Above is the coat-of-arms of Bishop John C. Wester joined with the coat-of-arms of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, where he is to be installed next month. We are eagerly looking forward to the day- Wednesday, 14 March 2007- when this crest will be placed over the cathedra and Bishop Wester is seated on this chair, established 27 January 1891 by Pope Leo XIII and first occupied by the Most Reverend Lawrence Scanlan.
One thing I try to do and will work hard to continue doing in this forum is to focus attention on our local Church, which, as Fr. Langes Silva, JCD, our hard-working and very competent Judicial Vicar, writes in one of his occasional pieces on canon law in the life of the Church for the Intermountain Catholic, tells us, referencing canon 369, is "a portion of the people of God united by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel and the Eucharist, entrusted to a bishop for pastoral care, with the cooperation of the presbyterate. It constitutes a particular church where the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is truly present and operative".
The entire article, which is excellent, is entitled Diocesan Bishops and the New Code of Canon Law.
Too often in this age of instantaneous global communication, we tend to diminish the local Church in favor of the global Church, the See of Peter. I am certainly prone to such privileging.
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