- ARCIC priest named Bishop of Saskatoon. Msgr. Donald Bolen served seven years on the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, from 2001 to 2008, with responsibility for Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue. Fr. Bolen was friendly to the TAC during his tenure with the PCPCU and it's good to see an ARCIC priest promoted. H/t to James Bradley.
- [The maniple] fell into disuse in the years of the post-conciliar reform, even though it was never abrogated. As Fr. Z says, "Tie one on." This article of liturgical garb perhaps derives from a handkerchief, or "mappula," that the Romans wore knotted on their left arm. As the "mappula" was used to wipe away tears or sweat, medieval ecclesiastical writers regarded the maniple as a symbol of the toils of the priesthood. Happily, traditionalist Anglicans have not cast aside this little known bit of priestly garb. As then Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen noted, "it is a long established principle of the Church never to completely drop from her public worship any ceremony, object, or prayer which once occupied a place in that worship."
- Yesterday, in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father delivered his annual address to the Roman Curia. Amongst other topics, the Pope spoke on penance and reconciliation:
On the subject of reconciliation, which ‘the Synod attempted to examine profoundly … as a task facing the Church today’, the Pope noted that ‘if man is not reconciled with God, he is also in disharmony with the creation. … Another aspect of reconciliation is the capacity to recognise guilt and to ask forgiveness, of God and of neighbour’, he said.
‘We must learn the ability to do penance, to allow ourselves to be transformed, to go out to meet others and to allow God to grant us the courage and strength for such renewal. In this world of ours today we must rediscover the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation’. In this context, the Holy Father described the fact that people are confessing less than they used to as ‘a symptom of a loss of veracity towards ourselves and towards God; a loss that endangers our humanity and diminishes our capacity for peace’.
- His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch was interviewed on '60 Minutes'. The presenter repeatedly makes His All Holiness out to be the Orthodox pope, which, of course, he is not. The interview highlights the great hardships endured by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and Greek Orthodox Christians at the hands of the Turkish government. Turkey is seeking to be admitted to the European Union and their "Secretariat for the entry of Turkey into the European Union" operates out of a building confiscated from the Orthodox Church.
We reject the defamation of Pius XII and that accuses him of cowardice and even anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazi enemy. These accusations are absolutely without foundation. Likewise, we reject the interpretations that see any honoring of Pius XII as a minimizing of the importance of the Shoah or as a retreat from the breathtaking progress in the relations between Jews and Catholics in the past decades.
Be sure to follow our Moderator at Eccentric Bliss, his personal blog!