More resources for the Year for Priests ... our January 2008 editorial gives these reasons to be a priest:

The seven sacraments are the original, and best, seven reasons to be a priest. But here are seven that incorporate recent news headlines about the priesthood.

First: The World Needs Heroes

That’s the title of NYPriest.com’s new movie ad, and it makes the essential point. God has shown his love and respect for human beings by taking an incredible risk, putting the very future of his project of redemption into our hands. He has arranged things such that the graces he intends for mankind reach us primarily through the seven sacraments. If men will step up and accept the...READ MORE

In our “Guide to Sunday,” for Father’s Day, my wife and I ask: Why not celebrate the man you actually call “Father” — your priest?

In Faith & Family magazine, April shared priests’ four tips about what they want when laypeople have them over for dinner:

1. Be normal, and do what you normally do. (“The last thing a priest wants is an awkward, self-conscious evening where he feels like a space alien.”)

2. Respect the priest’s position and duties.

(“Some priests love to have kids climb all over them,” said one priest. “I do, but others don’t.”)

3. Serve light food.

(Priests have many food-related events. A 300-pound priest told April that when he was ordained he...READ MORE

We’re collecting resources for the Year for Priests. Here is our editorial thanking priests.

Thank You, Father

As the Year for Priests begins, we lay editors of the Register want to take a moment to thank priests.

We want to thank not only the priests who have been our friends, but also those we barely knew, who did more for us than our friends ever could.

We want to thank not only the priests who inspire us with their words, but also those who moved us more deeply with the daily work of their priesthood than they ever could with words.

We want to thank not only those men who gave up their retirement, and their well-deserved rest, to enter the priesthood as late vocations, but also —...READ MORE

For the Year of the Priest, here are the “Top 10 Priest Movies” from our Top 100 Catholic Movies List (the full list, the result of an online poll of 1,000 people, is always under “Resources” above):

1. The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
2. The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
3. The Mission (1986), mature audiences
4. Going My Way (1944)
5. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
6. On the Waterfront (1954)
7. I Confess (1953)
8. Boys Town (1938)
9. Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999), mature audiences
10. The Exorcist (1973) mature audiences
*11. Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

(This list represents U.S. movies in which a main character is a priest. It omits movies focused on a bishop or a...READ MORE

In 1988, the Register asked Cardinal Bernardin if Catholic voters should disqualify candidates who don’t support a human life amendment.

“Well, certainly,” he said. “That’s what the consistent life ethic is all about.”

The interview’s full text follows:

BERNARDIN: Chicago’s Pastor on Consistency and the ’88 Vote

June 12, 1988

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, archbishop of Chicago, is chairman of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities. He’s also head of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Moral Status of Deterrence, a follow-up review of the bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace,” another project Bernardin...READ MORE

Savannah, Ga., Bishop Kevin Boland was ordained in 1959 Ireland with 40 other men bound for spreading the Catholic faith throughout the world. On Wednesday, he’ll celebrate his 50 years as a priest. Here he recounts how he has seen vocations dry up in Ireland ... and revive in America.

Yesterday, I noted that Obama’s vision, spelled out at Cairo and Notre Dame, is radically different from Benedict XVI’s.

Benedict wants religions to acknowledge their differences in search of truth. Obama wants them to acknowledge their sameness in search of peace.

Obama is very cleverly, with fine intentions, proposing relativistic secularism as the world’s common ground.

(This continues what I started yesterday in “Obama, Notre Dame and Islam”.)

At both Cairo and Notre Dame, Obama identified the Golden Rule as the point of agreement of all religions.

At Notre Dame, he stressed that the Golden Rule amounts to service and love:

To Catholics: “For if there is one law that we can...READ MORE

Wikipedia has barred the Church of Scientology from changing entries about scientology.

That’s, well, good news and bad news. The Church of Scientology has a reputation for cultish weirdness and propaganda. And weird cultish propaganda.

But shouldn’t they get some say in their own entry? Not sole say, certainly, but ... some?

Catholicism should be next, say commentators on many of the stories about the development.

Says the report from the (British) Register:

According to evidence turned up by admins in this long-running Wikiland court case, multiple editors have been “openly editing [Scientology-related articles] from Church of Scientology equipment and apparently coordinating their...READ MORE