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Happy news this time about another long-time friend of this blog's: Bishop Thomas Dowd of Waiting in Joyful Hope was ordained a bishop a few hours ago along with Bishop Christian Lépine. They are now the two active auxiliary bishops of Montreal.
Congratulations to both new bishops. Let us pray that they may be fruitful in spreading the fullness of the Catholic faith in their city and beyond.
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting Fr Tom Dowd of Waiting in Joyful Hope at the rectory of Marie-Reine-du-Monde, the Cathedral-Basilica of the Archdiocese of Montreal.
Before midday Mass in the cathedral I bumped into pro-life walkers from Crossroads, whom I'd met a week earlier, much closer to home, at a fundraising dance for Toronto Right-to-Life. These young people have been walking from Vancouver to Ottawa since May to raise awareness of the right to life of human persons from the moment of conception.
And while I was waiting for Fr Tom, I struck up a conversation with someone who turned out to be a friend of the Toronto Oratory from its Montreal era. Small world.
I could get used to being on vacation. I sure hope I do, in fact--it's been too long since I had an extended break. This week I'll sing my little heart out at music camp in the Laurentians and hopefully face no decision more difficult than what to eat for breakfast.
And I'll have no Internet access for a week--hurray, cold turkey'll do me good! See you soon enough.
In 2005 I innocently picked up a story fromThe Globe and Mail about snack food resembling communion wafers, and from here it circulated around St Blog's, along the way generating some sputtering about how Quebeckers were flirting with blasphemy, and a remark about secularization in the province being a reaction to "centuries of caesaropapism." So it's only right that I should link back to Fr Thomas Dowd's fine essay setting the record straight about the history of Church-State relations in Quebec, and explaining that retailles d’hosties have in fact been around for a long time. His post isn't new; I just happened to read it long after it first went up.
Can a pro-life song really be #1 in Québec? Amazing! The tide is turning, as Tony at Catholic Pillow Fight says.
Lyrics in French ici. Link thanks to SoCon or Bust.
In light of the statement of dissent published by 19 dissident priests in Quebec, I went to read Waiting in Joyful Hope. True to form, Fr. Dowd pointed to some excellent reflections at The Great Pumpkin on the how the Roman Catholic Church should deal with dissenters (Part 1) (read the comments too) and Part 2, where Linda quotes him extensively. I confess I had been rather troubled in my Protestant days by 1 Corinthians 5, and Fr Dowd explains it well. Most certainly the corrective force of ostracism as recommended to the Church in Corinth is undermined these days by the existence of so many ecclesial communities, so that if one body attempts to discipline a member, well, there's always some other denomination down the road where the sin in question isn't considered a problem.
And God bless Fr Dowd for his reflections on frustration.
Beyond this, though, I see a sad trend among some Catholics whose love and defense of Faith seems to make them myopic when it comes to Hope. The result is that they try harder and harder to defend the faith to the point of getting frustrated and wondering if it's all worth if, wondering where it's all going — in other words, losing hope. And when Hope is lost, Charity is not far behind. It is possible to have faith and still be on the road to perdition.
As a new Catholic I can't help but be struck when elements of Catholicism have gotten chucked out by the culture at large and then brought in again by the back door. The confessional is largely gone, and in its place we have a huge therapy industry (Foucault was way wrong about a whole lot of things, but in identifying Freudian analysis as a substitute for the confessional he was definitely on to something). Now I read that (unconsecrated!) communion-style wafers are being sold in Quebec as a salt-free, fat-free snack food. In Canada's most secularized province, it's said, the wafers appeal to people's nostalgia.
The Real Presence--accept no substitutes!
Update (28 Dec): Some interesting comments at the Curt Jester, which picked up this item via Sed Contra.
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