In the last weeks and months we've seen sexual scandals plaguing the Catholic Church

beginning with allegations against once Cardinal McCarick

all the way through the Pennsylvania Grand jury report and now we're hearing things from all over the world and the Pope is calling all the heads of conferences of Catholic bishops to discuss this plague in our church and all over the internet all over social media Catholics are asking what can we do and to be honest when it comes to procedures

There's not much we can do. However, there has been a call recently in the last week or

so for a return to the Catholic Ember Days. The Bishop of Pittsburgh recommended

all of his clergy, all of his priests, to celebrate the penitential

season of the Ember Weeks going all the way back, according to tradition, to the 200s, and

looking at what they are, how you you do them and then I want to

challenge you at the end to take up the ember days you're not bound by conscience

they're no longer on the books in the Catholic Church but they are a time-honored practice of penitential prayer, notably for

vocations to the Catholic priesthood and for holy priests.

And we'll see how all these these Ember Days relate to vocations and our own

Vocations crisis. So let's look at the Ember Days. So the Ember Days in Latin are called

the Quatur Tempura. Quatur meaning four and Tempura is plural for

tempus. Tempura means times. So the ember days are the four times of the year that

is the four seasons which correspond to

Lent, June, September and December and there are three days of fasting

on a Wednesday, on a Friday, and on a Saturday.

Now, the Portuguese and the Spanish referred to these four times, the four

temporez as temporas.

And you might be familiar with the Japanese style of frying shrimp or vegetables,

Tempora batter. That actually isn't a Japanese word, it's actually a Spanish and Portuguese word and it goes

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