Catholic Links for 9/13

Below are links to articles, stories, and blog posts that may be of interest to our parishioners, other Catholics, and those interested in reading about the church and its people. (all links should open in a new browser window when clicked)

• Fr. Mike Schmitz shares the perspective of a priest during confession.  
  •  “Confession is always a place of victory. Whether you have confessed a particular sin for the first time, or if this is the 12,001st time, every Confession is a win for Jesus. And I, a priest, get to be there. That’s what it’s like . . . I get to sit and watch Jesus win His children back all day.”
• A brief story about a priest who asked his parishioners to go to confession as his Christmas present.
  • “He said that, during the four weeks of Advent, he initially tried keeping track of the numbers of penitents, but was only able to keep track of the numbers of those who had not been to confession in more than 20 years – nearly 200, in his small parish!”
• An article about the advancement of the case for canonization for Fr. Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus.
  • “. . . there is good news concerning Father McGivney’s cause. A possible miracle attributed to his intercession is now under investigation in Rome.”  If the miracle is approved, Father McGivney would be beatified and receive the title of “Blessed.” 
• A piece examining Catholic women who have previously used artificial contraception, and have reconsidered.
  • “They love their faith and are proud to be Catholic. They volunteer at the parish, fast during Lent, pray the Rosary when they can. And they both use artificial contraception. They explained that they had not fully understood that the Church was serious about this teaching until the blowup surrounding the HHS Mandate; before then, they explained, it was easy to assure themselves that contracepting must be fine since so many other people in the pews were doing it.”
• An article exploring the work of Fr. Charles Dittmeier, a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville, who has spent the past 12 years helping teach sign language to Cambodians.
  • “It’s been more than 12 years since the soft-spoken priest arrived to aid the deaf in a nation still emerging from years of war, genocide, poverty and corruption — and one that before 1997 had no sign language, no deaf schools and no deaf organizations offering services”