation of Mindong priests. 

He won’t buy into recent Francis arrangement with the Chinese government, was effectively thrown with others under the Communist/papal bus.

At least five parishes have been closed, with electricity and water supplies cut off. . . . . “Fire safety” measures were given as a justification, an excuse for persecution. Some priests have been kicked out.

A home for the elderly kept by the nuns is also closed. Of the thirty guests, some are hosted by relatives, others are homeless.

Official [government-approved] bishop Zhan Silu [excommunicated until rehabilitated by Francis] was [transformed] by the [party vehicle] United Front.

Some priests speak of Holy See’s having “too lightly” signed to the agreement.

Ruthlessly, for the sake of God knows what.

More more more here.