Daily Archives: March 22, 2007

What surprising things you find in the dustbin of the Vatican website! They’ve got a great new search engine there, and I’ve been dipping in there on various subjects. Here I found Pope Paul VI’s 1967 Motu Proprio on the restoration of the Permanent Diaconate. And there I found Paragraph 10, which says that permanent deacons should be practice and be trained in:

in teaching the elements of the Christian religion to children and other faithful, in familiarizing the people with sacred chant and in directing it, in reading the sacred books of Scripture at gatherings of the faithful, in addressing and exhorting the people, in administering the sacraments which pertain to them, in visiting the sick, and in general in fulfilling the ministries which can be entrusted to them.

It’s a good list of the functions of a modern peramanent deacon. BUT, pick which task I bet modern deacons are NOT practiced or trained in!

I am not a huge Simpsons fan–I leave that department to the excellent Fraser Pearce who has compiled an entire dogmatic theology textbook on the basis of this long running animated comedy. Me, I prefer Monty Python…

BUT, Peter has sent me another YouTube link (I’m supposed to be doing some work tonight, Peter) which I just had to share. You may have missed this episode in which Bart and Homer Simpson convert (or almost convert) to Catholicism. Very witty, as Oscar Wilde would have said–who by all accounts actually did finally make it into the Catholic Church–hell, if he can do it, why not Bart and Homer? In fact, why not YOU, dear Reader?

Here’s the link. Enjoy.

I want to welcome all the new readers to Sentire Cum Ecclesia who have joined us since Sacramentum Caritatis came out. [A hint to other Catholic Bloggers out there: When a new and long awaited papal document is due out, be sure to be one of the first to blog on it: Google will lead people by the millions (well, hundreds anyway) to your page.] Readership has more than doubled since Tuesday 13th, with the last two days peaking at 95 a day. I know that’s chickenfeed compared to Amy Welborn or Rocco Palmo, but it humbles me to think that there are so many of you out there who really want to know what I’m thinking!

[Reader: No it doesn’t. Be honest. You love it.
Schütz: Is it that obvious? Oh, all right, I admit it. It’s a major ego trip for me.]

New readers may not be aware that not only does the marvellous technology of the Blog enable you to see right into my head, but you can look right into my SOUL as well by going to Year of Grace, my “Conversion Retro-Blog” of the time that I call “The Difficulties”: Easter 2000-Easter 2001–the year of my conversion from Lutheran Pastor to Catholic Layman. During all that time, I kept a regular journal (I didn’t know about blogging back then). Now I am posting it as if it were a regular blog, with the result that you can actually see blow by blow how it happened.

I have just put up a new entry. If you head over to Year of Grace, you will find the latest entry listed at the top. If you haven’t visited before, and you want to read the whole thing, you have to read it backwards (like a blog, rather than a book). You can do this easily with the archive list on the left hand side which has the entries in chronological order. I hope it is of benefit to those of you out there who may be having similar “difficulties”, and for those of you who are already Catholics, I hope it strengthens your faith to see what treasures the Catholic Church has.

Melbourne folk will remember Paul and Carol Quist, who were studying at John Paul II Institute 2004-2006. Paul is an ex-Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada minister. They were received into full communion in the Catholic Church with their whole family at the Easter Vigil at St Patrick’s Cathedral here in Melbourne by Archbishop Hart in 2005. They have a great story to tell, and EWTN’s Journey Home program is going to give them a chance to tell it. They are scheduled for 8pm US Eastern time on May 14, which means you can watch it live on the Internet link at 10am EST in Australia.