Lenten Ideas & Specials

During lent you will be spending more time in prayer and sacrifice. What better way to offer these prayers and sacrifices than for the Holy Souls in Purgatory? Lent would be a good time to start a daily practice-a committment if you will-of praying for the holyu souls.

Daily Prayers for the Church Suffering ($1.85) may just be the booklet to get you started. If features a short prayer every day of the week for a particular soul, followed by the recitation of Psalm 129 (130). The daily prayer follows Christ's passion through the week. [You may also want to spread this devotion by buying bulk quantities and distributing them-almsgiving for the Holy Souls. There are attractive discounts available at the Requiem Press website ]

If you plan to make extra visits and holy hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament this Lent, "Prayers in the Presence of the Holy Eucharist for the Church Suffering" ($2.50) may be another option. In this booklet by Fr. Xavier Lasance, a holy hour is mapped out (prayers for Adoration, Thanksgiving, Petition, and Reparation) as well as a meditation and prayers particular to the holy souls in Purgatory.

For your own spiritual reading during lent, "Witnesses to the Holy Mass and other sermons" by Dom Bede Camm OSB (regularily $8.95) is hard to beat. It is a book that can reinvigorate your spirit of sacrifice and most especially love of God. Dom Camm introduces us to some of the English martyrs under the persecutions of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. He shows how they can be an example to us today even if we are not under such a persecution. (It also makes a great gift to others who are looking for some Lenten reading.)

Lenten Special: Get all three books for just $7.95. When you order Witnesses to the Holy Mass at this discounted price, we will automatically include the two booklets for the holy souls.

May God bless your prayers and sacrifices during this holy season!

Lenten Specials should be posted and available on the website by tomorrwo morning...Stay tuned!

Catherine Doherty

Was reading this week's The Wanderer and there was a reference to this site about Catherine Doherty. Interestingly enough I had never heard of her, but had heard of her husband Eddie Doherty. Sophia Institute Press used to put out a magazine called "The Catholic Reader" which had reviews of many books of interest to Catholics (not just their own publications). One book was by this former newspaper man Eddie Doherty who had a conversion of heart based on his wife's prayer and work. Well, his wife is Catherine Doherty. Go to the site and check out her life and cause of sainthood....

RequiemPress is looking forward to publishing our first book for children in early fall. It will be a short book relating to a specific event in the history of salvation. We should be announcing the book and the author in a few days, stay tuned. We are very excited about this foray into new territory

Due out this spring, as mentioned somewhere below is, "Giving Up Stealing... For Lent!" by Brother Charles Madden OFM Conv. As also mentioned somewhere below, Brother Charles has written a very popular book on Freemasonery for TAN. Brother Charles is the youngest of 11 children. In "Giving Up Stealing..." he recounts the joys of growing up in a large Catholic family. He shares with us some 40 or more family stories which I'm sure are replayed with his siblings at their own family reunions. At times humorous, at times moving, "Giving Up Stealing..." is great fun, but also gives us some insight into the Catholic culture which was alive in families, parishes and neighborhoods in some years past. Look for it sometime (God-willing) in March.

Just found this article (originally appearing in the Catholic Register- (Canada). Here's a couple quotes:

The laity’s job is to transform the world, said Archbishop Gaumond. While that’s happening to some extent, it’s “not enough,” according to the archbishop of Sherbrooke, Que.

“But that’s not the fault of the laity,” Archbishop Gaumond said. “It is in the major part our fault in the hierarchy. It’s our fault because in the past, when we had problems in the church, we looked for the solutions by having more priestly vocations, more religious vocations.”

I would disagree at least a little with the latter statement. It is not a mistake to promote vocations to the priesthood and religious life; it is a mistake for the bishops to ordain anyone (or practically anyone) who applies (as we have seen with the scandal) and for bishops to neglect their role of teachers of the Faith. If Archbishop Gaumond is saying that the bishops have fallen into the dangers of clericalism when attempting to solve all problems, then I would agree-this is a mistake. However, I also think the laity (as they responsible for their own salvation) are to blame if they do not evangelize the culture and don't educate themselves on what needs to be done.

We have extended our special offer where you buy Russell Shaw's "Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church"and get John Meehan's "Two Towers, the de-Christianization of America and a Plan for Renewal" for half-price until the 25th of February.

Stay tuned for Lenten Specials at the website in a few days....

More upcoming releases...

We another exciting announcement to make on upcoming books from RequiemPress:

Scheduled for release in October 2006 is "The Roast Beef Hour-and other poems of Faith and Family" by Long-Skirts. You can get sampling of her poetry here.

Also, remember our special offer where you buy Russell Shaw's "Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church"and get John Meehan's "Two Towers, the de-Christianization of America and a Plan for Renewal" for half-price is in its last days.

Stay tuned for more...

This month's issue of crisis Magazine sports Russell Shaw (whose latest book "Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church" - RequiemPress ), reviewing John Allen's book, "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church". Here's a snippet of the review:

But most members—and Allen also makes this clear—find the Work a deeply satisfying part of their efforts to live integrated, prayerful lives in the service of God, the Church, and other people. The author gets the central idea exactly right when he writes, “Ultimately, the ‘spiritual life’ is nothing more or less than human life. Nothing falls outside that. There are no compartments that aren’t labeled ‘God’s business.’” This is a lofty ideal that offers huge rewards to those who, however imperfectly, put their hearts into trying to realize it.

Read the rest of the review here

A Layman's Response to Vatican II

Continued from yesterday (see below), John Meehan talks about the founding of Magdalen College - from his book "Two Towers-the de-Christianizaton of America and a Plan for Renewal" (RequiemPress):

In 1968, I began to address the "spirit" subterfuge by instructing others outside of my family and home about the real and true Vatican Council II. Later on, in 1973, two other laymen and I founded a Catholic institution of higher learning in light of the documents of Vatican Council II. Despite the publication of Conciliar documents that defined the lay vocation, apostolate, and spirituality, a long-standing, bureaucratic clericalism made it very difficult to erect a Catholic college founded and administered by lay people. Representatives of the institutional Church presumed that Catholic education was the strict province of the clergy or teaching religious orders. Furthermore, the effort to found a Catholic college with an integrated curriculum and ordered campus life was complicated, at that time, by political unrest and social upheaval in this country.

Nonetheless, the post-Conciliar distress of Catholic parents confirmed that a pressing need did exist for a lay apostolate bold enough to ensure that sacred scripture, catechetical instruction, and liturgical training were fundamental elements of undergraduate Catholic education. But, three obstacles stood in the way of forming young people through an integration of the Word of God, catechesis, and liturgy.

First, many parents had been provided with only a rudimentary knowledge of the Deposit of Faith by way of the Baltimore Catechism, and few of their offspring had received systematic catechetical instruction or disciplined liturgical training at any level of their formal religious education. Second, watered-down doctrine and liturgical abuses entered almost every aspect of parish life which dismayed the majority of childlike believers raised in ancestral cultures of piety.

Since the Council of Trent (1545-63) and the subsequent Counter-Reformation, catechetical instruction and "preparation for attending Mass" had always been basic features of parish instruction and formal Catholic education. Therefore, I was convinced that a renewal in undergraduate Catholic education by way of systematic catechesis and liturgical training, while difficult, would not be impossible. Simply put, these two so-called obstacles — catechesis and liturgy — could be done away with by implementing the relevant documents of Vatican Council II.

The third obstacle, sacred scripture, I knew had a long and somewhat dark history. That history went all the way back to the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation. Except for the seminary training of priests, the formation of monks, and the preparation given by a religious order to its members, the study of sacred scripture was not an essential element of either parish instruction or the formal education imparted to lay people. While virtually every Catholic home in America possessed a Bible, few ever read, let alone studied the Word of God.

Having sacred scripture become an integral part of undergraduate Catholic education and campus life responded to an exhortation of the Fathers of Vatican Council II: read, study, and meditate on the Word of God. Hence, I was convinced that the third obstacle could be overcome because the "silence" of sacred scripture had been broken indirectly with the liturgical reform approved by Pope Paul VI in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

One great gift of the Fathers of Vatican Council II, then, was opening again the treasures of sacred scripture to the laity. The promulgation of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, and the approval of Pope Paul VI to permit the use of vernacular languages in the cycles of scriptural readings, responsorial Psalms, and Gospel accounts enabled lay people worldwide to listen to and become familiar with the Word of God. In this country, the Old and New Testament readings, Psalm responses, and Gospel passages were read, prayed, or sung in the English language.

A Little Bit From "Two Towers"

For the next two days we will excerpt "Two Towers-the de-Christianization of America and a Plan for Renewal" (RequiemPress -on special now) where John Meehan talks about the circumstances surrounding the founding Magdalen College.

It has been heartbreaking for me, to witness the vast number of lay people — old, middle-aged, and young — living their baptismal lives without a working knowledge of the Deposit of Faith or of the approved liturgical life of the Catholic Church. Let me be precise, "orthopraxy" (right ethical action or the tower of morals) has superseded "orthodoxy" (right Catholic belief or the tower of Faith). This reversal has turned personal belief upside down. The result has been the loss of a practical common belief among the laity in this country: American de-Christianization.

When Vatican Council II closed in 1965, I became disturbed over the non-responses of most lay people to the teachings of the Council Fathers. Their indifference, however, was apparent, not actual. The non-responses of the people I knew only indicated that, as lay people, they had not been prepared to educate themselves when it came to matters of Faith and morals. In fact, they did not even consider it an obligation to challenge the ideas or practices of bishops, priests, or consecrated religious. So, confusion became widespread, which resulted in a disoriented pew-sitting laity.

Worse, I was shocked by the misapplications of Conciliar documents to catechesis, liturgy, and the vocation of the laity by certain bishops, priests, and teaching religious. Consequently, one day in 1967, I made an eager-hearted commitment before the Eucharistic Christ to promote the
authentic renewal called for by the Fathers of Vatican Council II, a decision that required some fundamental changes in my professional life which, in turn, affected my family life in nonessential ways. At that decisive moment, I promised Jesus Christ I would attempt to combat a surreptitious euphemism being passed on to the laity: "the spirit of Vatican II." As will be shown, that deceitful term advanced quite rapidly the process of de-Christianization in America.

Continued tomorrow...