How our video on tap-dancing seminarian came to be

By Robert Duncan
Catholic News Service

ROME — I briefly met David Rider two years ago in New York City while on retreat at the archdiocesan seminary. I was surprised to run into him on the streets of Rome last spring. He was wearing clerics and I gave him one of those “don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere” finger wags. Since then, we’ve run into each other often, he going to and from class at the Pontifical Gregorian University and I all about the city with my camera, on the job.

I’m a lover of the old Fred Astaire movies and all the great show tunes of his day, so when I discovered that Rider had left theater to give his life to the priesthood, I asked him to talk about all that jazz on camera. I hope the video I’ve produced pays homage to both the quintessential American art form and to Rider’s vocation story.

Robert Duncan is a multimedia journalist in the Catholic News Service Rome bureau.

New clearinghouse for doctrinal congregation’s documents

Screen grab from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's new website http://www.doctrinafidei.va

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has unveiled a new webpage listing the major public documents and decisions it has issued since 1966 plus key commentaries.

It has separate categories for doctrinal and disciplinary documents and documents dealing with sacramental questions.

It also lists important speeches and statements issued since 1983 by the last two prefects of the congregation: U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The series of volumes “Documenti e Studi” will only be helpful to folks who can read Italian. It’s a list of volumes published by the Vatican publishing house of the congregation’s major documents and proceedings of various symposia the congregation has organized.

Some choice documents in the archives:

• The 2002 doctrinal note on the participation of Catholics in political life, which says that while Catholics are free to choose among political parties and strategies for promoting the common good, they cannot claim that freedom allows them to support abortion, euthanasia or other attacks on human life. Includes commentaries in English by Cardinals Joachim Meisner and Giacomo Biffi.
• The 1976 decree regarding public celebration of Mass in the Catholic Church for other Christians who have died (Accidit in diversis,) which explains conditions in which a public Mass may be celebrated.
• A 1985 letter to ordinaries regarding norms on exorcism, which puts limitations on how prayer groups pray against demons and evil.
• A 1994 letter to bishops on the reception of Communion by divorced and remarried Catholics, along with additional commentary by Cardinal Ratzinger “Concerning some Objections to the Church’s Teaching…”
• And finally, given Pope Benedict’s call for a deeper understanding of the catechism for the upcoming Year of Faith, it’s of note to re-read his 2002 address as then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Catechetical Congress in Rome.