"Break the Chains" with some young clergy, the Daughters of St Paul and Blessed Giacomo Alberione



Today is “Day 10 praying to #BreakTheChains of pornography.” This is an idea thought up by Fr Cassidy Stinson, a recently ordained priest who put it like this:
It is also worth looking through the thread and indeed following Father Stinson’s Twitter feed @TheHappyPriest He has followed up with an update thread after the first week of the movement.

What to do

During the first week, #BreakTheChains has gathered momentum with many young people agreeing to pray, offer sacrifice, and encourage one another. There is no pledge to commit to a specific set of prayers, although quite a number of people seem to be choosing so recite the rosary. This is fitting because the “chain” of the Rosary is a good way to break the chain of enslavement to unchastity which has caught up so many people.

The #BreakTheChains campaign recognises the power that pornography exercises over many people who have become addicted to it. The sophistication and technical skill which is used in the production of obscene materials creates greater temptation for people than ever before. This new movement started by a young priest, supported by his brother priests and many young lay friends, is the kind of encouragement that is needed by very many people and the kind of encouragement that is given with great effectiveness by the young. May God bless Father Cassidy and his good friends.

A co-operative Podcast


One immediate fruit of the campaign has been a crossover podcast with Big Tree and Vici Mundum. Big Tree is a media evangelisation initiative of Theological College.* (For English and other readers, I do need to acknowledge that there is actually more than one Theological College in the world, so I must specify that I am referring to “Theological College” at the Catholic University of America in Washington in the District of Columbia which of usually abbreviated to “DC”.) Vici Mundum is “A Podcast Ministry of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Newport News, VA” (For English readers, VA refers to Virginia. It was named after Queen Elizabeth I on the suggestion of Sir Walter Raleigh. [That's enough silly English clarifications. Ed])

The Podcast is: Ep. 15: #BreaktheChains [Fr. Cassidy Stinson & Austin Farinholt] and can be found at that link or on your favourite podcast host. It is just under an hour long.

Big Tree is an initiative of the Alberione Project which began at Theological College* as a formation project for Catholic seminarians wanting to proclaim the gospel using modern means of communications. The Alberione Project works in co-operation with the Daughters of St Paul (known by their hashtag as the “#MediaNuns”) who also work effectively on Twitter and elsewhere, giving a heart-lifting sense of Christian joy in their apostolate.

BreviaryViews


In an illustration of how these apostolates can work in conjunction and reinforce the promotion of the gospel, a friend of Fr Stinson recently came up with another viral hashtag. Seminarian John De Guzman @JohnDeGuzzy of Theological College* came up with the simple idea that people use the hashtag #BreviaryViews to post photos of a breviary in the place where they are praying the office. This began as a fun way to share views of idyllic places to pray the breviary but has mushroomed into a major catalyst for people to begin saying the divine office. John has been the subject of an article at Aleteia: The seminarian and story behind a viral Catholic hashtag, #BreviaryViews.

The #BreviaryViews hashtag has a natural affinity with the #BreaktheChains in that people can pray the office to help others break free from unchastity. Such providential concurrences are of course not unknown to the saints. Within this kind of apostolate, there is the example of Blessed Giacomo Alberione who founded the the Daughters of St. Paul and several other congregations, with the specific apostolate of promoting the gospel by modern means of communications.

Deacon Antony Ferguson @Artferg who is one of the co-founders of the Alberione Project (and, you guessed it, another student for the Diocese of Richmond VA and member of Theological College*) gives us a fascinating nugget about Blessed Giacomo Alberione. Apparently, in 1921, Blessed Giacomo bought printing presses from a company that was going out of business. Its former specialisation was pornography.

Encouraging

From time to time, good clergy coalesce as brothers-in-arms in that spiritual battle to which we are all called, and have a significant positive impact on the life of the Church in a given place. Fr Stinson and his friends among the young clergy, religious and laity from Richmond and roundabouts, seem to have a gift for promoting the faith through the online apostolate in a manner that would be dear to the heart of their favourite beatus, Blessed Giacomo Alberione. May God bless their work, may St Michael protect it, and may Blessed Giacomo smile on them.


Popular posts from this blog

1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
Read more

Święcone - blessing of Easter food

Image
The blessing of meat, eggs and bread at the end of Lent is a Catholic tradition that has been preserved by the Polish people. A Polish family in my parish asked to bless their baskets of food (containing these items) on Holy Saturday so I arranged to do so at 11am, letting others know also. Above you can see a basket ( Święcone ) that was prepared as a gift for me. When I was asked to do this blessing by another Polish family a couple of years ago, I was intrigued to find that in my 1860 copy of the Roman Ritual ( above ), there is, precisely, a blessing of lamb, eggs and bread for Holy Saturday. This convinced me that the devotion kept by the Poles must have been something more widely practised in past centuries. The immediate explanation might be that this is the blessing of food at the end of the Lenten fast. It must be more than that. People would have abstained from meat, and from lacticinia (including eggs) but not from bread. Perhaps there is a more specifically eucharis
Read more

Beachy Head and Lewes

Image
We did manage to visit Beachy Head yesterday on the way over to Shoreham-on-Sea. It was a good blustery English summer's day which added to the experience of walking near the edge of the highest coastal chalk cliff in Britain. Above is one of the photos I took. I might get a chance to stitch together a YouTube video about the site. Fr Sean Finnegan (of the Valle Adurni blog) was, as ever, a magnificent host, not only setting us up for our Masses but also giving us an excellent lunch. He has posted an amusing lament on the subject of his Church: Oh Lord! A prayer . Today, we took the train to Lewes to visit Fr Richard Biggerstaff at the parish of St Pancras. Fr Jonathan Martin is staying with him during the summer. Below, you can see the fine Church; thankfully, the Ditchling altar has survived various phases of "re-ordering". I realised today that I love serving Mass in the usus antiquior as well as saying it. I served Fr Briggs' Mass after saying my own and tried t
Read more

SPUC Clergy information day

Image
SPUC today held a Clergy Information Day. Unfortunately, because of an urgent meeting I had to be late for this so I missed the first half of the morning lecture by Fr John Fleming. I could catch up with most of it from his notes and look forward to the published version when it is available from SPUC. Fr Fleming was speaking about the rights of the unborn under international law, the pro-life battle at the UN and the nature of the early human embryo. As a lecture, it was certainly not "dumbed down". He presented some of the latest research on the biochemistry of the human embryo in relationship with the mother and then tied this in to the philosophical question of the status of the embryo, dealing with such hoary chestnuts as twinning and the differentiation of cells in the embryo. It was a most helpful and informative presentation: intellectually challenging but well put together. I think that the sheer quality of these presentations has been the important factor in the gr
Read more

When people walk away with Holy Communion

Image
It happens from time to time that someone will come up for Holy Communion which they receive into their hands, and then walk away with the sacred host. A priest friend asked me to write something about what we can do. Let’s think first of all of the actual situation and then about some possible preventative measures. In terms of canon law, the desecration of the sacred species is a crime, punishable by automatic excommunication. In most cases, the person does not know what they are doing or how wrong it is, so I’ll assume that is the case (rather than deliberate desecration, perhaps for satanic purposes or as an atheistic stunt.) But even if the person does not know the seriousness of what they are doing, it is still objectively a very grave matter. So we can’t just let it happen. A pastoral complication is that people don’t like to be “shown up” or embarrassed in front of the congregation so they can easily become annoyed or aggressive in their confusion. Therefore we need to ke
Read more