Ordination to the Diaconate for Six Chair of St Peter Ordinariate clerics

Fr. Scott Hurd, Vicar General of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, writes on Facebook:

I thank God for the last night’s ordination as transitional deacon of six oustanding men in Fort Worth. As a former priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, I give thanks in a particular way for my friends and former colleagues. Of them, Deacon Chuck Hough Sr. was my first boss at St. Andrews’, Grand Prairie, and his son was an altar server at Stephanie’s and my wedding. And I had great joy assisting Deacon Christopher Stainbrook Stainbrook leading the diocesan youth ministry- which included a fine young woman named Kristina Steenson! And thanks you, Bishop Kevin Vann.

(left to right) Charles Hough IV, Timothy Perkins, Joshua Whitfield, Christopher Stainbrook, Mark Cannaday, and Charles Hough III

Source

 

The Problem with Same-sex Marriage

A documentary worth watching.
 

 

8 Reasons your Church is Stuck

1. You lack a leadership empowerment plan. We have failed as leaders in the church if we do not embrace the unique gift-mix that God designed. And we won’t fully know the power and impact of the local church until people are empowered to be the people God wired them up to be.
2. You are unclear about your vision and mission. There are lots of churches with vision statements, but I don’t think there are very many churches that really have a vision statement that clarifies who they are as an organization. A clear vision that is properly communicated will both rally and repel people.
3. You blame outsiders and external factors. Victim-thinking will only lead to bitterness and competition. Leaders who blame outsiders and external factors actually are confessing their own failure to think creatively and inspire their team.
4. Your structure inhibits growth. One of the attributes of a church in decline is a complex structure. The natural tendency of organizations is to add complexity to their structure and systems. The longer an organization exists, the more complex it typically gets.
5. You worship your past success. Our past successes can be one of the greatest contributing factors to our future demise. When organizations stick to “the way we do it,” the safe approach of avoiding innovation and change becomes the riskiest approach.
6. You focus on activities instead of outcomes. While many church leaders are full of vision and passion, they lack an effective strategy to accomplish their mission. That leads to a feeling of disorganization, and ultimately they become stuck.
7. You fail to equip God’s people. For whatever reason, smaller churches I work with have a tendency to rely on the pastors and paid staff to carry the ministry load rather than equipping lay people.
8. Your ministries ignore people outside the church. When churches become inward-focused and start making decisions about ministry to keep people rather than reach people, they also start to die.

Source

 

Italy: Earthquake, Priest Killed Trying to Rescue Church Statues

Lastampa:

A country priest has nothing but his Church. The fact that it is not an architectural masterpiece and is not home to any great works of art matters little to him. Each statue and piece of furniture represented a piece of the village. Sixty five year old Ivan Martini who had worked for nine years as parish priest of Rovereto – a village near Modena, the area of Italy that has been worst hit by the earthquake – died this morning after his church collapsed on top of him…

Fr. Ivan loved his Church and everything in it. St. Catherine’s parish had been damaged and declared unfit for use following a previous earthquake, but an inspection had to be carried out in order to salvage some furniture from inside it. So, this morning, the priest entered the church along with two firemen, to try to save some statues. Among these was a statue of the Virgin Mary which his parishioners were particularly fond of.

But the strong earthquake that followed took the priest by surprise. Unable to escape, Fr. Ivan was hit by a rock or a collapsing beam, while the two firemen who had accompanied him managed to escape unscathed.

In the midst of all the damaged buildings, Rovereto mourns its only victim, its parish priest, who was much loved. It is certainly not easy being parish priest, surrounded by communists and immigrants who call God by a different name. “Fr. Ivan was really on the ball,” a parishioner of his said, accompanying his words of praise with an explicit but respectful gesture that described the courage the priest had shown throughout his mission.

Another parish priest was injured when the cathedral dome in Carpi, in the Italian Province of Modena, collapsed. Although news of his alleged death spread, he only actually suffered light physical injury and a huge shock, as the rest of his fellow parishioners did.

 

Using an iPad as a Missal

Via The Deacon’s Bench:

This comes from New Zealand, where one priest writes that the biggest problem with the new missal isn’t the language, but the physical ordering of the missal itself.

Then, inspiration struck:

What the people who translated the new Missal didn’t do was decide how the new English translation should look. They didn’t decide the layout of the New Zealand edition of the Missal.

Given the first effort was rejected, I can only but imagine what it might have looked like.

I’d suggest this edition still has layout issues. Among them

• page turns in awkward places
• the capitalisation of the words of consecration, making them almost impossible to read, and
• some of the text is so closely aligned to the gutter of the book, that standing in a normal upright position makes it also almost impossible to read e.g. the Prayer of the Gifts on the 4th Sunday of Lent.

Negotiating the new text is one thing, negotiating poor formatting is another.

If this were a normal book, I’d be tempted to return it.

After my Sunday experience, I chatted with other priests who like me have tried-out the new New Zealand Missal.

Alas, they reinforced my view; one going as far as saying his experience was “dreadful”, and another, “forget the words, the layout is all over the place.”

I’m fortunate enough to have an iPad, and for some time have had the Universalis App.

This week, Universalis released a new free upgrade and with it came a feature “Mass Today”.

My initial reaction, it’s fantastic.

Some of its features include the ability to:

• select the New Zealand liturgical calendar
• make the font size either smaller or larger
• select “Mass Today” and you get the whole Mass from the Sign of the Cross through to the Dismissal, including readings and your choice of Preface and ten Eucharistic Prayers.
• take it with you in portable form.

Universalis on the iPad is not without its issues:

• some of the pagination still interrupts the flow a little, (but because you don’t have to turn the page as often, this inconvenience is minimised)
• it’s only in English; there’s no Maori translation
• unlike a book which you just open and use, it’s important to make sure the iPad has enough battery-life to get you through Mass. A full-charge lasts for 10 hours. Hint: Turn the screen off during your sermon
• managing the iPad itself, navigation, updates and the like, may be a challenge for some
• it probably requires a cover to make it look more like a book
• it costs NZ$26

Using the iPad as a replacement missal may not be everyone’s “cup of tea”, but I’d pose it’s at least worthy of consideration.

Read more.

Now, if only I could afford an iPad…