Bishop Robert Vasa

St.Eric · #1 Sep 17, '06, 9:11 pm

I spent all of Saturday with the Bishop in a training. I and 32 other men were installed today as Acolytes in our diocese. We spent all day on Saturday with the Bishop, training for the office, preparing to be installed at today's Mass, discussing the liturgy, asking questions, etc. I really have a new found respect for Bishop Vasa. He is a great man and a great Shepard. He is very orthodox and true to the church. I have a real sense that he REALLY has a profound faith/belief/and respect for the faith. On top of that he really does have a great sense of humor.

I have heard a lot of people speak negatively of him and how "cold" he is. I find that those allegations are completely without foundation. He really is a warm, faithful, and personable man.
Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there about the Bishop. I had a wonderful experience with him and now pray that I can faithfully serve the church in my new office and instruct faithfully. God bless you all.

Victorious · #2 Sep 17, '06, 9:58 pm

Bishop Vasa: a bishop who bishes! Would you consider lending him to our diocese? We wouldn't keep him long -- just 40 or 50 years or so.

Rand Al'Thor · #3 Sep 17, '06, 10:11 pm

Psx vobiscum!

I love Bishop Vasa! I'm your neighbor in the Portland Archdiocese and I certainly am proud to have Bishop Vasa in our state.

By the way, St.Eric, how is the feasting in Valhalla these days? I'm still in Midgard myself. lol.

Rand Al'Thor · #4 Sep 17, '06, 10:39 pm

P.S. Congratulations on your institution.

St.Eric · #5 Sep 17, '06, 10:49 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rand Al'Thor

P.S. Congratulations on your institution.

....Thank you!

St.Eric · #6 Sep 17, '06, 10:51 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rand Al'Thor

Psx vobiscum!

I love Bishop Vasa! I'm your neighbor in the Portland Archdiocese and I certainly am proud to have Bishop Vasa in our state.

By the way, St.Eric, how is the feasting in Valhalla these days? I'm still in Midgard myself. lol.

Ahhh, yes! The feasting is grand. Whatever you desire and much Glog and Grog as well....SKOL!!!!!

St.Eric · #7 Sep 22, '06, 9:26 pm

I was commenting to a fellow parishoner, who is 20+ years my senior, about how I admired Bishop Vasa and really enjoyed how faithful he is to the magisterium. The fellow parishoner replied, "yeah, he is OK but so many of his ideas are old fashioned..." He went on to say how he and his wife, who is the director of R.E. in our parish, thought that a lot of his ideas about the faith were not progressive enough. I was pretty much flabergasted. Two things here. (a) Bishop Vasa is probably one of the of the most balanced, loving, orthodox Bishops we have in the U.S., and (b) no wonder our U.S. Catholics are poorly cathecised if our R.E. leaders think that bishops like Vasa are "too old fashoined." All I can say is....Go Bishop Vasa! Do not bend to the modernist notions!!!

John Lilburne · #8 Sep 25, '06, 10:57 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by St.Eric

I was commenting to a fellow parishoner, who is 20+ years my senior, about how I admired Bishop Vasa and really enjoyed how faithful he is to the magisterium. The fellow parishoner replied, "yeah, he is OK but so many of his ideas are old fashioned..." He went on to say how he and his wife, who is the director of R.E. in our parish, thought that a lot of his ideas about the faith were not progressive enough. I was pretty much flabergasted. Two things here. (a) Bishop Vasa is probably one of the of the most balanced, loving, orthodox Bishops we have in the U.S., and (b) no wonder our U.S. Catholics are poorly cathecised if our R.E. leaders think that bishops like Vasa are "too old fashoined." All I can say is....Go Bishop Vasa! Do not bend to the modernist notions!!!

Deciding to institute non-seminarians as acolytes is not "old fashioned". Perhaps it could be described as "radically orthodox".
To highlight how courageous a step he is taking, here is an extract from an article of 17 September 2006 by Father Allen Morris (Secretary to the Department for Christian Life and Worship of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales). Writing about instituted readers and acolytes he has:

"... I say ‘people’ but to be more accurate I ought to say ‘men’. For a number of reasons, but for reasons which from the start seemed both unfortunate and unnecessary, these ministries were restricted to lay men. And because the bishops, not only of England and Wales, but pretty much the whole world, did not wish to exclude women from exercising these ministries, they decided not to institute people to them – except, ironically, those men who were preparing for ordained ministry, who are required to receive these ministries before they are permitted to proceed to ordination. ...".
The full article is at http://www.totalcatholic.com/faith/f...h20060917.html .

So at least one bishop has decided to institute people as acolytes. He has decided that he should follow the directions of Pope Paul VI in his 1972 Motu Proprio Ministeria Quaedam. By doing this he is confronting and challenging a lot of other bishops. This will have its challenges, for which Bishop Vasa deserves support and prayer.

Rand Al'Thor · #9 Sep 26, '06, 6:58 pm

Pax vobiscum!

Another thing I like about Bishop Vasa is that they still kneel after the Agnus Dei, something that we don't do in Portland anymore, except for at Holy Rosary.

In Christ,
Rand

bellesjoy · #10 Sep 26, '06, 9:22 pm

Congratulations St. Eric. We spend a lot of time with the good Bishop and have been singing his praises for years! He is orthodox, fun, has a great sense of humor, holy, inspiring and a wonderful blessing to our diocese.

We have a rather noisy bunch of aging CTAers here in town that give him no respect and attack everything he does.

One such issue was the fact that he was indeed installing instituted acolytes (you and the other 31). A rude, dissident and poorly uncatechised CTA gentleman (not really) who is also a EMHC, stood outside of a required class for the EMHCs 2 wks ago passing out his "letter" telling everyone that Bishop Vasa was installing the acolytes to push women out of being lectors and EMHCs and it was a huge plot. He told everyone to boycott all ministries to teach the Bishop a lesson. (The CTA bunch are those who want women priests.) Hopefully and apparently the only ones who listened to him were other CTAers and good riddance.

Bishop Vasa has no such agenda and states so in his column in our diocesan newspaper the Catholic Sentinel. He is always faithful to Rome. You can read it here and note that the quotes refer to the letter handed out by the CTA folks:
http://www.sentinel.org/articles/2006-38/14947.html

St.Eric · #11 Sep 27, '06, 9:07 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by bellesjoy

Congratulations St. Eric. We spend a lot of time with the good Bishop and have been singing his praises for years! He is orthodox, fun, has a great sense of humor, holy, inspiring and a wonderful blessing to our diocese.

We have a rather noisy bunch of aging CTAers here in town that give him no respect and attack everything he does.

One such issue was the fact that he was indeed installing instituted acolytes (you and the other 31). A rude, dissident and poorly uncatechised CTA gentleman (not really) who is also a EMHC, stood outside of a required class for the EMHCs 2 wks ago passing out his "letter" telling everyone that Bishop Vasa was installing the acolytes to push women out of being lectors and EMHCs and it was a huge plot. He told everyone to boycott all ministries to teach the Bishop a lesson. (The CTA bunch are those who want women priests.) Hopefully and apparently the only ones who listened to him were other CTAers and good riddance.

Bishop Vasa has no such agenda and states so in his column in our diocesan newspaper the Catholic Sentinel. He is always faithful to Rome. You can read it here and note that the quotes refer to the letter handed out by the CTA folks:
http://www.sentinel.org/articles/2006-38/14947.html

Thank you! Thanks also for the link to the article. It was really good. I sent the Bishop a quick email thanking him for our training and installation and encouraging him to stand strong in the face of opposition. He promptly reply with a quick "thank you." I thought that was really nice of him. He really is a great man and I wish more of our American Bishops had the fortitude and fidelity that he does to the Magisterium. Also, what are "CTA Catholics?" I haven't heard that term before. I am assuming it is something along the lines of a cafeteria Catholic or something close to that.

bellesjoy · #12 Sep 28, '06, 11:04 am

Sorry, CTA stands for Call To Action. They are a group that claims to be Catholic, but spend most of their time attacking the Magisterium. They are dissident, supporting many things that are contrary to Catholic teaching. They want women priests, push the GLBT agenda in the church, and want the church to be a democracy as in voting for Bishops, etc. There is much more that you can see at their website which I won’t even give recognition to here.

Their main speakers are the likes of Joan Chittister, Gumbleton, McNeil, and they align themselves with Future Church, treat the Eucharist with “creativity”, refer to the Holy Spirit as “her”, elevate the concept of “goddesses”, women celebrating the Eucharist, seek changes in how the Church views sexuality and the list goes on. Like many of these groups they use the sex scandals in the Church to gain credibility, but always go back to the same tired old issues.

Their former president, Linda Pieczynski, personally attacked Bishop Vasa in our local town newspaper, calling him ignorant and slanderous. This was in reply to a pastoral column he wrote for the Catholic Sentinel that was factual and respectful. (who was actually shown to be ignorant and slanderous in that case?)

We have a cell here in town that is made up mostly of older bitter dissidents with a few younger activists who like to infiltrate local parishes and cause as much havoc as possible. Previously they had free reign in our parish under an unconcerned pastor and an older dissident activist sister who pretty much ran the parish giving them positions of authority on committees, etc . The sister was called (told?) to return to her mother house in CA last year and we now have an orthodox no-nonsense pastor who won’t tolerate their behavior. He is already teaching and correcting in a pastoral way.

The man who wrote and handed out the letter a couple of weeks ago did so without the permission of the pastor. It attacked again the motives and sheparding of Bishop Vasa, who responded to the letter in an instructive and direct manner in the most recent of his columns to which I posted the above link. (you can sign up there to get his column every week) It did serve to show the lack of knowledge and incorrect unsubstantiated assumptions made by these folks. They usually misinterpret the work of Vatican II and the Bishop provides needed correction. He has the patience of a saint!

For the most part we ignore what they say and do locally unless it is abusive or damaging to a person or program. They are nationally a group of older dissident activist whose influence in the Church is thankful of little consequence.

Bishop Vasa is always available to anyone who stops by to speak with him. He is responsive and open. Continue to support him in deed and prayer.