St. Monica's Sodality

Do you know what a Lapsi is?

It is a Latin word used to refer to persons who have lapsed from the practice of the Catholic Faith. (Lapsi is a collective plural. Singular is lapsus for a male and lapsa for a female.) If you do, you might want to consider joining St. Monica's Sodality.

The home of St. Monica's Sodality is St. John Cantius Church in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The Sodality meets weekly for their Novena Prayer and Mass.

The purpose of the Sodality is to support its members to cooperate with St. Monica in praying for their loved Lapsi.

Here is their prayer:

Exemplary Mother of the great Augustine, you perseveringly pursued your wayward son not with wild threats but with prayerful cries to heaven. Intercede for all mothers in our day so that they may learn to draw their children to God. Teach them how to remain close to their children, even the prodigal sons and daughters who have sadly gone astray.
Amen

RIP Richard Nethercut

Thurs. Sept. 29th I posted about Richard Nethercut, the Volunteer of the Year missing from the Volunteer Appreciation Dinner, at MCI Norfolk, MA. Well, I received this sad email, today.

For those of you who knew Dick Nethercut, a volunteer at MCI Norfolk who worked with the Alternative to Violence program.....
Dear Friends,
Dick Nethercut's body was found by the police today just a short time ago. They found him in the conservation area where they had searched before for three days. He was actually found near the Carlisle border just over the line in Carlisle. The police think he just walked too far, got disoriented, and fell in a stream near a boggy area. He still had his wallet, credit cards, and car keys and there was no sign of foul play. The police do not have any additional information at this time and requested that we discourage people from calling the police station.
We know that all of you have been deeply concerned by Dick's disappearance and have been praying for him along with us in AVP. Dick has been an AVP leader for 17 years. He has trained dozens of facilitators and hundreds of inmates. His loyalty to the program and to those working to build a better life inspire us. Dick's personal journey of forgiveness and reconciliation stand as a testament to his faith and open heart.
As terrible as Dick's disappearance and ultimate death have been, this ordeal of the past two weeks reminds and inspires us of the need for the work that Dick believed in so deeply, for our continued efforts to bring rehabilitation and compassion to all aspects of our society, and to build caring communities. We hope many will feel led to join us in this essential work rather than give in to voices and promptings of fear or despair.
We have no news yet of any funeral arrangements for Dick, but will send that information when it is available.
Warm regards,
Nancy Shippen, Tim Wilson, and Betty Keddy
AVP MA Board

Lord, now let your servant go in peace.

Caritas in Veritate

Caritas in Veritate is Pope Benedict's latest encyclical. Even since it came out, I've tried to read it. I admit it's very difficult. People call documents from the Vatican, "Vaticanese," because to us, they are hard to understand. It takes getting use to. Alright, it takes a lot of getting use to. But if you try--consistently, somehow you'll find yourself developing the vocabulary, the literary manner that is used. It has to be written to be translated and to be applicable to many cultures. That's how I look at it--it's hard to write, therefore it's hard to understand.

What caught my attention was the section on social justice. Considering the economic condition of the world, B16's words seem providential. The collapse of the world's financial system made people think about their personal and national financial systems. B16 asked for reform. He asks countries to restructure their financial priorities. A financial order that works for "common good." He asks to combat hunger and to open agricultural markets to developing nations. Rich countries should share the wealth.

The blog, "Catholic Culture," quotes the reaction of Lord Brian Griffiths of Fforestfach. He is a former economic adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a current member of the House of Lords, a vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, a devout Evangelical Christian, and whose everyday work engages him in the future prospect of the global economic system, makes this extraordinary statement on encyclical:

Despite heavy competition from some of the world's finest minds, it is without a doubt the most articulate, comprehensive and thoughtful response to the financial crisis that has yet appeared.

I think so too, which is why I am, and will continue to, study it.

Your Prayer for Today

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. From the Sudan.

Fatima Shrine

I'm taking this on line poetry course. The assignment I'm working on is writing about a place. It's an exercise in description. We are to describe a place in 25 lines. Well, as usual, I was inspired to deviate from the assignment. Oh I did the assignment; I wrote about Tijuana and gave the instructor what I think she wanted. But the real poem is this one:

Fatima Shrine

I go over to the shrine to pray.
The world's biggest Rosary,
boulders group into a decade
like a Christian Stonehenge.
The rocks pray Hail Mary
in different languages.
There's more to see--
grotto, stations, altar and statues.
It's like a prayer book
of Catholic devotions.
You walk the Rosary,
you read the signs,
and then you begin to pray.

Fatima Shrine, Holliston, MA

Praying Priests

Praying Priests is almost an oxymoron. Have I got your attention? Yeah, I'm a little tongue in cheek here, but upon reading Zenit, this morning, I was reading something Cardinal Christoph Schonborn said, when he was giving a retreat to priests in Ars, France.

"In Vorarlberg [Austria], in the afternoon, there was always a light in the church: It was the parish priest who was praying there. That remained engraved in my memory."

It has always been a pet peeve of mine that I never, alright not never--only twice in my life, have I ever seen a priest pray. I'm talking about outside of Mass. One was a priest who use to kneel in the church, by himself, and pray his Office. The other was a priest who obviously was praying his Rosary while he walked inside his Church.

Why wouldn't a priest want people to see him pray?

Beats me.

Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine in Iraq

This link tells the story of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine in Iraq. These Sisters--the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena in Iraq--had operated various institutions in central and northern Iraq for a long period of time. Since the First Gulf War in 1990/1991 and the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations, their capacity to provide healthcare and education had been severely tested. After the invasion of 2003, a number of their institutions were attacked and several Sisters injured.

Despite the dangers and hardships, these Sisters have availed themselves of every reasonable opportunity to serve God through service to neighbor, including healing and teaching in Baghdad, in Mosul, and in the refugee camps of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

The Prioress of this order is a 69-year-old Iraqi, Sister Maria Hanna. She has a deep and abiding faith in a merciful God, a profound love for her neighbors, and extraordinary hope for a better future. Her order is consecrated in the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church and includes women of all the backgrounds which represent Iraq. Their spiritually is Dominican and they are part of the world-wide family of St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena.

Violence there is still high but the need for a hospital is even greater. This is the area where most of the remaining religious minorities of Iraq live (north and east of Mosul).

Sadly, very little aid of any kind has gone to this area. The U.S. Congress, noticing this lack, now requires that the State Department account for all money that is spent in Iraq for the religious minorities. Champions of this effort have been Representatives Frank Wolf (R-VA), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Christopher Smith (R-NJ) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA). In spite of the reporting requirement clearly identified in law, no specific efforts have been created by the Executive Branch to assist our friends in Iraq.

After our initial contact with the Prioress and the Nuncio, we worked to put together a team of people to assist. One team member, Marty Hudson, was the Acting Health Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. Her contacts in Iraq and in the United States were invaluable.

Once the team was assembled, we engaged in a series of long distance discussions with Sister Hanna. Where exactly would the hospital be located? Who would staff it? How much would it cost? Who would provide security, etc.? Many of these questions require a deeper understanding of Sister Hanna's dream so we requested a meeting with Sister Hanna and the Nuncio.

We were able to secure an invitation for the Nuncio to attend the Annual Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., held in May of each year. The Nuncio deputized the Latin Archbishop Jean Sleiman of Baghdad to come in his stead.

Fortunately, Sister Hanna was already planning to visit the U.S. at that time. We developed an itinerary for Archbishop Sleiman and Sister Hanna so they would have the opportunity to tell their story themselves.

Since the Dominican Sisters already operate a maternity hospital in Baghdad, they know what is required to duplicate that effort in another part of Iraq. The floor plans and cost estimates they provided us captured the current hospital's resource requirements.

If we were to accomplish this effort in another country (e.g., the U.S., the Philippines or Nigeria), it would be a fairly straightforward effort. We would develop plans for building construction, equipment, personnel, ongoing operations, and recurring maintenance. But this is Iraq (and specifically the Nineveh Plain) so we needed a detailed political-military security plan as well.

We included current and former members of the Iraqi government in our efforts, along with the larger private sector or Iraqi civil society. We are developing with them something like a "Medical Green Zone"--a safe and secure location for healing and teaching in the north of Iraq. But the term "Green Zone" has very negative connotations with Iraqi people since they consider Iraqis who live or work there corrupt and uninterested in what is best for the nation as a whole. We settled on using the term "health security" instead.

Making the Dream a Reality Our goal in this project is to assist Sister Hanna. There are specific dollar amounts that we hope to achieve in order to support her new hospital.

Secondarily, we hope to bring about the IHS and the public-private partnership needed to develop a sound social, economic, political and secure environment.

A third goal is to try to look at ways to help individuals who have been victims of the violence, their family members, and perpetrators. This goal is similar to those in South Africa after the Apartheid regime ended as well as in post-conflict Balkans and the Sub-Sahara Africa. We are addressing the possibility of having the Ministry of Higher Education sponsor a facility we are tentatively calling the Iraqi National Reconciliation Institute (INRI). Sister Hanna's faith is clearly the source of her ability to not only forgive but to live out in her own life Christ's vision that all of us are His brothers and sisters and must be treated with dignity and respect.

This is a remarkable project because of the remarkable people who will make it work. Frail and broken humans are offering their lives in service to God and we can witness God's grace on earth through them. Secularists will just see this as an act of medical diplomacy.

Please continue to pray for peace -- and especially for those who are trying to live out that vocation in a place that has not seen peace in recorded history.

Please refer to the link to read the entire article.