The Men of Jesus Christ

I met a young priest in Fairfax, Va., last week. Of course “young” is a relative term. Everyone around me gets younger with each passing year. 

Father Jaffe had been at the parish for less than a week and was the priest on call for the local hospital. It was 2 a.m. when his pager went off. A couple had lost their 8-year-old son hours before and the mother wouldn’t let go of his body. 

All attempts of the staff and hospital chaplain to get her to release her son had failed. She sat rocking him, unresponsive to anyone. The woman wasn’t Catholic, but the staff knew from experience that it was time to call in a priest. 

When the newly ordained 26-year-old arrived he did the only thing that came to mind. He sat with the parents in silence for a moment and said, “It looks like you need some prayer.” He opened his rite book, “The Pastoral Care of the Sick” to the section with the prayers for the deceased and he began to pray aloud. 

The concept of virtuocity is a weekly men's meeting that encompasses virtue and velocity.  The forward movement of men in their Catholic faith.  We have decided to reboot virtuocity into a men's meeting more in-depth, and with a format that has been proven to move men forward in their spiritual lives.  A men's ministry started in Philadephia called The King's Men have been doing men's ministry full time for the since 2006 and have found the "secret sauce" when it comes to men's meetings. 

We are going to be coming at this men's meeting from all angle's, from learning and networking with other men to accountability for weekly growth in our lives.  We are keeping it open to all men, but there does need to be a commitment to attend the meeting for at least 4 weeks to know what it is all about and to give it a chance.  It does take prayer and discernment to see if you are called to be a part of this, but I have to say that every man needs accountability from their fellow brothers, as we cannot live this life alone.  There have been some heavy hitters in the Catholic Church that have taken major falls.  Were they speaking with other men they trusted about their struggles?  Would they have taken the falls they did?  No one will ever know, but what I do know is that any man can fall, and the results can be destructive, not only to themselves but to those around them. 

We meet every Wednesday at the 101.7 FM Station of the Cross HQ located at 6325 Sheridan Drive. at 8pm.  If you are interested, send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I can provide you with more information. 

The format is as follows:

8:00 Prayer and Rosary

8:30 Discussion from men's resource or book

9:20 Break up into Accountability groups- The Four C's

Click to know more about the 4 C's

9:50 Closing Prayer

Time is starting to carve wrinkles into my face and is slowly plucking hairs from my head. Time is annoying. It makes everything fade. It ushers friends and family one at a time over “the precipice” into eternity. But someday time will fade into a distant memory and we’ll have the last laugh. Though I guess that’s a reflection for another article. This one is about my conversion and why I’ve given my life to youth ministry.

Thanks to my parents I always had a sense of God’s presence and as a little kid I wanted to be a saint. The roots they gave me never fully withered, though I came dangerously close to destroying them during the insanity known as “junior high.”

According to neurobiologists, the frontal lobe of the brain develops last. That’s the part devoted to reasoning. In junior high it is full of gray matter, that is, unformed brain space. So, like many young people, I regularly did things that might prompt the question, “What were you thinking?” To which I’d offer the honest reply, “I wasn’t.”
I was a sweet little kid with some bad influences and plenty of gray matter. As early as the sixth grade I had become an odd conglomeration of wholesomeness and sin. I remember coloring at a friend’s house after school with a crayon in one hand and a shot of Jack Daniel’s in the other.

I have spoken to many of you who are familiar with the issue of the governments mandate forcing Catholic institutions to violate their conscience, and I have spoken to some of you who may not be as familiar on the issue so I wanted to post a blog post from Cardinal Dolan who breaks down the issue as it stands today in a very concise and easy way to understand.

I owe you an update

by Cardinal Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York

Over the last six months or so, the Catholic Church in the United States has found itself in some tension with the executive branch of the federal government over a very grave issue:  religious freedom.  Can a government bureau, in this case the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), define for us or any faith community what is ministry and how it can be exercised?  Can government also coerce the church to violate its conscience?

I wanted to let you, the great people of the archdiocese, know how we’re doing in this fight.  Thank you for your extraordinary unity, support, and encouragement.  Throughout all the archdiocese, our people – both as patriotic citizens and committed Catholics — have been very effective in letting government know that we are not at peace at all with this attempt to curtail the  freedom of religion and sanctity of conviction we cherish as both Catholics and Americans.

This has not been a fight of our choosing.  We’d rather not be in it.  We’d prefer to concentrate on the noble tasks of healing the sick, teaching our youth, and helping the poor, all now in jeopardy due to this bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church.  And we were doing all of those noble works rather well, I dare say, without these radical new mandates from the government.  The Catholic Church in America has a long tradition of partnership with government and the wider community in the service of the sick, our children, our elders, and the poor at home and abroad.  We’d sure rather be partnering than punching.

Nor is this a “Catholic” fight alone.  As a nurse from Harrison emailed me, “Cardinal, I’m not so much mad about all this as a Catholic, but as an American.”  It was a Baptist minister, Governor Mike Huckabee, who observed, “In this matter, we’re all Catholics.”

Yesterday marked a day that made me proud to be a Catholic.  One of our officials Kathy Hochul (D) here in Western NY scheduled a town hall meeting that took her by surprise.  As referenced in the video below she was under the impression that she would addressing concerns about taxes and the economy, but was confronted with a crowd of devout Catholics, so the meeting quickly turned toward the HHS mandate. The questions were intense and the crowd was on fire! I would like to put out a personal thanks to all those who participated.  There are videos below that need to be shared to show the blatant disregard for religious freedom and the constitution out of the mouth of a politician. The videos will speak for themselves. 

I want to encourage you to speak up as this is a critical time to band together as Catholics and fight this war which is tearing down our faith and our country.  Whatever community or state you are from, you can make a difference!