Catholicism Flourishing in South Carolina and Throughout the South and West

Saint Joseph Catholic Church, Columbia, South Carolina

We were astonished to learn this past Sunday that in our Columbia, South Carolina parish, 9 adults will be baptized and an additional 28 adults will be received into the Church at the Easter Vigil.  In following-up on this good news, the statistician for the statewide Diocese of Charleston informs us that approximately 500 adults throughout South Carolina will be received into the Church this Easter.  In a small state where Catholics are not quite 4% of the population, that is a remarkable rate of growth.  Indeed, Catholic numbers in South Carolina are up by more than 30,000 in the past 10 years, and unlike traditional centers of Catholic life, like the Archdiocese of Newark, which has closed more than 80 schools in the past 10 years, South Carolina is building new churches and schools.

At a recent conference at Villanova University, demographers have presented heartening data indicating that Church numbers in the United States are climbing and would continue to grow even without immigration.

Holy Mass at Prince of Peace Catholic Church, Taylors, South Carolina

Having lived in Virginia and South Carolina, as well as in the Northeast and Midwest, we can attest to an extraordinary contrast between regions.  The most faithful, orthodox and beautiful liturgies we have encountered have been in the South.  Devotion to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, traditional Catholic devotions, sound preaching and all the richness, beauty and fullness of the Faith are alive and well in places like the Dioceses of Arlington and Charleston.  After all the painful corruption and scandal on the part of a few, we can see the hand of God renewing His Church in unexpected places and in  wondrous and surprising ways.  "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound."

BBC Reports on the Diocese of Charleston's Social Media Outreach for Priestly Vocations

The Catholic Diocese of Charleston has been featured in a BBC News Magazine video report on how the Church is turning to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare in the quest for priestly vocations (video).

Chaplain Barred from Celebrating Mass in South Carolina Jail

From Catholic World News

A Catholic chaplain has been told that he cannot celebrate Mass in a South Carolina jail.

Msgr. Ed Lofton, who had been celebrating Mass at Charleston County jail for 15 years, was blocked from entering the facility because he was carrying altar wine. The jail’s policy bans all alcohol, and while state regulations in South Carolina make an exception for sacramental wine, Charleston County does not.

Msgr. Lofton reports that he bring a single ounce of wine to the jail, all of which he would consume himself. Prison officials told him that he must substitute grape juice. But a valid Mass cannot be celebrated without wine. 

Additional sources for this story
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• Ousted after demanding wine for Mass, jail chaplain claims rights were violated (Post and Courier)

Diocese of Charleston Produces Video on the Sacrament of Confirmation

Many young Catholics have received the Sacrament of Confirmation in recent months; others may have received Confirmation at the Easter Vigil.  This great strengthening of baptismal graces helps us to be "doers of the Word, and not hearers only."  

The newspaper for the Diocese of Charleston, The Catholic Miscellany, recently commissioned the following video on the importance and power of the Sacrament of Confirmation.  The Diocese of Charleston encompasses the entire state of South Carolina, and the Catholic population is a mere 3.7% of the state, but there are good things happening here, some great priests and many good, committed lay people.  Most of the state is served by several Catholic radio stations that provide superb programming from EWTN and Ave Maria Radio, and the state has a Catholic school that regularly ranks among the top 50 high schools in the United States. It is striking to see how much more vibrant the parishes are compared to states in which Catholics are a majority or close to it.

  

Perhaps a "sign of the times" is that the reevangelization of the world is coming from unlikely backwaters where the Church has been marginalized or persecuted, from the former communist countries, from Africa, and perhaps even those parts of our own country that are often considered mission territory.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of thy love.
  Send forth thy Spirit, and they shall be created.
And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

Bishop Guglielmone to be Ordained Today

Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone

The new Catholic bishop of Charleston will be ordained today in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Scripture tells us that "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." We have faith in Bishop Guglielmone, and hope he will be a powerful instrument of God's grace.

Our new bishop comes from the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, the diocese in which I grew up. That diocese has been a hotbed of modernism and heterodoxy, but we hope its many troubles will have only strengthened our new bishop's orthodoxy and will keep him focused on proclaiming the Truth and building the Kingdom of God.

His installation can be viewed live and in its entirety here at 2 p.m. today.

We will be praying that Bishop Guglielmone doesn't turn out to be a "modernist," as so many in the last half century have proven to be. What is a "modernist"? With a hat tip to The Modern Priest blog which is based in Bishop Guglielmone's former diocese, let Sir Humphrey explain it to you:

The Shameful Betrayal of a Courageous Pastor

From Catholic Culture
By Philip F. Lawler

St. Mary's church in Greenville, South Carolina, is a model Catholic parish, with an outstanding young pastor. The liturgy is beautiful and reverent; the religious instruction is meticulous and orthodox; the lay people are numerous and active. There is a busy school (run by the Nashville Dominicans), and each year there are dozens of adults welcomed into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil.

But that's not why you've heard so much about St. Mary's in the past two weeks. In fact, the success of the parish is not why I'm writing about it today.

St. Mary's has suddenly become the focus of nationwide attention because of what the pastor said-- or rather, what the media said he had said-- about people who had voted for Barack Obama.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Diocese of Charleston: Shepherds vs. Wolves

The supporters of the culture of death and its champion, Barack Hussein Obama, have taken great delight in Monsignor Martin Laughlin’s repudiation of Father Jay Scott Newman’s statement that "voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”

Father Newman acted as a courageous shepherd of souls, knowing that his remarks would be misunderstood and ridiculed by many, but as an alter Christus and good shepherd he was obliged to speak out on behalf of those entrusted to his care. Father Newman has an international reputation as a scholar and homilist and his parish has a national reputation for its beautiful, reverent liturgies. Father Newman and his parish have won many converts to the faith – people who see in this courageous pastor someone whose life is totally dedicated to Jesus Christ and who is ready to “lay down his life for his friends.”

The sensus fidei of Catholics across the Internet is overwhelmingly in support of Father Newman. Faithful Catholics recognize the enormous charity inherent in Father Newman’s remarks. Here is a man willing to jeopardize his standing in the Church, his good name, and endure public ridicule for the sake of the souls entrusted to his care and their eternal salvation.

As the story below indicates, even Monsignor Laughlin and his spokesperson were supporting Father Newman just a few days ago. What happened in the interim? Could the Diocese have received a phone call from a Cardinal or an Archbishop, or perhaps many messages from the many bishops who have been too cowardly to speak clearly and forcefully on the greatest moral issue of our day? The ones who routinely make equivocal statements so as to not jeopardize what they care about most, the almighty dollar. The ones who politely applauded when, just this past year, the Holy Father exhorted:

“it falls to you (the bishops) to ensure that the moral formation provided at every level of ecclesial life reflects the authentic teaching of the Gospel of life.”

How should we weigh Monsignor Laughlin’s contradictory statements against the clear pastoral teaching of Father Newman? Like Father Newman, Monsignor Laughlin is a pastor who is the temporary administrator of the Diocese. He is the apparatchik of a diocese that has had 45 allegations of sexual abuse, paid $2,546,000 for settlements, and $646,000 for counseling and legal fees.

As Philip Lawler points out in his superb book, The Faithful Departed, 'Only a small minority of American priests — 2–3 percent, by most calculations — were ever accused of sexual abuse, whereas the vast majority of bishops were involved in the cover-up efforts.”

Monsignor Laughlin has quickly accommodated himself to a culture that puts institutional interests above the people it should serve. He talks about diverting “the focus from the Church’s clear position against abortion,” but given the delight that the pro-aborts are taking in his latest statement, what pro-abortion Catholic won’t feel justified in voting for pro-abortion candidates now that Father Newman’s clear statement has been contradicted? According to Monsignor Laughlin, lay Catholics are free to act as their individual consciences dictate, but their pastor is not.

Recent history has made painfully clear that wolves have frequently found their way to positions of authority in the Catholic Church. Fortunately, the great outpouring of support for Father Jay Scott Newman proves that most faithful Catholics know their shepherds from the wolves.

Latin Liturgy: A Slow But Sure Return to Tradition

It has been a year since Pope Benedict XVI issued his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which removed all legal obstacles to priests wishing to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass. Yet implementation of the Holy Father's wishes has been spotty at best. In some dioceses training programs for priests unfamiliar with the older rite have been wildly popular and oversubscribed. In other dioceses liberal bishops have instituted an array of conditions, such as rigorous Latin examinations for priests and other onerous rules that have, for now, thwarted the clearly expressed wish of the Pope.

Here in South Carolina they just pretend they never got the memo. There is not a single additional Latin Mass in the State of South Carolina as a result of the Holy Father's Motu Proprio. Those of us in the state's largest city and capital have a Latin Mass on the first Sunday of each month in a former Anglican parish that was corporately received into the Catholic Church. On other Sundays, those wishing to attend a Latin Mass can drive east, two hours/122 miles to Sullivan's Island, or two hours west/115 miles to Taylors, South Carolina. Requests to the chancery office for an additional Mass receive no response.

Given the enormous popularity of the traditional Latin Mass in some dioceses and its total absence in others, it is clear that clericalists who demand obedience from the laity, but offer none to those above, even to the Pope, are standing in the way. They are men who really enjoyed the seventies. They cling to their felt banners, tambourines and guitars and think "Kumbaya" marks the high water mark in sacred music. Fortunately, these old men who thought themselves "cool" more than thirty years ago are reaching retirement age. More often than not, they are replaced with priests who appreciate the ineffable majesty and sacredness of the divine liturgy.

Hat Tip to the Real Clear Religion blog for calling attention to this great article about the traditionalist revolution underway in Britain.

And for those who will suggest that the tacky, semi-circle pit churches with their kitchen table altars, so favored by the double-knit set, can't accommodate the traditional Mass, here's a great video showing how it can be done.

Summorum Pontificum Contact Database

The excellent, award-winning, Catholic website, LumenGentleman, has developed a Summorum Pontificum Contact Data Base.

An obstacle to the implementation of the Holy Father's Motu Proprio has been the networking required to find other Catholics interested in attending the Traditional Latin Mass. The Summorum Pontificum Contact Database allows Catholics in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, United Kingdom, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, United States, Ireland, Hungary, and South Africa to register their interest in the traditional Latin Mass and to contact others in their parish, region or diocese so that they might petition local, diocesan or, if necessary, Vatican authorities to request the Holy Mass. Additional countries will be added to the Database.

While some bishops have acquiesced to the Pope's wishes that the ancient Mass be available to all those who want it, many dioceses have yet to acknowledge the Motu Proprio and ignore all requests from the laity. Here in South Carolina there are two traditional Latin Masses at opposite ends of the state, more than two hours from Columbia, the state capital and a major city in the center of the state. While there is a once-a-month traditional Latin Mass offered in Columbia by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the closest traditional Latin Mass offered weekly is at a chapel of the Society of St. Pius X, 93 miles away. Requests to the Diocese of Charleston are ignored.

This data base is an excellent tool in overcoming ecclesial arrogance and the authoritarian liberals of Amchurch who defy the Holy Father and have driven so many of the faithful to schismatic chapels.