BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) There are any number of words and phrases that we use so often that we no longer pay attention to their content. Take the Lord’s Prayer for instance. What do we really mean when we address God as our Father? Who do we include in our ; who do we exclude from our ? Today we just heard a phrase that we heard so many times: “Christ is the Good Shepherd who cares for his flock.” But what kind of a flock is it? Evidently it is made up of different kinds of sheep. There is a unity in God’s flock but there is diversity also, otherwise why would the Good Shepherd be going out looking for other sheep that Jesus indicates to be “not of this flock”? We value unity while at the same we value diversity. It’s a nice ideal but it is a difficult reality to attain. We have only to look at the problem of unity and diversity as we find it both in our own country and in our Church. “Who’s in and who’s out?” is the big issue ...

  With the death of Pope Francis, there is much speculation about who will emerge from the College of Cardinals . A popular saying in Vatican circles is that if you “enter a conclave as pope, you leave as a cardinal.” Within 20 days of the pope’s death, a conclave consisting of 120 cardinals out of the 138 who are under age 80 and can vote will gather at the Vatican to pick his replacement. The new pontiff could come from Africa, Italy, or Sri Lanka — possibly even America — but it’s likely that whoever is elected to follow Pope Francis, who died Monday at age 88, will move the Catholic Church back to the ideological center. Here is a list of the "papabile" cardinals who are his possible successors.  Cardinal Luis Tagle, 67 The outgoing and personable Tagle, from the Philippines, would appear to be Francis’ pick for the first Asian pope. Francis brought the popular archbishop of Manila to Rome to head the Vatican’s missionary evangelization office, serving the needs of the C...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Christ’s resurrection from the dead immediately caused controversy brought on by those who sought to suppress that event. That controversy continues even in our time some 2000 years later. There are those in our own times who for their own various reasons want to discredit the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The leaders of ISIS torture and put to death Christians who, like the Apostles, are witnesses to the resurrected Christ. Just the apostles told the members of the Sanhedrin, Christians in the Middle East are by their lives saying: “we are witnesses of these things.” Christ’s resurrection from the dead just won’t go away. The immediate reaction of the Jewish religious authorities is presented to us in the first reading of today’s Mass where it is reported: "When the captain and the court officers had brought the apostles in and made them stand before the Sanhedrin, the high priest quest...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) There’s a lot of skepticism in our world these days. We are skeptical about the war in Iraq: Is it a war against radical Islamic fundamentalism or is it a war between Arab and Western cultures? Is our political process for the election of our presidents fundamentally flawed? Just what is the role of our nation’s Supreme Court and our Constitution? Has globalization doomed the future of American jobs? Will what we have known to be marriage be radically morphed into a variety of mere civil unions? This skepticism is more than simple doubting or questioning. Skepticism cuts into reality itself. As he conducted his trial of Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate asked, “Truth? What is truth?” That was not the question of a person who is genuinely looking for an answer. That was the question of a skeptic. Questioners are less radical. One asks a question because one has faith that there is an answer. A question is a quest ...

Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism Fr. Anthony Pillari JCL, MCL, STD Lesson 5: On Our First Parents and the Fall Welcome again to Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism for our fifth lesson – On Our First Parents and the Fall. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. O Jesus, I choose to live this day, for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Amen. We heard in our last lesson how the angels fell through disobedience. Unfortunately, our first parents fell in the same way. Have you ever felt within yourself something pushing you to do evil? For example, maybe there was a time when you promised your parents you were not going to fight with your brothers. You were going to be calm; you were not going to say bad words. And then, just a day or two later, you find yourself getting angry over nothing, maybe getting in a fight, or saying something you shouldn’t have sa...