The Good Shepherd Parish will be giving a special program called Presence which helps us understand the powerful way that God is present in the Eucharist. The program is free of charge and consists of four modules that will be held over four weeks. Participants can go online at Formed.org to revi...

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Sacraments 101: Volume 15 - In Closing… Over the last year or so, we’ve looked at the seven Sacraments of the Church as instituted and handed down to us by Jesus Himself and His Catholic Church. In these articles, we explored some of the theological foundations for each Sacrament. We...

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In this second and final part of our discussion on the Sacrament of Holy Orders, we’ll look at the proper matter and form required for the sacrament. But in order to do that, we have to first recall something important. Holy Orders, like the Sacrament of Marriage, comprises more than just t...

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In concluding our look at the Sacrament of Matrimony in the previous article, we’ve now covered six of the seven sacraments instituted by Christ. That leaves us to discuss one last sacrament which falls into the same category as Matrimony/Marriage. It is the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Holy Orde...

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Last month we introduced the Sacrament of Matrimony. In doing so, we also entered into the third and final category of the sacraments. First, we covered the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Eucharist. Then, we looked at the second category, the Sacraments of Healing: Penance...

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In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a collection of the official teachings of the Church, we read the following: “we profess that ‘the sacraments of the new law were…all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1114). This claim ...

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That evening, at sundown, they brought to [Jesus] all who were sick or possessed with demons. The whole city was gathered together about the door (Mark 1:32-33). Anyone who has ever experienced illness or sickness before, especially if it’s a chronic illness, could understand the desperatio...

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Norwich, Catholic

Volume 10: Follow-up Questions Here are two helpful questions that were sent to me that I think are worth answering publicly. Can you help clarify what constitutes a mortal sin and when confession is warranted without mortal sin? Should venial sins be confessed? If so, how? In Saint John&...

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Norwich, Catholic, sin, confession

Sacraments 101: Confession, Part I Life is often thought of as a kind of journey. Far from being something static or stagnant, our lives are constantly subject to change, growth, decay, and all other kinds of movement. For us as Catholics, one of the most common images used to describe life here ...

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As we’ve seen in both the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, each Sacrament of the Church comes to us with a particular form and a particular matter which are required in order for the Sacrament to be valid. But if we step back for a minute, we can see that there is a coherent reason w...

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Norwich, Catholic