Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Another article found on home chapels...

(Brendan)

This article was in USA Today in 2003. It's very interesting, despite the general rarity, to see the breadth of home chapels across all of Christendom (though apparently one Christian family had a person design their chapel who has her own Buddhist chapel in her home... not recommended, but I digress). Hopefully the people profiled in the article understand that a home chapel should never be a replacement for worship with the larger body of Christians. Christianity is not a private religion. But it does seem there is a growing consensus that we need to make places in our homes, even just a small corner, that allows focusing on prayer both as an individual and a family.

There was also one comment that a Catholic would typically not celebrate the Eucharist in a home chapel, which is definitely true. On the one hand, it's kind of obvious since you need a priest to do so. However, if there is a priest available, celebrating mass on occasion in a home chapel is not prohibited provided the purpose of doing so is not to establish a replacement for one's parish in their home.

2 comments:

daisy said...

Hi Brendan,

I was reading the January 13-19, 2008 issue of National Catholic Register recently and came across something you would find of interest, I think.

In the article about William Clark
http://ncregister.com/site/article/7722,

I found this:

There he also pursues his final calling: He has built a chapel on his ranch, which holds regular Mass and which plays host to some of the finest minds in modern Catholicism: Franciscan Father Benedict Groeschel, founder of Priests for Life Father Frank Pavone, Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

Daisy

Brendan Koop said...

Thanks for the reference! Very interesting.