Catholic Video Presentations at Kellenberg High School

This is a very good group and I highly recommend this evening.   I was able to go to these events a long time ago and they were always interesting.  If you are in the area consider attending, it is free.  It is Thursday night, June 20th @ 7:30 PM at Kellenberg High School in Uniondale.

AMERICANS UNITED FOR THE POPE, INC 
Where the Pope is, there is the Church
 TWO EXCELLENT CATHOLIC VIDEO PRESENTATIONS

Mexican Priest Martyrs

Blessed Justino Orona

Blessed Atilano Cruz

                        

      In the 1920’s the Catholic Church was brutally persecuted in Mexico.  Churches were closed and priests were hunted down and killed.  With the help of the laity, priests went into hiding and risked their lives offering Mass and hearing confessions for the love of God and their people. 

      Among the many priest Martyrs are Father Justino Orona and Father Atilano Cruz.  In spite of the ever present danger of certain death they continued to do their priestly work.  They joined the countless others who stood up to the oppressive government under the banner of “Long live Christ the King and our Lady of Guadalupe!”  Hear the true story of how these priests died from two men who helped the priests in the last days of their earthly life.  Very inspiring!

**********************************************************

Judy Hehr

SHE MADE MILLIONS BUT COULD NOT FIND HAPPINESS WITHOUT GOD

            In her high school years Judy fell in with the wrong crowd and embraced self destructive behavior.  She was into drugs, heavy drinking and sex.  She came close to committing suicide.

            After high school Judy became a sales representative for a printing firm and was tremendously successful.  But even though she became a millionaire and had four beautiful children and a loving husband her life was still empty.  Then God stepped in and she tells her amazing conversion story.  Today she is in love with her faith and has become active in the church as an inspiring speaker.  Come and hear this extraordinary journey back to God.

COME AND BRING A FRIEND

Thursday  June 20th   7:30pm Kellenberg HS – 3rd floor meeting room Directions to the 3rd floor Emmanuel Marianist Retreat House meeting room.  Drive past the auditorium (main doors with three levels of steps on the right: the outdoor crucifix on your left.) Keep going around the building until you will see an outside elevator for the Emmanuel Marianist Retreat House.  Take the elevator to the third floor and follow the signs music room. – Thank you.)

Long Island's Only Dairy Queen

This may be hard for most Americans to believe, but up until June 10th Long Island had no Dairy Queens.  The first one opened in my hometown of Massapequa and I am sure more will follow. 

Dairy Queen Holds Grand Opening In Massapequa

Superman and Jesus

From CNN - 

"Baltimore, Maryland (CNN) - As the new Superman movie takes flight this weekend, filmmakers are hoping the Man of Steel lands not only in theaters, but also in pulpits.


Warner Bros. Studios is aggressively marketing "Man of Steel" to Christian pastors, inviting them to early screenings, creating Father’s Day discussion guides and producing special film trailers that focus on the faith-friendly angles of the movie.

The movie studio even asked a theologian to provide sermon notes for pastors who want to preach about Superman on Sunday. Titled “Jesus: The Original Superhero,” the notes run nine pages.

“How might the story of Superman awaken our passion for the greatest hero who ever lived and died and rose again?” the sermon notes ask."

Jesuit says Britain and US are ‘crazy’ for backing Islamists in Egypt

Some common sense from The Catholic Herald in the UK:

"Fr Boulad said the Muslim Brotherhood had a systematic plan to harass Christians so that they would leave Egypt and that among their tactics was the kidnapping and rape of Christian girls.


The organisation also invokes human rights to silence critics in France, Canada and elsewhere, using the courts against people who speak up, he said. The government cries “Islamophobia” and it “is politically incorrect to be an Islamophobe”, he said.

“The United States, France and Great Britain are supporting this. It’s crazy,” he added.“Intellectual and factual terrorism is being implemented not only in Egypt but all over the world. You cannot speak up. They go to court; they accuse you. “As long as Islam is not reformed, we are going to catastrophe,” Fr Boulad said.

Fortunately, he added, some people had the courage to speak up.

He said he hoped that liberal democracies would support the growing coalition opposing the Egyptian ruling party."

No 'Definitive Plans' for Sacred Heart Parish, Says Diocese

From NorthFork Patch.com

"The Sacred Heart parish continues to evaluate its future -- with no absolute plans in place, a representative for the Diocese of Rockville Centre said Wednesday.

“The Diocese is not aware of any definitive plans for any buildings on the Sacred Heart parish campus. The parish, along with the Diocese, continues to evaluate the best use of all of its resources for its parishioners,” said Sean P. Dolan, spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, after a number of requests from Patch about the future of the church, rectory, and convent."

"The Sacred Heart Church, closed since December, as well as the rectory and carriage house, is one of seven properties listed as 'endangered' by the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, was built in the late 1870s.

Despite a sit-in by some parishoners to keep church services going at the Roman Catholic worship house, was ultimately considered too much of a danger to keep open."

Chinese parents left childless do battle against once-child policy

From MSNBC, a story about the dangers of a culture of death, run by a government out to keep the birth rate low.  The problems of overpopulation in China can be worked on with moral methods.  The problems caused by this immoral one child policy are much deeper and will hurt China more and more in decades to come.  

"In her grief, Zhang, 59, was forced to come to terms with the marginal life of a childless middle-aged woman of few resources in a society where children and the extension of the family line are essential to a person’s survival. She began to blame her husband, feeling he did not support her enough to have a second child. Zhang retreated from society, even living in a monastery for several years to escape the pain.

Each year 76,000 families in China lose their only child, according to an annual report by Chinese Ministry of Health in 2010. In June 2012, for the first time, over 80 parents from all over the country who had lost their only child marched to Beijing to protest the policy and the meager compensation they are given in front of the National Family Planning office.

Zhang heard about the protest and began to think about her own experience. Having one child had not been her choice. Indeed she had been pregnant twice after she gave birth to her son, thinking that, as a farmer, she would be exempt from the one-child policy.

But she says her county’s family planning department coerced her into having abortions under the threat of losing her husband’s teaching job and their house. The abortions were administered late, she said once when she was five months pregnant and once at eight months, when a gruesome procedure is required.

NBC could not confirm Zhang’s allegation, but reports of forced abortions have caused international outcry in recent years. In June 2012 city officials in China apologized to a woman who was forced to have an abortion and disciplined three people responsible for it. The apology came after gruesome photos of the mother and the fetus sparked outrage among Chinese netizens."

 

The Chinese Ministry of Health released data in March that 336 million abortions 222 million sterilizations have been performed since 1971. (The one-child policy was implemented in 1979, but other family planning policies were enforced before it)."

2 Long Islanders ordained Jesuits Priests

 Yesterday, at Fordham University in the Bronx, 2 Long Islanders became Jesuits:

Rev. Mr. James Donovan, SJ (NYK), 48, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up on Long Island. Mr. Donovan’s Catholic education dates back to grammar school at Our Lady of Lourdes School in his hometown of Malverne, New York, followed by Maria Regina Diocesan High School in Uniondale.

Rev. Mr. Peter Folan, SJ (MAR), 34, is a native of Massapequa Park on Long Island, New York. A 1996 graduate of Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York, Mr. Folan attended the University of Notre Dame and earned a bachelor’s degree in the Program of Liberal Studies and German in 2000.

The Charismatic Renewal and the Catholic Church

The Catholic World Report takes a look at the history of the Charismatic Renewal movement within the Church.    This is a short background history focused mostly on the origins in Italy, sparked by Sister Elena Guerra, and does not look at the movement today in the US, which I think would make a good followup article.

"The Charismatic Renewal was eventually sparked in the Catholic Church in 1967, not by any intervention of the pope or clergy, but at the level of the laity at a students’ retreat at Duquesne University, in February of that year. Interestingly, tradition puts in an appearance here as well, as Duquesne was founded in 1878 by the Holy Ghost Fathers, members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. From there the flame went almost simultaneously to Notre Dame where, in the words of Dorothy Ranaghan, writer and witness of the beginnings, after the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit


Summer school brought in priests, nuns, and lay people from all over the world. And so we held prayer meetings and crowds attended and hundreds were baptized in the Holy Spirit and they took the baptism in the Holy Spirit back to their home countries. It was a wild and wonderful summer. There were no Life in the Spirit Seminars [they hadn’t been written yet], we just laid hands on everyone and prayed right away and amazing things happened. Given our youth and inexperience it is all the more evident that it was God’s work, not ours."

1 Year Anniversary of Priesthood

Fr. Michael Duffy, from St. Kilians parish in Farmingdale, and the blogger at Father, Where Art Thou? has reflects on his first anniversary of his ordination here.

Debunking the Myths of a Good Death

Date: Thursday, June 20, 2013
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: New York University
Kimmel Center, Room 914
60 Washington Square South, New York

A discussion about euthanasia and the value of suffering toward the end of life


with Dr. Margaret SOMERVILLE, Founding Director, Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, Montreal, and Daniel P. SULMASY, MD, PhD, Kilbride-Clinton Professor of Medicine and Ethics, Department of Medicine and Divinity School; Associate Director, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, Chicago

Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center

This event is dedicated to the ongoing debate about the possible legalization of assisted suicide or, in some cases, even euthanasia.

 End-of-life issues are not easy to discuss because they involve very fundamental questions, such as the meaning and scope of individual freedom, the very value of human life and the nature of the medical profession. For this event, we have asked our speakers to help us understand better two very basic questions.

The first question is: what motivates the current push towards assisted suicide? What cultural forces are at work and how should we respond to them? Contemporary culture places a disproportionate emphasis on individual autonomy, but is that the only criterion? Is our death really just our own? Or does the idea of legal euthanasia ignore that fact that how we live and die has profound consequences on the lives of people around us?

This last question leads us to second theme that we would like to discuss tonight, namely the apparent inability of our culture to attribute any value to the unavoidable suffering that is associated with dying. Nothing makes suffering more unbearable than the perception that it is utterly meaningless. But is it really so? Is it possible to discover a possibility of good even in suffering?

The event is open to the public and free of charge.

Brooklyn's Catholic churches celebrate Feast of Corpus Christi

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a short article on public Eucharistic processions including a picture of the procession at St. Finbars.  My grandfather used to work at St. Finbars as a handyman.

"At Saint Finbar Catholic Church, hundreds of parishioners followed their pastor, the Rev. Michael Louis Gelfant, through the streets of Bath Beach singing “Christ Be Beside Me,” “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” and other hymns.
The participants included dozens of children dressed in crisp white dresses and suits who had recently received their first Holy Communion.
Curious onlookers waved at the religious procession. Some took pictures with their cell phone cameras.
After the procession, the parishioners returned to the church at 138 Bay 20th St., where a benediction took place. Noting the hot and humid weather the participants marched in, Gelfant said, “We were sweating, but we were sweating for Jesus!”

Fr. Andrew Greeley

When I heard Fr. Andrew Greeley died the first thing I thought of was his writing about having documents hidden away about a ring of pedophiles in the Chicago priesthood.  Fortunately I was not the only one who remembers this.  When I first read that, before the priest sex scandals broke open,  I always wondered whether it was true and if so why did he hide away the documents instead of handing them over to the police or press to expose this ring.   Now that he is dead I hope we find out.

Fake Catholic Weddings on Long Island

When I was an altar boy I served Mass for a newly ordained priest named Fr. Robert Allmendinger.  He later left the active ministry (I am not sure why) and was featured on a local investigative news feature called 'Shame on You'.  He was presenting himself as a Catholic priest and marrying people but they were later finding out that he was not a priest in good standing.  He now seems to have shorted his name to Robert Allmen and is calling himself a bishop (complete with snazzy bishop type outfit!).  He has a second almost identical website here.  I don't know if he is still doing the rent a priest thing here but he was 'returned to the lay state' as of November 9, 2011.  So he is no longer a Catholic priest, and has not been a priest in good standing from long before that.  I hope Catholics of Long Island realize that this man is not an active Catholic priest and if they want a Catholic wedding it will be inside a Catholic parish. 

Update:  Based on this thread on Liweddings.com some people still think he is a Catholic priest.  Apparently he founded his own church called the Good Shepherd in Hamptons Bays (this is not a Catholic Church).

Related:  Deacon Greg Kandra of The Deacon's Bench discusses the important question of "Why can't a Catholic get married outside of a Church?".

The atheist orthodoxy that drove me to faith

Below is a link to a great column by Megan Hodder, a Catholic convert who was a devotee of the 'New Atheists', those angry and fundamentalist atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, until she read Aquinas, George Weigel, and Pope Benedict.  But the intellectual writing was just the spark, it was contact with 'real life' Catholics who brought her into the Church.

"My friendships with practising Catholics finally convinced me that I had to make a decision. Faith, after all, isn’t merely an intellectual exercise, an assent to certain propositions; it’s a radical act of the will, one that engenders a change of the whole person. Books had taken me to Catholicism as a plausible conjecture, but Catholicism as a living truth I came to understand only through observing those already serving the Church within that life of grace."


Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing at the Catholic Herald (UK), it is well worth it.  Catholicism can be very exciting when you encounter it in books from great writers.  It is so all encompassing that when you discover one person, such as Chesterton, you will be lead to others (Belloc) and then you will be brought into a whole other topic such as distributism, which will lead you to economics and justice, which will lead you into other people and topics, and on and on etc...  But, without real encounters with genuine Christian people and good Liturgy, it can be just intellectual stimulation.  As the author of the column puts it:

"I grew up in a culture that has largely turned its back on faith. It’s why I was able to drift through life with my ill-conceived atheism going unchallenged, and at least partially explains the sheer extent of the popular support for the New Atheists: for every considerate and well-informed atheist, there will be others with no personal experience of religion and no interest in the arguments who are simply drifting with the cultural tide.

As the popularity of belligerent, all-the-answers atheism wanes, however, thoughtful Christians able to explain and defend their faith will become an increasingly vital presence in the public square."

Disgusting perverts in political office and the priesthood

As a New Yorker, I have been accostomed to politicians being exposed as perverts or crooks (Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Vito Lopez, etc...).

As a Catholic I have become accostomed to priests being exposed as perverts or crooks (Paul Shanley, John Corapi, Marcial Maciel, etc..).

 This short article talks about perverted and crooked politicians but everything said about them would also apply to perverted and crooked priests as well.

Political Narcissists:  Lacking a Moral Center
 By George Marlin
   

"What makes these and so many other political lowlifes believe they are indispensible and that nothing they ever do will be led against them in the long run?

First and foremost, they are narcissists.  They have grandiose views of their talents, excessive interest in themselves, a craving for attention and admiration, and a consciousness of superiority.

This type of person, as social philosopher Christopher Lasch once observed, depends on others “to validate his self-esteem.  He cannot live without an admiring audience. . . .For the narcissist, the world is a mirror, whereas the rugged individual saw it as an empty wilderness to be shaped to his own design.”  Success for these narcissists “consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be vastly admired; not for one’s accomplishments, but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation.”

   

Five Schools Get Reprieve From Rockville Centre Diocese

From CBS 2

"The Diocese of Rockville Center [sic]will not be closing five grammar schools next fall.

Two of the schools are in Nassau County and three of the schools are in Suffolk County.

Nassau, they are St. Dominic Elementary School in Oyster Bay and St. Edward the Confessor School in Syosset.

In Suffolk, they are St. Isidore School in Riverhead, Our Lady of Mercy Regional School in Cutchogue, and Our Lady Queen of Apostles School in Center Moriches.

The’ve been removed from a watch list, at least for now, according to Diocese spokesman Sean Dolan.

“It’s dependent upon enrollment. It’s dependent upon adequate funding from the parishes and contributions from parishioners and fundraising and stuff,”


What is needed in the DRVC is a couple of small schools setup by lay people and run explicitly to teach the faith.  This is a trend in Catholic elementary education and the Diocese has plenty of empty school buildings that the schools could reside.

Vatican: 100,000 Christians killed annually

By Catholic News Service


GENEVA (CNS) -- More than 100,000 Christians are killed each year because of their faith, and millions more face bigotry, intolerance and marginalization because of their beliefs, a Vatican official said.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to U.S. agencies in Geneva, told the Human Rights Council May 27 that "credible research" by Massimo Introvigne, a former representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on combating intolerance and discrimination against Christians, "has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year."

In addition, he said, "in some Western countries, where historically the Christian presence has been an integral part of society, a trend emerges that tends to marginalize Christianity in public life, ignore historic and social contributions and even restrict the ability of faith communities to carry out social charitable services."

Of course the bigots in this country will deny this, or downplay it as they always do.

Catholic Church Mediates Ceasefire Between Honduran Gangs

I heard this story driving home from work tonight.  You can listen to the story on NRP.org but it does not go into details about the Church's involvement.

Dr. Peter Kreeft's conversion to Catholicism - Part 1

Over at the Catholic Education Resource Center, Dr. Peter Kreeft tells the story of his conversion to Catholicism.  I has no idea he was a convert - they really should wear name tags or something.

"We lived in New Jersey, and we went to New York City a lot as tourists — I'm an only child — with my parents, and we went to St. Patrick's Cathedral, just to see it, and I'd never seen anything like that before.  I was stunned.  It was just like the gate of heaven.  It was a different kind of beauty.  I said to myself, this is the most beautiful piece of architecture I've ever seen in my life.  And I turned to my father and I said, "Dad, this is a Catholic church, isn't it?"  And he said, "Yes."  And I said, "The Catholics are wrong, aren't they?" And he said, "Oh, yes, of course;  they're very, very wrong."  And then I said, "Then how can their churches be so beautiful?"  And it was the first time in my life that my father didn't have any answer to a question at all;  he was just stumped.  I saw the confusion on his face.  I think I was at the time much more scandalized by the fact that my hitherto-infallible father didn't have the answer to a very simple question than my doubts that the Catholic Church was as bad as I had thought it.  Well, sermons in stone: You can argue with thoughts;  you can't argue with beauty"

New Pastors and priest transfers in the Diocese of Rockville Centre

June is the traditional time for the Diocese to shift priests around.  The Long Island Catholic would always publish all the personnel changes, so now that it is not published weekly I suppose we will have to watch the DRVC website to learn where priests will land. 
I did find some of this info on Bishop Murphy's blog a couple of months ago:

• Msgr. Gerald Ringenback from pastor at St. Bernard, Levittown, to pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Holbrook (replacing Msgr. Thomas Spadaro, who was pastor at Good Shepherd for 31 years!)
• Msgr. Ralph Sommer from pastor at St. Brigid, Westbury to pastor of St. Bernard, Levittown
• Father Anthony Stanganelli from pastor at Ss. Philip and James in St. James, to pastor of St. Brigid, Westbury
• Msgr. James McNamara from pastor of Holy Cross, Nesconset, to pastor of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, Point Lookout, where he will replace retiring pastor, Father Patrick Callan.
• Father Frank Grieco will leave St. Anthony in East Northport to become pastor at Holy Spirit, New Hyde Park.
• Father Valentine Rebello will go from associate at St. Barnabas, Bellmore, to pastor of St. Pius X in Plainview.
• Father Robert Holtz will move from associate at St. Christopher, Baldwin to be pastor of St. Raphael, East Meadow.
• Father Michael Holzman will finish up as chaplain at St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School to become pastor of Holy Cross, Nesconset.
• Father Marian Bicz will leave as pastor of Our Lady of Obstrabama in Cutchogue to become pastor of St. Hyacinth in Glen Head.
• Father Thomas Haggerty completes his years at St. Raphael, East Meadow, to become pastor of SS. Philip and James in St. James.

In addition I know of these two moves:

Fr. Christopher Costigan of St. Bernards in Levittown will go to St. Mary's in Manhasset

Msgr. Batule will become the pastor of Corpus Christi in Mineola.

If anyone knows of any other information please let me know.

UPDATE - from a reader:
Father Nohs from Holy Spirit will be going to St Bernards