Angelus News | January 14, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 1
On the cover: It can be described as the sacrament of “penance,” “reconciliation,” or more simply, just “confession.” A necessary part of any serious Catholic’s spiritual life, certainly, but can it be something more? On Page 10, Mike Aquilina invokes the life and example of St. Pope John Paul II to make the case that confession is much more than a duty, but actually a right — and perhaps our best shot at the radical conversion God wants to give us.
On the cover: It can be described as the sacrament of “penance,” “reconciliation,” or more simply, just “confession.” A necessary part of any serious Catholic’s spiritual life, certainly, but can it be something more? On Page 10, Mike Aquilina invokes the life and example of St. Pope John Paul II to make the case that confession is much more than a duty, but actually a right — and perhaps our best shot at the radical conversion God wants to give us.
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LOCAL<br />
■ A Catholic school’s new firefighting mission<br />
Fire authorities<br />
in Ventura<br />
County have<br />
a new piece in<br />
their firefighting<br />
arsenal: a<br />
strategically<br />
located helipad<br />
on the campus of<br />
Thomas Aquinas<br />
College in Santa<br />
Paula.<br />
The Catholic<br />
university<br />
allowed the<br />
helipad’s installation<br />
as part of<br />
an agreement<br />
A Firehawk helicopter during a debut training exercise at the new helipad on the<br />
campus of Thomas Aquinas College. | THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE<br />
with the Ventura<br />
County Fire<br />
Department<br />
(VCFD), which recently purchased two Sikorsky Firehawk helicopters.<br />
For decades, firefighters were allowed to land water-carrying choppers on the<br />
school’s athletic fields, but that option was no longer viable for the larger and<br />
heavier Firehawks.<br />
Thanks to the new “helispot” — less than a mile from where the infamous<br />
2017 Thomas Fire started — “we no longer need to fly our helicopters to Fillmore<br />
to fill water tanks,” said VCFD Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen. “That means<br />
we can put more water on a fire while it’s small, giving it less time to spread.”<br />
A most important gift — Archbishop José H. Gomez enters the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at the start<br />
of the 9 a.m. Christmas Day Mass Dec. 25. In his homily, the archbishop called on the faithful to “adore the Child,<br />
as the shepherds did on that first Christmas night, and let us offer this honor to the Child — let’s offer him the gift<br />
of our heart.” | VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
■ Vocations basketball<br />
game set for a<br />
comeback<br />
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles’<br />
annual Priests vs. Seminarians basketball<br />
game is back this year after taking<br />
a year off due to COVID-19.<br />
A squad made up of men studying<br />
for the priesthood at St. John Seminary<br />
in Camarillo will take on their<br />
ordained opponents on Friday, Feb. 11,<br />
at Chaminade College Preparatory’s<br />
middle-school campus gymnasium.<br />
The teams have a split record since<br />
the tradition started three years ago:<br />
Team Seminarians won the matchup<br />
in 2019, and Team Priests in 2020.<br />
Doors open at 6 p.m. and tip-off is at<br />
7:30 p.m. COVID-19 protocols will be<br />
followed. Tickets can be purchased at<br />
archla.org/basketball.<br />
■ UC Irvine fires<br />
Catholic professor over<br />
vaccine mandate<br />
A professor at University of California<br />
Irvine’s (UCI) medical school is<br />
out of a job after refusing to comply<br />
with a systemwide COVID-19 vaccine<br />
mandate.<br />
Aaron Kheriaty, Ph.D., who taught<br />
psychiatry and human behavior and<br />
was director of UCI’s medical ethics<br />
program, had argued in a lawsuit<br />
against the UC system last fall that he<br />
should be exempt from the vaccine<br />
mandate due to the natural immunity<br />
he acquired from previously contracting<br />
COVID-19.<br />
Kheriaty, who is Catholic, has said<br />
he is not against the COVID-19<br />
vaccine but opposes making it mandatory.<br />
“Requiring the naturally immune to<br />
be vaccinated doesn’t make anyone<br />
actually safer,” wrote Kheriaty in<br />
the Wall Street Journal last year.<br />
“It is wrong to risk harming healthy<br />
people so that college can peddle a<br />
psychological placebo to those who<br />
don’t care enough to consider basic<br />
scientific facts.”<br />
Y<br />
6 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>14</strong>, <strong>2022</strong>
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