DCMission Statement


Sunday, October 23, 2011

An Introduction to Eastern Catholicism

Fr. Thomas Loya, priest of the Byzantine Rite of Catholicism, gives a brief history of the Church in the East.

I also found this book by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J., Ph.D. on the topic: Link.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Dr. Alice von Hildebrand on the life of her husband

Dr. Alice von Hildebrand last night discussed the life of her late husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and the struggles faced in his opposition to Nazism during its rise and fall.

"The individual person and community are ordered to one another in such a way that we will never be able to understand the true nature of community if we do not clearly acknowledge man as a spiritual person made in the image of God, and, on the other hand, that we will never do justice to the nature of the person and the fullness of his being if we do not fully understand the nature of community. Modern anti-personalism as we encounter it in Bolshevism and National Socialism does not represent a victory over liberal individualism but its ultimate and most radical consequence. Only the rehabilitation of man as a spiritual person, as a being with an immortal soul destined to eternal community with God, can save us from being dissolved into a depersonalized mass and lead us to real community." ~Dietrich von Hildebrand, from "Masse und Gemeinschaft" ("Mass and Community"), Jan. 12, 1936, in "Der christliche Ständestaat" ("The Christian Corporative State").

Monday, October 10, 2011

Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. on Redemptoris Missio

I ran across this recent episode of Threshold of Hope in which Fr. Pacwa discusses Bl. JP2's encyclical Redemptoris Missio (On the permanent validity of the Church's missionary mandate). As DCMission is seeking to be the "Missionaries to the Digital Continent," I thought this would be worth watching. I watched all of it and found it very relevant.

One point that was particularly relevant was the first question from the audience, in which a woman called in and said that she had been in Bible study groups in which she felt that the leaders weren't qualified to be leading such discussions. She said she'd also been invited to lead study groups before and she didn't feel qualified to do so. So she was asking what could be done to remedy this problem. Fr. Pacwa stressed the importance of studying the Catechism and also of studying the Bible along with commentaries (particularly those of St. John Chrysostom (whose feast day was Sept. 13). His commentaries on Scripture are large in number. Many are posted on EWTN's website. You can go here and search for author "Chrysostom"). Fr. Pacwa recommends reading several commentaries, as some are better than others in different respects.

The site VeritasBible.com has the Haydock commentary, which I have heard is good. This site also has the Catena Aurea, which was compiled by St. Thomas Aquinas and, according to wikipedia, contains "excerpts from some eighty Greek and Latin commentators on the Gospels." There are other nice features of this site. For example, it allows you to display the Bible passages in English and Latin along with the commentary in different columns.