Tag Archives: Catholic

Bishop to Celebrate Mass for the Catholic Medical Association

For all those Pittsburghers in medicine, nursing, dentistry and other healthcare fields (which is probably a good chunk of the population), please mark this on your calendars:

Sunday, September 21, 2008



Mass @ 9:00 a.m., Holy Family Chapel,
UPMC-Mercy Hospital

Bishop David A. Zubik, D.D. – Main Celebrant


Breakfast Program to follow in Sr. Ferdinand M. Clark Auditorium


Speaker: John F. Brehany, Ph.D., S.T.L.
Executive Director and Ethicist, National CMA


Topic: The Future of CMA is Now!


This is run by the Pittsburgh Guild of the Catholic Medical Association. Write to info@cathmedpittsburgh.org for more information.

In Search of Catholic “To Kill a Mockingbird”

I met my wife three years ago in northern Quebec, and at the time she could barely speak English and I could barely speak French. Now that we are both proficient in each other’s language, one of the great joys of our married life has been to introduce each other to the literature of our respective languages. I will never forget the day she finished “To Kill a Mockingbird.” She fell in love that day with the English language and has explored dozens of authors since, from C.S. Lewis to J.D. Salinger to Margaret Atwood.

Now my wife is thinking of becoming Roman Catholic (she was one of the few Evangelical Baptists in Quebec when I met her). She has asked me for books to read that will give her sense of what the RC religion is all about. This has got me asking myself: what is the “To Kill a Mockingbird” of modern Catholic literature–by which I mean the most gripping, readable book that should be every newcomer’s first introduction to the RC faith? She is presently reading Ste-Therese of Lisieux’s “Story of a Soul,” which, though excellent, is not exactly Catholic 101. She is already a well-read Christian, and has basically exhausted C.S. Lewis.

Any suggestions?

Liturgy Is For God

“There were practical reasons for the fact that [the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] was the first [of Vatican II]. Yet looking back, we have to say that this made good sense in terms of the structure of the Council as a whole: worship, adoration, comes first. And thus God does….The Constitution on the Church, which then followed as the Council’s second text, should be seen as being inwardly bracketed together with it. The Church derives from adoration, from the task of glorifying God. Ecclesiology, of its nature, has to do with liturgy. And so it is logical, too, that the third Constitution talks about the Word of God, which calls the Church together and is at all times renewing her. The Fourth Constitution shows how the glory of God presents itself in an ethos, how the light we have received from God is carried out into the world, how only thus can God be fully glorified. In the period following the Council, of course, the Constitution on the Liturgy was understood, no longer on the basis of this fundamental primacy of adoration, but quite simply as a recipe book concerned with what we can do with the liturgy. In the meantime many liturgical experts, rushing into consideration about how we can shape the liturgy in a more attractive way, to communicate better, so as to get more and more people actively involved, have apparently quite lost sight of the fact that the liturgy is actually ‘done’ for God and not for ourselves. The more we do it for ourselves, however, the less it attracts people, because everyone can clearly sense that what is essential is increasingly eluding us.”

Of Atheists and Crackers

Need a demonstration of the fallen nature of man? You’re looking at him. Syndicating Peter’s post linking to P.Z. Myers’ screed about the Eucharist being just a cracker royally offended good friend, frequent commenter, and occasional blogger, Stuff. As a form of public penance, here are links to some Catholic discussion of Myers’ and his rabid rants.:

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