priests

Earlier today, I was honored to be able to join in the celebration of the ordination of seven new priests for the Archdiocese of St. Louis. I was asked by the class to photograph their special event, and as I have done for many years, I gladly accepted and used the occasion to rent some new photography gear—this year I supplemented my Nikon D750 and F-mount lenses with a:

• Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera
• Nikon 35mm f/1.8 S lens (Z-mount)
• Sigma 135mm f/1.8 Art lens (F-mount)

This was also the first year I kept my two workhorse zoom lenses (24-70 2.8 and 70-200 2.8) in the bag, and shot exclusively with prime lenses. I've often considered doing this, but only recently realized there was a good prime between 105mm and 200mm that I could rely on for the shots where the Archbishop interacts with the ordinands, for example, the Laying on of Hands:

Update: Photographs from the game were posted online by one of the game's photographers: 2014 - Souls and Goals.

Yours truly, sitting down on the job. Image from the St. Louis Review.

It's almost time again for what is now an annual tradition—the 'Souls and Goals' soccer match in St. Louis, where the seminary soccer team will play against a team of 'clergy and company'; last year's match was a close game until late in the second half, when the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Lions took a 2-0 lead and with it, the cup.

I feel like a broken record... yet again, I was perusing the Internet (this time, Twitter), and then I noticed an illustration—a very familiar one—of the Roman collar (the white collar worn by priests):

A great peace always came over me when I saw the Roman Collar, a rep of the high priest, Jesus Christ, was present pic.twitter.com/9qH5VghciI

— Chris Boutin (@Boutleg) June 15, 2014

@Boutleg didn't create the graphic; it looks like uCatholic originally posted the graphic on Facebook, where it was shared and reshared thousands of times, and liked (through that network of shares) many thousands of times.

[Update: There is now a simple website where the latest information can be found: Souls and Goals.org.]

On November 7, 2013, there will be a soccer match between 'clergy and company' (archdiocesan priests, a bishop, and some of their friends) and the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Lions (the seminary's soccer team) at St. Dominic High School.

The match is free and open to all the faithful in the Archdiocese, and will be a friendly match with concessions, some special visitors, and prayers for vocations.

Details:

I noticed this video yesterday, featuring a nasally rendition of Call Me Maybe by the Women's Ordination Conference (not worth a link):

Quotables:

• "Excommunication, I'm still glowing."
• "[I] don't listen to St. Paul."
• "We want our Church back."

Notably, comments were disabled sometime this morning, after over 300 comments were posted yesterday witfully deriding the lunacy of the video (additionally, the negative ratings were beating positive ratings 2:1). I guess the Women's Ordination Conference can dish it out, but can't take the heat.

The video mentions St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and says that like her "I need to give this a whirl." Looking at the WOC's website, I found the following:

I've posted all the photos I took at this year's Mass of Priestly Ordination at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Flickr:

Congratulations to all five men who were ordained; we'll be praying for you!

A shout-out to another one of my friends / former classmates, Rev. Syring, from the Diocese of Omaha (Nebraska). He will be an amazing priest, and I was privileged to be able to photograph his first Mass as a priest:

Please pray for our priests!