Posts in: theology

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Friar

Habemus papam!

As it happened, I was sitting at a cafe in the city of Assisi when Cardinal Robert Prevost was announced as the 267th Bishop of Rome.

I’m still digesting the circumstances: an American Pope, graduate of Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union, a White Sox fan!

I love that he chose the name Leo XIV. As he remarked to the College of Cardinals, the name indicates a focus I believe is super important:

Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour. Source: vatican.va

I will continue to pray for the new Pope. In order to live into his new role, he will need God’s grace and the collaboration of the faithful and all people of good will.

This is firmly in my bullseye: esoteric liturgical nomenclature and a solid pun.

If only the thurifer was a member of a mendicant religious order. (Because if there’s smoke, there’s friar.)

Source: [bsky.app/profile/a...](https://bsky.app/profile/aodhbc.bsky.social/post/3lmdnsm3rbk2e&10;&10;A) thurible mistake&10;Sir, - Denis Staunton's account of Mass in Beijing's North Cathedral ("Is the Catholic Church bending its knee to China's communist party?", World, April 5th) includes a description of an altar server "swinging a thurifer as it pumped out thick gusts of incense".&10;I was under the impression that the container is a thurible which is carried by the thurifer, ie the person holding it. But maybe that's the way they do things in China. If so, it must make for a most entertaining celebration of the Eucharist! - Is mise,&10;JOHN KELLY,&10;Co Carlow.

Finished reading: Counting the Cost by Clemens Sedmak 📚

This book is a terrific exploration of what it means to integrate values into the work of organizational budgeting.

10/10 - required reading for mission leaders, faith-based organization executives, and finance leaders everywhere.

A quote from _Counting the Cost_, by Clemens Sedmak and Kelli Reagan Hickey: We claim that financial decisions are moral decisions and also spiritual decisions, decisions that reflect values, but also decisions that shed light on the ultimate questions of mission and purpose.