Paying tribute as I take leave of the Forum

[Don_Ruggero]

I want my final message to the forum sum up what I have lived across the many years of my priesthood, which I sought to bring to this forum in the spirit of the Dominican maxim to contemplate and to share the fruits of contemplation. Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere.

First, I pay tribute to the Successor of St. Peter…the Bishop of Rome…the Head of the College of Bishops…the rock upon which the Church is built…the Vicar of Christ…The Supreme and Sovereign Pontiff.

I have had the great joy of seeing the canonizations of Pope Saint John XXIII, Pope Saint Paul VI, and Pope Saint John Paul II. Each evoked great joy and happiness. In their personal holiness, I was privileged to see in each of them a truly extraordinary gift to the Church – and each of its members.

Their teachings were, each, exceptional. Their living the gift – and cooperating with the grace and action of the Holy Spirit – in putting into reality the inspired work of the Second Vatican Council can scarce be put into words. In the complete reform and renewal of the Church’s liturgical life, which itself was the fruit of the liturgical movement that was itself the gift of the Spirit. The renewal of moral theology. The renewal of spirituality. The renewal of the study of Church history using new and more appropriate paradigms. The renewal of clerical life, of Religious Life. New forms of Consecrated Life, received as gifts from the Holy Spirit. Receiving the divine imperative, articulated at the Council, of the ecumenical movement and working for Christian unity. All these are the things I look back on with deep gratitude to God.

Today, I have the joy and pleasure of living my priesthood under Pope Francis. I wish him a very long life indeed. The Church is richly blessed that the Lord chose him as our Pope for this moment of the Church’s history and I consider it a privilege and grace to live under his pontificate and to continue my life’s journey guided by his thought, his teachings, his example, and his manner of living his life. His embrace of simplicity will hopefully forever transform the papacy…just as it is a progression and growth from the simplifications begun under Pope Saint Paul VI and continued by Pontiffs after him in all facets of the institutional Church.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

continued

I also pay tribute to my own Bishop and to all the Bishops…successors to the Apostles and prelates of the Particular Churches that they shepherd, governing the faithful entrusted to them, and, as a body, composing the Church’s Magisterium.

I also wish to pay tribute to the Cardinals and the Bishops of the United States where this forum is located. Across the decades during which I had the distinct privilege to meet and engage with various Bishops from the United States, I found them to be genuine and caring, knowledgeable and thoughtful. I was delighted by our conversations and edified by their comportment and their conscientiousness in the fulfillment of their sacred duties and the offices that had been entrusted to them.

Finally as this apostolate is located in the Diocese of San Diego, I pay a special tribute to His Excellency, Bishop Robert McElroy…I always remember him as a graduate of the Gregorian University in Rome, years ago. I continue to follow him from afar, with great interest in his initiatives and efforts and I laud the tremendous good that he is doing. Catholic Answers is richly blessed to have him as their shepherd.

I invoke God’s blessing upon @Christopher_Check and upon the Catholic Answers apostolate…all who work or volunteer for it. May it always be an instrument that brings people closer to the Lord…to the Church that He founded…and to the Pope and Bishops who are the Church’s shepherds and guardians of its Magisterium.

I remember in my prayer, and I invoke the blessing of Almighty God upon, those who were users of this Forum across the years.

May the good it sought to do find new expressions and new avenues of realization as its work concludes a few hours hence.

My greetings to all who are left and following the forum in its final hours before its demise.

Farewell!

May God’s peace and grace abide with you always.

Rev.do Don Ruggero

 

[Irishmom2]

May God’s peace and grace abide with you always.

And also with you, Fr. Ruggero.

 

[1cthlctrth]

Thank you to all those who agree with me and to those who challenge me with disagreements.