Jenna Marie Cooper

“Parish administrator” is distinct from the office of pastor, but this distinction probably will not make much of a practical difference in your day-to-day experience of parish life.

Though the St. Michael prayer is no longer mandated in our post-Vatican II Mass, it can still be a beautiful and spiritually beneficial custom to pray it after the final blessing as a community.

It seems unlikely that these men would have been willing to suffer so intensely and give up so much if they themselves did not sincerely believe in the truth of what they were professing. Reasoning it out, what would have been the Apostles’ motivation for making up a new religion if it meant that they had everything to lose but nothing in this world to gain?

The general understanding among canon lawyers is that indulgences can still be earned during an “interregnum period” — meaning, during the period between the death or resignation of a pope and the election of his successor — because there does not need to be a reigning pope in order for the faithful to pray for the pope’s intentions.