Comic Book Promotes Rosary

INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS, May 12 – Pauline Books, operated by the Daughters of St. Paul, has published a new book designed to mark the Year of the Rosary and help popularize the devotion among children.

The Rosary Comic Book, by cartoonist Gene Yang, is 56 pages long, in full color and contains instructions on how to pray the rosary, the full text of all the rosary prayers and the Luminous Mysteries, recently introduced by Pope John Paul II, reported Independent Catholic News.

Yang hopes his work will prove useful to Catholic children, their parents and teachers.

“As a child I didn't really understand that the rosary was meant to be a meditation on Christ's life,” he said. “It just seemed like a bunch of words I had to say over and over and over. I'm hoping that this comic book will help today's kids understand what I didn't.”

Kansas Church Films Liturgy to Teach Changes

DIOCESE OF DODGE CITY, KAN., May 4 – The church was packed at St. Andrew's parish in Wright, Kan., on April 6, but not for Mass. Well, it was a Mass, but only a simulated one – congregants took part in a videotaping designed to teach the recent Vatican-authorized changes in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the Diocese of Dodge City, Kan., reported.

Diocesan officials pointed out that some of the upcoming changes are previous reforms that were never implemented.

“For example, when ready to receive Communion, the congregation will stand and will stay standing until the last person receives the Eucharist,” they said.

Father Henry Hildebrandt, who presided at the staged liturgy, pointed to a key emphasis in the revision of the missal.

“Silence is being stressed like it hasn't been before,” he said. “When we go to Mass we should have a genuine encounter with God. One of the things the Holy Father sees as instrumental of feeling God's presence is taking time to let the Holy Spirit move within us in a holy silence. After the first and second reading, there should be a pause measurable in minutes, not seconds.”

Israeli Museum Hosts Anti-Catholic Art

CATHOLIC LEAGUE, May 7 – William Donohue of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights in a press statement questioned several artworks to be exhibited starting May 22 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The exhibition, “Revelation: Representations of Christ in Photography,” is based on a newly released book by that name, which Donohue has reviewed.

“As Nissan Perez [curator of the exhibit and author of the book's introduction] says, the 195 illustrations range from the ‘sacred’ to the ‘profane,’” Donohue wrote, “[but he] writes that ‘no disrespect or offense [is] intended.’ How considerate. I wonder, is this what he tells his Jewish friends when they are offended by anti-Semitic art – to consider that no disrespect was intended?”

Donohue pointed to some of the obscene, blasphemous images in the exhibit as examples of “the moral relativism that marked Weimar Germany ... which made possible Hitler's triumph.”