It is with a heavy and incredulous heart that I post the news that our beloved Father, Fr. Santan Pinto, died suddenly in a car accident after just arriving for a home visit in India. Apparently, Fr. Pinto was the passenger in a car that was struck and he died instantly. A Bishop in India, the Bishop of Belgaum, has contacted our community and confirmed this sorrowful news. Fr. Pinto's funeral will be tomorrow in India. It's interesting, you know, after just posting Father's Christmas message yesterday and then posting the clip by Fr. Barron about the true nature of Advent, we never know when God will take us home. The media and secular society loves to mock celibacy and the priesthood but it's easy to see that Fr. Pinto has more spiritual children than those people ever will. God will not be mocked. Father was a priest who was faithful to the end, who loved God more than anything and made countless sacrifices for his many spiritual children. To say that he will b...
When I first heard the song Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella , I pondered it for a long time. The setting in the musical is the royal palace garden and the Prince has just seen Cinderella and danced with her. He is captivated by her beautiful form and finds himself falling in love with her. He then begins to sing "Do I love you because you're beautiful or are you beautiful because I love you?" Obviously fairy tales speak a deep meaning and are meant to be more than just a superficial story, and so it is with this song. Philosophers and theologians from of old have heralded beauty (ultimately Divine Beauty) as the attraction of our souls. We are attracted to beauty. But there is another, deeper, aspect to love. Love makes things beautiful. When love is placed in a situation, it invites and elicits beauty. What may appear "ugly" to someone on the surface, is beautiful to the one who loves. This is why ...
Two days ago, after assessing the evidence gathered by investigation of religious life in the United States, the Vatican announced that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), needs a reform. The Vatican listed doctrinal and practical issues at the heart of the mandate for reform. (as an aside, my SOLT community is NOT a part of this organization. We are members of the other organization the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, CMSWR) This mandate for reform will potentially be a very explosive situation. I am personally glad that Archbishop Sartain has been chosen to lead this reform, he has a special charism which I believe will help in the healing of this process. Allow me, as a religious sister, to say a few things about this mandate and the situation of the women in the LCWR. First of all, don't believe the hype of the mainstream media. You will most likely read stories that this is yet another "war on women" by a male hierarchy or that...
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