This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.
I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill
I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/
Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/
The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.
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E Letter: Converting Criminals during Tough Times
While this is a tough time to convert criminals to the Catholic faith it can also—because of the uncertainty—be a good time to do so.
What is crucial is to stick to the basics and this excerpt from an exceptional article I read recently reminds us of them.
An excerpt.
“We can still love the Church.
“We must love the Church.
“Those who truly love the Lord Jesus will not fail to love the Mystical Body of which He is the Head, the Bride for whom He offered Himself up on the Cross. It would be ingratitude to Him if we refused His gift of the Church as Mother and Teacher. We are members of the Church, yet she is greater than we are, and is eminently worthy of our trust. The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church will never let us down. She is “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (I Timothy 3:15)
“But surely, when we remember the sexual crimes of some of the clergy, we cannot love the Church. How is she to be trusted when so many of her bishops, even when not guilty of perversion themselves, have practiced deception and covered up the evils of others? Surely we cannot love a Church led by bad shepherds.
“But no, we can and must love the Church. The wickedness of which we have heard so much in this last year is the work of churchmen, not of the Church herself. The visible, hierarchical Catholic Church remains immaculate in the beauty of holiness, and in the splendour of truth. She is holy because of Christ, her divine Head, and by the working of the Holy Spirit, who fills her with His grace, gifts and fruits.
“Despite our own sins, and those of our pastors, the Church is holy in the sacred doctrine of her faith, and in her Sacraments, which impart the grace of Christ for the sanctification of our souls. She is holy in the saints in heaven, and above all in the Immaculate Mother of God, the Queen of All Saints. She is holy in the poor souls in purgatory, for whom the remains of sin are being burnt away. She is holy in the humble Catholics on earth who love Jesus and Mary, trust in God and not in themselves, who strive to keep the commandments, avoid the occasions of sin, pray without ceasing, and fight courageously against the world, the flesh and the Devil. When we say in the Apostle’s Creed that we believe in the Holy Catholic Church, we are not deceiving ourselves.
“The Church’s integrity is undiminished even when one of her prelates departs from her faith and presents his own strange opinions as if they were orthodoxy. Think of those who fell into Arianism, of Nestorius in the See of Constantinople, or of Thomas Cramer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) remains invulnerable despite the depredations of the heretics. This or that cleric may lose his faith, and make himself a slave of the world, but the Church our Mother remains divinely free; she is a virgin, and keeps the faith pure and intact. Even when a pope falls into heresy, as Honorius I and John XXII apparently did, Peter’s voice still resounds with all its original clarity in the teaching of his orthodox predecessors, and indeed in all those bishops, priests and lay people who hold and foster the Catholic and Apostolic faith. Sacred Tradition is immortal by the gift of the risen Christ.” (p. 36)
Fr. John Saward. (2019). Love in a time of crisis. Catholic Herald. August 2, 2019.
Also, prison conversion is helped by using the already enumerated tools I have mentioned in the Lampstand book on prison ministry:
Four reference books which Lampstand suggests would be very important for the ministry group to read and discuss before beginning outreach are (1) Inside the Criminal Mind: Revised and Updated Edition. Stanton E. Samenow. Ph.D. (2004) (2) Criminal Justice and the Catholic Church. Fr. Andrew Skotnicki, O. Carm. (2008) (3) The two volume work of Fr. Rodger Charles, SJ, Christian Social Witness and Teaching: The Catholic Tradition from Genesis to Centesimus Annus, (1998) (4) H. W. Crocker III, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000 Year History, (2001).” (pp. 44-45)
David H. Lukenbill. (2011). The Lampstand Prison Ministry: Constructed On Catholic Social Teaching & the History of the Catholic Church. Lampstand Foundation: Sacramento, California.
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David H. Lukenbill, President, The Lampstand Foundation
Post Office Box 254794 Sacramento, CA 95865-4794
Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/
Blog: http://www.cathliceye.wordpress.com
E-Mail: Dlukenbill@msn.com
With Peter to Christ through Mary