NEWS FROM PAGES PAST
50 years ago — Sept. 8, 1967
Most Reverend James J. Sweeney, Bishop of Honolulu, visited with the Most Reverend Robert Lucey, Archbishop of San Antonio, at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Tuesday. The archbishop was one of twenty-two observers returning from Vietnam, where they witnessed the recent presidential election. The archbishop was pleased to renew the friendship and their conversation centered around problems of the Church in the U.S., especially in the second largest state of Texas and the second smallest state of Hawaii. Alaska and Rhode Island are claiming the largest and smallest honors.
25 years ago — Sept. 11, 1992
‘Pastoral moment’
Holy Trinity school gym two weeks ago looked like a shelter scene from any recent televised disaster of the week. Twenty-seven blue flimsy-looking steel-framed rented beds with four-inch thick mattresses covered with clean white linens were arranged in orderly rows from one basketball hoop to the other. Schools of wheelchairs gathered in corners and beside long practical tables. Attendants milled around. Cardboard cases full of supplies were stacked up along the sides.
The mood did not fit that of a calamity, however. It was calm and serene. On most of the beds lay the still and fragile bodies of old men and old women – sleeping.
These were the residents of Hale Malamalama Nursing Home, napping after lunch on Saturday, Aug. 29. The athletic gym of the Kuliouou Catholic school in east Honolulu was their temporary quarters from that morning until the following Monday afternoon while their regular residence was treated for termites.
10 years ago — Sept. 7, 2007
Bishop says Sunday Communion services prohibited except in rare circumstances
Communion services should never replace parish Sunday Mass except in the case of a “true emergency,” according to policies issued by Bishop Larry Silva on Aug. 21. During the rest of the week a Communion service in place of a Mass should be the “rare exception,” he said.
The bishop issued the rules in the Diocese of Honolulu e-Newsletter, an online newsletter published by the office of the vicar general … and e-mailed to parishes and offices in the diocese.
At all parishes in the Diocese of Honolulu (and missions where a Sunday service is regularly scheduled), “Priests are obliged to celebrate the Eucharist in its entirety on Sundays (and Saturday Vigils)” in all parishes and missions with regularly scheduled Masses, the bishop wrote. …
If for some reason it is impossible for a priest to celebrate Sunday Mass, the first option is to direct the congregation to a neighboring parish if feasible.