Tag: Year of Faith

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Abbot Marcel Rooney, OSB

Confirmation: Sacrament and challenge

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church says about this sacrament: “By the Sacrament of Confirmation [the baptized] are more perfectly bound to the Church and enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed” (#1285).

The sacrament of Baptism incorporates one into the Body of Christ and hence makes one a member of Christ’s Church. What the Catechism means when it says that the baptized “are more perfectly bound to the Church” is that Confirmation, in effect, completes the process begun in Baptism, and fulfills what Christian Initiation is all about. This is why the traditional order of the sacraments in the Church, from our earliest evidence, is generally: Baptism, then Confirmation, and then Holy Eucharist.

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Lindsay Becher, For the Catholic Herald

Engaging in work on the new and the old evangelization

This is the first in a series of articles to be published on the topic of engaging in the work of evangelization — old and new — and how to live out the Year of Faith by engaging in this most important task. Keep reading in the weeks to come!

We are three months in. This Year of Faith was called for with the hope of transforming our world and the lives of those living in it. What has happened?

  • A synod of bishops and lay leaders in the Church met in Rome for a month to talk about the New Evangelization last October
  • A few hundred people in the Diocese of Madison came out to hear Tom Peterson, founder of Catholics Come Home, speak in Madison this past November.
  • A couple parishes in the area have invited back those who had fallen away from the practice of their faith.
  • Catholic churches were packed on Christmas and were less than half full the following Sunday.
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Mary C. Uhler, Catholic Herald Staff

What’s in a name? Lamenting the decline in children named after Mary and the saints

When I was a student at Aquinas High School in LaCrosse, there were eight of us in my class with the name Mary. To avoid confusion, we were called by our first and middle name, such as Mary Beth, Mary Ellen, Mary Pat, and Mary Sue. I was usually just called Mary, although I like my middle name and wouldn’t mind being called Mary Clare.

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Michelle Nilsson

A call to study Vatican II

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The Year of Faith was called for by our Holy Father to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.

In the years following Vatican II, the council’s purpose and the documents it promulgated were poorly understood, leading to a vast range of interpretation and division. It is important to note that the “spirit” of Vatican II that is often referenced is none other than the Holy Spirit who has maintained unity and guidance to the Church and our Sacred Tradition both before and after Vatican II.

It is only fitting that our current Holy Father has called for this year as a year to revisit the Council and her documents and, as a result, grow in faith and in unity with one another under the guidance of the Holy See.

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Lindsay Becher

Finding the heart of practicing our faith

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During this Year of Faith, we are called to take time to consider what is at the heart of the practice of our Catholic faith.

Hopefully this season of Advent has been a chance to prayerfully think about this topic and wait in anticipation for the answer. This may have been a battle, as our world poses many challenges to this task. There are Christmas parties to attend, light displays to enjoy, trees needing to be trimmed, gifts waiting to be wrapped, and meals to be planned. The pre-Christmas to-do list goes on and on.

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Lindsay Becher, For the Catholic Herald

Has the faith changed

Year of Faith column logo“Families only had one car in those days. . .” Tom Delaney smiles as he recounts the details of proposing to his bride Nan over 50 years ago. Around Christmas of 1961, he asked her dad for permission to borrow her family’s car to take her to midnight Mass at Holy Hill. A bit flustered, he forgot to ask her dad for permission to marry her.

Despite the small blunder, on that Christmas Eve he offered her a diamond, and she accepted.

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Abbot Marcel Rooney, OSB

Sacraments of Christian Initiation: baptism for infants

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The previous installment in this series spoke of Baptism for Adults. The Church has shown its understanding of this sacrament’s importance by creating the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

But the Church has always had the tradition of baptizing infants and children also. Thus, Acts 16 and 18 speak of three instances in which the “whole household” was baptized. Patristic evidence assures us that the practice of Infant Baptism continued unbroken in the first centuries — and so it has been down through the ages.

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Patrick Gorman

Encountering Christ in the liturgy

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One of the great contributions of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy is the brief synthesis on Christ’s presence in the Church’s prayer.

“Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations,” (art. 7). Christ’s presence in the Mass is multifaceted and mysterious, but there are four specific ways named by the Council — in the Eucharistic species, the Word of God, the person of the priest, and in the gathered community in which “the Church prays and sings” (art. 7).

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Decree Designating a Place of Pilgrimage for the Year of Faith and Determining Certain Days for Obtaining a Plenary Indulgence

Whereas our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in the hope of arousing in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, of intensifying the celebration of the faith in the liturgy, and of encouraging the faithful to rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived, and prayed, has proclaimed a Year of Faith from October 11, 2012, to November 24, 2013;

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