REFLECTIONS ON OUR FAITH AND ITS PRACTICES

No connection between
celibacy and pedophilia
Letters
(Massachusetts)
Monday, May 05


In the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's recent visit to the U.S., there have been several letters to the editor regarding the pope's comments and actions regarding the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the United States.

Mr. McCarthy's letter of April 27, "Chastity at root of pedophile issue," explains that celibacy is the cause of pedophilia. Similarly, Eric Biss's letter of April 26, "Church policy invites more scandal," explains that statistically the Roman Catholic Church's policy requiring celibacy will produce pedophiles.

There's something I don't understand. How could Alden C. Hewett (a former law enforcement officer just sentenced to 15-20 years in prison) be a pedophile since he's not a priest? Where is the logic in the idea that being a priest and celibate turns a man into a pedophile?

Roman Catholic priests are not the only religious people that practice celibacy. Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam all have requirements for celibacy amongst clergy. Where are the stories of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims being accused of sexual assault? Applying Mr. McCarthy's and Mr. Biss's logic, there should be serious pedophile problems within the Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu religions.

Can anyone remember hearing about Mohandas Gandhi being sued for sexual assault? Gandhi took a vow of celibacy at age 37, even though he was already married. Why didn't he start raping young boys? It must be because he wasn't a psychopath before becoming celibate.

Normal men don't become priests so that they can become pedophiles. Similarly, normal men who are priests don't "turn into" pedophiles because they've become priests. Why don't we hear of Catholic nuns becoming child molesters? They take vows of celibacy also.

We no longer accept the stereotype that a black man is a drug dealer simply because he's black. A Jew isn't stingy simply because he's a Jew. The Mexican man working the kitchen of a restaurant isn't going to steal my hubcaps simply because he's Mexican.

Why do we allow people to assume that a priest is a pervert, simply because he's a priest? This casts negative light on all parish priests. It is time for this terrible stereotype to be stopped.

PATRICK SMITH
Sheffield

POPE AUTHORIZES
'PERSONAL PARISH' IN ROME
FOR THE TRADITIONAL MASS


Further information of interest in connection with the opening of a 'personal parish' in Rome for all those who wish to follow the traditional Mass on a daily basis. [See news item posted today in NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT].

The following is taken from an article in the FSSP French newsletter, the "Lettre aux amis" of May 2008 - translation provided by the FSSP's English site.

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Dear Friends of the Fraternity,

As you know the Fraternity of St. Peter has a particular attachment to the Eternal City. It is in Rome that we were founded. Those instrumental in our foundation were the Holy Father John Paul II and then Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, the Sovereign Pontiff and Bishop of Rome.

Finally we were given the great grace to take the name of the Prince of the Apostles St. Peter, patron of Rome; the first order to take on such a name in two centuries. Since that first great act of fidelity to the Successor of Peter by our founders our Fraternity has kept a continuous presence in the Eternal City.

In our less than twenty years we have sent 15 men for licentiate and doctorate work at the Roman Universities and have had a very small chapel, S. Gregorio that we have served as chaplains since 1997.

It is then with great joy that on behalf of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter I can announce to you that on Easter Sunday (March 23, 2008) the Vicariate of Rome granted a personal parish to the care of our Fraternity at the church of Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini.

The Fraternity is honored that the Holy Father has established this personal parish to serve the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite in the heart of Rome, and that through his Cardinal Vicar Camillo Ruini the FSSP has been chosen to serve it. What better example could be found of an application of Summorum Pontificum!

It is only fitting that Rome, the heart of the Church is the first Diocese in Europe to entrust a personal parish to our Fraternity.


The church Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini stands in the very center of Rome only 100 meters from the Palazzo Farnese, near the Ponte Sisto. It would be hard to imagine a finer location.

The church, which dates from the beginning of the 17th century, has a rich history in Rome. It was built by the Confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims which was founded under the inspiration and direction of St. Philip Neri, with the specific mission of housing and caring for pilgrims in Rome.

The church has its very roots then in the work of St. Philip who is often called the third apostle of the Eternal City, whose mission was a true reform of bringing faithful back to a zealous practice of the faith through processions, devotions and the liturgy. The church also has the mission of receiving pilgrims at its origins and further reinforces the mission of the Fraternity in Rome.

Typical of the Roman churches of the Counter-Reformation period, Trinità dei Pellegrini has a wide sanctuary with no liturgical choir, enabling the faithful to see the sacred ceremonies more clearly. Likewise, the 8 side chapels, two major ones and 6 minor, are constructed in such a way as to not distract from the principal sanctuary.

The church contains several interesting artworks, such as the “Madonna and Child with Ss. Francis and Augustine” of Giuseppe Cesari, (also called the Cavaliere d’Arpino), under whom the painter Caravaggio worked during his Roman sojourn, and the famous “Mass of Saint Gregory” by Iacopo Zucchi, an interesting document of Roman liturgical practice in the later 16th century.



However, the most outstanding piece by far is the majestic painting of “the Trinity” by the Bolognese painter Guido Reni. Commissioned by Card. Ludovisi, the nephew of Pope Gregory XV, in 1625, this beautifully balanced and colored painting, done when the artist was 50 years old, is a version of the “mercy-seat” motif; God the Father, at the top of the painting, is shown with open arms, with the Holy Spirit at His chest above the Crucified Christ.

The figure of Christ is painted in a stark white which causes him to stand out against the colorful background, echoing the Elevation of the white Sacred Host taking place during the solemn Mass celebrated underneath the painting at the main Altar. It is considered one of the most beautiful retable in all of Rome.

In establishing a church in Rome to serve as the center for the traditional Mass the Vicariate not only wanted a parish life which would serve those living in the city, but also a place which would receive the pilgrims coming to Rome who desire to worship according to the extraordinary form.

The Vicariate of Rome stated from the start that the structure of a personal parish is the one which best makes these faithful feel at home, and thus active members of the local Church. It also best manifests the priests’ relation to the bishop and their concrete duties towards him. In this way our priest, like every parish priest, will form a sort of bridge for the people to their pastor, the bishop.



A second purpose of this magnificent church is to give an example of the full liturgical life of the extraordinary form in all of its splendor. One of the main efforts of the Fraternity of St. Peter will be to provide a church with a living liturgical life which can serve as an example of what Pope Benedict XVI refers to as the “treasures of worship and culture accumulated” in the Roman Rite.

Masses and offices will be offered solemnly with highly trained ministers and musicians. For years the Russian College in Rome has served as a living example of the beauty of the Eastern Rites. Here the Rites are carried out in full solemnity. Many priests and faithful have come to know and appreciate these Rites in this beautiful setting. It is now our duty to try to do something similar in the Eternal City.

How many pilgrims and how many young priests will have their first contact with the beautiful ritual of the Extraordinary Form at Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini. The duty that lies before us is very humbling, but very exciting. We can only thank His Holiness Pope Benedict the XVI for this opportunity.

I ask for your prayers for this endeavor which is important not only for our community but for the whole Church. We will be glad to use Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini for all offices and Masses of our twentieth anniversary on October 18, 2008. I also hope to see you there to celebrate the opening of our parish on June 8, or at another time in Rome in the not too distant future, in the heart of the See of Peter.

Very Rev. John Berg, Superior General FSSP

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Here's a related story from Poland, thanks to
rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/


First traditional Mass publicly celebrated
by a Bishop in Poland since the 1969-70 reforms




On May 4, the Sunday after the Ascension, in the Church of the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God in Cracow, Poland, there was a Pontifical Mass celebrated by one of the oldest Polish Bishops, Bishop Albin Malysiak. Bishop Malysiak was once a suffragan bishop to cardinal Wojtyla.

This was the first Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Rite by a Polish Bishop since the reforms of Vatican II. Several young Catholics received Sacrament of Confirmation in the Traditional Rite from Bishop Malysiak.

In his sermon, the Bishop pointed to the many dangers to the faith and morals in the modern world and the importance of the Catholic Church as the one true Church in the lives of young people. In the conclusion of his sermon, he noticed the beauty of Traditional Liturgy. The event was enthusiastically welcomed by Polish Catholics devoted to Tradition.

Another article about Notre Dame de Laus and her remarkable protege, Benoite Rencurel... Previous posts about this are in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH and THE SAINTS... threads.


New Marian shrine approved by the Church
is a treasure trove of mysticism
By Michael Brown
Pewsitter.com
May 7, 2008






The 17th century apparitions officially recognized Sunday by the Church in dramatic style in France opens a veritable treasure trove of mysticism.

Involving a young woman named Benoîte Rencurel in the diocese of Gap, the apparitions, visions, and other manifestations at Saint Etienne de Laus lasted her lifetime and now bring to light a major new mystic who -- in addition to experiencing what are now approved apparitions -- displayed supernatural abilities and such piety that she was named venerable more than a century ago and may now be headed for full canonization.

As in many instances, the visionary's phenomena were inextricably attached to the apparitions themselves, blurring the line between mystic and seer.

That phenomena included stigmata (the wounds of Christ), uncanny knowledge of the future, the ability to read souls, battles with the devil, and angelic interventions, especially of the Archangel Michael.

Perhaps most poignant in the remarkable account of this apparition -- which spanned from 1664 until 1718 and will become known as "Laus" (pronounced lou, after the valley in which the visions occurred) -- are accounts describing the huge and perhaps unprecedented manifestations of delicious heavenly aromas known to mystical theologians as the "odor of sanctity."

The aroma, often recounted as a cross between lilies and roses -- but yet more delightful -- lasted for weeks at a time and covered large outdoor areas.

Noted one official, a judge named François Grimaud: "During the Easter Season of 1666, I smelled a very sweet fragrance for around seven minutes; I had never smelled anything like it in my life, and it gave me such deep satisfaction that I was enraptured." The odor continued beyond the seer's death and is still in evidence. According to one account, it was so powerful in the spring of 1690 that the Laus church was pervaded with the fragrance and "all the pilgrims attested to it."

To this day, inexplicable such aromas are said to transcend even the delightful natural scents of flowers and other flora that make this spot seem as if it was pre-ordained to be a major spiritual refuge.

"Heaven had made of it a place of exquisite beauty, lying in one of the most lovely valleys of the district, the snow-crowned mountains around being covered with vast forests and adorned with choicest flowers, together with quantities of fragrant hyssop," notes Heaven's Bright Queen, by William J. Walsh, a definitive set of volumes on historic apparitions of the Blessed Virgin.

Walsh -- known too for his studies of Fatima -- wrote in 1904 of how the Blessed Mother has left "what in all the country round has ever since been known as les parfums du Laus -- for which no natural explanation can be found."

Phenomenally, the seer was born on September 29, 1647 -- the feast day of the Archangel Michael -- amid tremendous gyrations in the Church and society at large.

Just years before, a strange light was seen near the Vatican of a flaming dragon at a time when Luther's revolution was rocking the Church, witch hunts were plaguing Europe, and ecclesiastics were battling scientists for predominance in forming human thought.

"The girl's name, Benoîte, was in itself a predestination, being the old form of bénite, or blessed," wrote Walsh.

"Once, when she was only five years old, a mysterious and beautiful Lady drew her aside as she was at play with other children, and sprinkled her with water; whilst later on, the same Lady appeared to her and her younger sister when they had missed their way on the mountain, and set the frightened children in the right path."

One day in the spring of 1664, said Walsh, Benoîte was wending her way toward a grotto hollowed out of rock when she saw a strange light and a beautiful Lady smiling at her.

It wasn't until the following August that the apparition -- which continued almost daily -- spoke to the 17-year-old shepherd woman.

Asked if she was the Madonna, the apparition had responded that "yes, I am Mary, the Mother of Jesus. My Son wishes to be specially honored in this valley."

A nearby spot was then indicated -- again, on September 29 -- by a second dazzling light and the odor of sanctity.

Angels were said to be "constant companions" to the woman, whose visions lasted for 54 years -- more even than what has transpired thus far at the famous site of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where, as at Fatima, the seers were poor peasants watching livestock.

And as elsewhere, Laus was the center of great ecclesiastic debate, the apparitions initially accepted by two bishops before a third attempted to dismiss them. The focus of the messages was the importance of Confession, with the Blessed Mother urging constant prayer for sinners. In another irony, pilgrimages to Laus began during 1665 on the Feast of St. Joseph. Benoîte's room is still preserved, along with a portrait of her.

"Strange as it may seem," noted Walsh, "her most bitter enemies were priests. Some of these went so far as to cast her in prison; but, after fourteen days spent in fervent prayer and without tasting food, Benoîte was released, her persecutors then declaring their doubts unfounded."

One reason they may have released her: her cell filled with the odor of a heavenly perfume.

And so there is this special charism attached to what promises to be a significant site of pilgrimage, declared as officially sanctioned by Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri, who at a Mass at Laus Sunday said he recognized the "supernatural origin" of the apparitions -- extending tacit local approvals, which had included construction of a church, to international recognition.

The bishop, in an interview on France-Info radio, said the decision meant the Church "has committed itself in an official way to say to pilgrims 'you can come here in total confidence.'" Radio Vatican's web site said some 30 cardinals and bishops from around the world attended the Mass in celebration of the recognition.

That recognition again accents the dominance of France in Marian apparitions.

Almost beyond accurate reckoning are the hundreds of spots in France where the Blessed Mother has appeared to peasants or shepherds. Among the most famous: Lourdes to the south, the Miraculous Medal apparitions in Paris, the Sacred Heart revelations in Paral-le-Monial (these involving Jesus), historic apparitions at a now-famous spot in Chartres, and the Rosary revelations to St. Dominic in Prouille, as well as LaSalette, which occurred two centuries later in the same region of Grenoble and is a short distance to the north.

France also lays claim to one of the very earliest apparitions of Mary at Le Puy, which occurred in the first century (A.D. 47) in the southwestern part of the country. The only older apparition of Mary is believed to be her appearance several years before to the apostle James at Zaragossa, Spain.

Often, it is said, Our Lady of Laus was accompanied by the Infant Jesus and many times Benoîte beheld the Divine Child in the sacred Host. The title Mary is called here is "Reconciler and Refuge of Sinners."

In her later years, Benoîte made pilgrimages to the valley barefoot even in snow that caused her feet to freeze on at least twenty occasions.

"There, at the foot of the Alpine relic of piety, Benoîte received celestial favors which God deigns to accord to His most cherished servants," said Walsh in a book made available at the Marian Library in Dayton, Ohio.

"And each week, from Thursday at four o'clock until Saturday at nine, Benoîte lay on her bed, her arms extended in the form of a Cross, her feet crossed one on the other; her whole body, says an old document, 'as rigid as an iron bar.'"

After some time she received the stigmata, but when crowds arrived she pleaded with the Lord to make it invisible.

It was on Christmas Day in 1718 that she was told she had just three days to live; and on the morning of the feast of the Holy Innocents, she announced she would die that evening.

Today, a marble tablet covers her tomb -- which was opened in 1788 when a workman accidentally dropped a heavy stone on it, allowing stunned witnesses to record that a wound opened on the corpse's cheek and issued fresh blood.

In 1854 the coffin was reopened and while Benoîte's habit was found intact, the rest of her body was skeletal. On September 7, 1871, she was declared venerable. [[She was beatified more than a century later, in 1984.]

"She remained perfectly conscious till the last moment," wrote Walsh, "and she whose life agony had been so awful knew no agony at the hour of death.

"Before prayers were finished the angelic soul of Benoîte had passed peacefully away, into everlasting happiness."

Pentecost on Mount Athos

A voyage to the holy mountain of the Orthodox Church in 1997.
Or this year! - Because on Athos,
earthly time is one and the same as the eternal today of heaven.

by Sandro Magister

MOUNT ATHOS – When you see the summit of Athos emerge through the mist of the Aegean, stop the clocks. Because things are on another schedule there. The calendar is the Julian one, 13 days behind the Latin calendar that spread throughout the rest of the world. The hours are counted not from midnight, but from sunset. And it is not under the noon-day sun but in the dark of night that Athos is most alive and pulsating. In songs, lights, and mysteries.

Mount Athos is a truly holy land that inspires fear of God. It's not for everyone. At least it isn't for women, and that's already a good half of the human race. The last authorized female pilgrim set foot there sixteen centuries ago. Her name was Galla Placidia, depicted in the blue and gold mosaics of a church in Ravenna that is named after her. And being the daughter of the great Theodosius, the Christian emperor of Rome and Constantinople, was of no use to her. As soon as she entered one of Athos's monasteries, an icon of the Virgin ordered her: "Halt!" and enjoined her to leave the mountain. From then on, it was to remain untouched by woman. Since the 11th century, they say, not even female animals – cows, goats, rabbits – have dared to climb the holy mountain with impunity.


URANÚPOLIS


Uranúpolis, heavenly city, the last Greek village before the sacred border, is a frontier land of the most particular nature. Enameled iron signs inform you up to the last minute that you will not pass easily if you are a woman dressed as a man or if they discover you without the proper permits. The holy epistassía, the monks' government, will hand you over to a Greek tribunal, which is always severe in safeguarding the extraterritoriality of Athos and its laws as an autonomous theocracy, sanctioned in the Hellenic constitution and internationally recognized.

Perspiring monks in tunics and round hats hold back the crush of travelers looking to gain access. Many are called but few are chosen, the Gospel says. And very few entrance visas are stamped each morning, with the seal of the Virgin. Those who finally receive the parchment that authorizes a visit race to the boarding dock, for Athos is reached only by sea, on vessels that are named after saints.

The landing is a small harbor halfway up the peninsula called Daphne, like Apollo's nymph. But forget about far-off Olympus, which one catches a glimpse of on windy days. A bulbous old bus, earth-colored, even in its windows, hobbles along the road that climbs toward Karyès, the administrative center of Athos and the seat of the holy epistassìa.


KARYÈS


At Karyès there is a police station, a pair of alleys with shops that sell spelt seeds, icons, incense grains and monks' habits; there is the end of the bus line and a trattoria. There's even a public telephone that has every appearance of being the first and the last.

Karyès is a strange hamlet with no inhabitants. The few that turn up are all transitory: itinerant monks, policemen, day workers, lost travelers. From there one proceeds on foot – hours of walking on dirt roads without shade, in clouds of dust as fine as cocoa powder. Or in jeeps rented from another of the odd Greek transients. Or by hopping onto passing jeeps owned by the more modernized monasteries.

But it's always with great physical punishment. Athos is for strong, ascetic tempers. From the outset it puts you through the mill. Every day of your stay will have its "via crucis" of dust, stones and cliffs: Because on your precious permit, it is written that you cannot stop for more than one night in any one monastery, and between one and the other there are hours of walking. Pilgrimage is obligatory.


MEGISTI LAVRA


But when you do arrive exhausted in one of the twenty great monasteries – what a paradise. Megisti Lavra, the first in the hierarchy of the twenty, welcomes you within its walls that are suspended between heaven and earth toward the point of the peninsula just beneath the holy mountain. A young monk appears and takes your permit and passport. He reappears like the angel in Revelation after about a half hour's silence in heaven, restoring you with a glass of cool water, a little glass of anise liquor, a square of fruit jelly, and spiced Turkish coffee. It's the sign that you have been admitted among the guests. You are entitled to a bed in a room for six within the centuries-old walls, with freshly laundered sheets and a towel. From now on you will live the life of a monk.

Or rather you will do as you please. The monasteries of Athos are not like those in the West – walled citadels where every move, every word is under communal rule. On Athos there is something for everyone. There is the solitary hermit on the rock precipice, whose food they send up little by little with a basket. There are the anchorites in their huts hidden among the brooms and strawberry trees on the coast of the mountain. There are those without a permanent dwelling, always on the move and ever restless. There are the solemn colonies of communal life ruled by an abbot, here called the "igoumenos." There are the village monasteries where each monk keeps his own pace.

Megisti Lavra is one of the latter types. Within its walls there are squares, alleys, churches, arbors, fountains, mills. The cells are in blocks like in an Eastern Kasbah. The blue plaster stands out, while red is the sacred color of the churches. When the call for prayer is made, with seven-tone bells and the beating of the wooden talanton, the monks set off for the "catholikon," the main church. But if someone wants to pray or to eat alone, nothing keeps him from remaining in his cell. It's this way even for the visitor, except that he has very few alternatives. He rushes impatient to vespers. He tries night prayer, immediately induced to collapse from sleepiness. Dimly groggy, he tries again at the morning liturgy.

Or is he inebriated? There is the scent of the East, of Byzantium, at Megisti Lavra. There is the aroma of cypress and incense, the fragrance of beeswax, of relics, of ancient things mysteriously near. Because the monks of Athos don't suffer the passage of time. They tell you of their saints, of that Saint Athanasius who planted two cypresses at the center of the Megisti Lavra; who with Herculean strength built the catholikon; who shaped the monasticism of Athos; as if he had not died in the year 1000 but just yesterday, as if they had met him personally and not long ago.

Saints, centuries, empires, earthly and heavenly cities – everything seems to oscillate and flow, no longer distant. The monastery's treasures – golden and silver boxes with sapphires and rubies that are set in the Virgin's belt, the skull of Saint Basil the Great, Saint John Chrysostom's right hand – are offered to visitors for veneration. The light of the sunset sets them aglow, makes them pulsate. And the frescoes of Theophanes – master of the Cretan school in the first part of the 16th century – are also lit up, as are the blue majolica tiles on the walls, the mother-of-pearl on the iconostasis, on the lectern, on the episcopal throne.

After vespers one leaves the catholikon in procession and, facing the square, enters the refectory, which is also built like a church and frescoed by the great Theophanes. The same liturgy continues. The igoumenos takes his place at the center of the apse. A monk reads stories of saints from the pulpit, almost singing. One eats blessed food: soups and vegetables from old iron dishes – and on feast days even amber-colored wine – on thick, roughly hewn marble tables, themselves resting on marble supports. They are a thousand years old, yet evoke prehistoric dolmens. The exit is also made in procession. A monk gives everyone a piece of blessed bread. Another incenses it so artfully that the perfume remains a long time in your mouth.


VATOPÉDION


After Megisti Lavra, in the hierarchy of the twenty monasteries, comes Vatopédion. It stands on the sea amid rolling hills reminiscent of Tuscany. There, they say, Arcadius, Theodosius' son, took shelter after a shipwreck. And it was from here that his sister Galla Placidia, the first woman barred from Athos, would have put out again to sea.

Vatopédion is as refined as Megisti Lavra is rustic. And in certain phases of its history it was too much so: opulent and decadent. Not many years ago it was home to sodomite monks, the dishonor of Athos. But then came the purifying lash from a bunch of rigorist monks from Cyprus, who banished the reprobates and imposed the cenobite rule. Today Vatopédion has become one of the most flourishing of the monasteries. It takes in young novices from places as far away as America, the sons of Orthodox emigrants.

Vatopédion is the aristocracy of Athos. The igoumenos, Ephraim, with a copper-colored beard, blue eyes and a melodious voice, says: "Athos is unique. It's the only monastic state in the world." But if it's a heavenly city on earth, then everything there has to be sublime. Like the liturgies, which at Vatopédion truly are sublime. Especially on the important feast days: Easter, Epiphany, Pentecost. The pilgrim must triumph over sleep and not miss – for anything in the world – its marvelous nighttime offices.

The church itself is highly evocative: It's in the form of a Greek cross, like all of the other churches on Athos, admirably frescoed by Macedonian masters of the 14th century, and with an iconostasis brilliantly radiant with gold and icons. But it's the chant that gives life to everything: harmonic chant, masculine, without instruments, that flows uninterruptedly even for seven, ten hours at a time. The greater the feast, the longer it lasts into the night, chant now robust, now whispered, like the tide that ebbs and flows.

There are two lead choirs: bunches of monks gathered in columns around the lectern of each transept, with the choirmaster who intones the strophe and the choir that catches the tune and makes it blossom in melodies and chords. And when the choirmaster moves from the first to the second choir and crosses the nave with quick steps, his minutely pleated lightweight cloak billows in the form of two majestic wings. He seems to fly, like the notes.

And then there are the lights. There is electricity in the monastery, but not in the church. Here the only lights are fire: myriads of little flames whose lighting and extinguishing and motion is also a part of the rite. In every catholikon on Athos an immense chandelier in the form of a royal crown hangs from the central cupola, and has a circumference equal to that of the cupola itself. The crown is of copper, of bronze, of shining brass; it alternates candles and icons; it carries giant suspended eggs, which are a symbol of the Resurrection. It hangs very low, almost skimming the floor, directly in front of the iconostasis that marks off the holy of holies. Other magnificent golden chandeliers hang from the transepts' vaults.

And there's the moment in solemn liturgies when all the candles are lit: those in the chandeliers and in the central corona; and then the first are made to swing widely, while the great corona is spun on its axis. The dance of lights lasts at least an hour, until little by little it dies down. The glow of the thousand little flames, the shining of the gold, the clinking of the metals, the changing of colors of the icons, the resonant wave of the choir that accompanies these rotating galaxies of stars like celestial spheres: It all makes the true essence of Athos – its glimpse into the superhuman mysteries – sparkle.

What Western, Catholic liturgies today are able to initiate simple hearts into similar mysteries and to inflame them with heavenly thoughts? Joseph Ratzinger, previously as cardinal and now as pope, hits the mark when he points to the vulgarization of the liturgy as the critical point for today's Catholicism. On Athos the diagnosis is even more radical: the Western churches, in trying to humanize God, make him disappear. "Our God is not the God of Western scholasticism," the igoumenos of the Gregoríos monastery on Athos moralizes. "A God who doesn't deify man can't have any appeal, whether he exists or not. A large part of the reasons behind the wave of atheism in the West are found in this functional, incidental Christianity."

Vassilios, igoumenos of Ivíron, another of the monasteries, echoes the sentiment: "In the West, action rules; they ask us how we can stay here for so many hours in church without doing anything. I reply: What does the embryo in the maternal womb do? Nothing, but since it is in its mother's womb it develops and grows. So it is with the monk. He preserves the holy space in which he finds himself and he is preserved, molded by this same space. The miracle is here: We are entering into paradise, here and now. We are in the heart of the communion of saints."


SIMONOS PETRA


Simonos Petra is another of the monasteries that are spearheading the Athonite renaissance. It juts out on a spur of rock between the peak of Athos and the sea, with vertiginous terraces on the precipice. Eliseos, the igoumenos, has just returned from a tour of monasteries in France. He prizes Solesmes, bastion of Gregorian chant. But he judges the Western Church as too much "the prisoner of a system," too "institutional."

Athos, instead – he says – is the place of free spirits, of great charismatics. On Athos "logos is wed to praxis," word to deeds. "The monk has to show that the truths are reality. He has to live the Gospel in a perfect way. This is why his presence in the world is essential. Saint John Climakos wrote: "Angels are light for monks, monks are light for men."

Simonos Petra spreads its teachings even beyond the confines of Athos. It gave life to a monastery for nuns – about 80 of them – in the heart of the Chalkidiki peninsula. It established another near the border between Greece and Bulgaria. And even in France, it has opened three more of its monastic nuclei. It is a cultured monastery, equipped with a splendid library. In the dead of the night, its 80 monks keep vigil in their cells from three to five hours before the predawn liturgy, reading and meditating on the books by the Church Fathers.

Sleepless Athos. Without time, unless it is that of the angelic spheres. Leaving it is a hard shock even for the most disenchanted visitor. One boards the ferry again at Daphne. The rhythmic rumbling of the motors puts you back in synch with the world. The Greek girl, the first one, who serves you coffee in Uranúpolis, meets you like an apparition. With the dazzling beauty of a Nike of Samothrace.

The role of the priest in public affairs
By Charles J. Chaput
Archbishop of Denver

April 30, 2008


One of those things I left unposted too long. It echoes much of what Benedict XVI, priest and Pope, has been saying, constantly and consistently, to priests and about priests.


Catholic leadership in the secular world belongs to laypeople, not to clergy or religious. The visible role of the priest in public affairs —if by public affairs we mean political affairs — should normally be pretty small.

It’s very dangerous for the Church to identify with one political party. It’s not my business to tell people to vote for John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. And while I worked for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign as a volunteer when I was a young, I don’t think any Catholic should feel comfortable today in either major political party — Democrat or Republican.

But that doesn’t really get us off the hook, does it? The problem is that the Church teaches moral truth, and truth has obligations for human behavior — including the social, economic, and political kind.

The Church is never mainly a political organism, but her witness for justice always has political consequences. For example, killing unborn children is a form of homicide. It’s a profound attack on human dignity, because all other rights depend on the right to life.

It’s not the only important issue facing our country. But it is the foundational one at this moment in our nation’s history. We can’t ignore it.

Cooperating in abortion or quietly tolerating it is a grave evil. We can incrementally seek to restrict and eliminate abortion, but we can never accept it as a so-called right. And if that truth inconveniences one or another political candidate, well, that’s their problem. It’s not the fault of the Church.

It is the job of Catholic laypeople to change the thinking of their political party and their political leaders with the tools of their Catholic faith. But it is the job of priests to give people those tools — to form Catholic laypeople to think and act as disciples of Jesus Christ, in a manner guided by the teaching of the Church.

Just as Catholic laypeople should be the leaven of Jesus Christ in the public square, so we priests need to be the leaven of Jesus Christ in lives of our people.

As priests we know that, during the Easter season, the Church invites us to reflect on the Acts of the Apostles in a special way. It’s important to remember that the title of the book is the Acts of the Apostles — not the Good Intentions, or the Excellent Plans, or the Plausible Alibis of the Apostles, but their Acts.

Words are important. Actions are more important. Christ said he loved us. Then he died to prove it. He said he would rise from the dead and give us new life. Then he really did it.

And when the first Apostles said they believed in Jesus Christ, they acted like they meant it, because they did — and then they proved it by turning the world upside down with the gospel.

A handful of simple and imperfect men made the greatest revolution in history — a global revolution of God’s love. And Christ, through his Church, ordained you and me to follow in their footsteps and do exactly the same thing. So a reading from Acts is always the first reading on each day of the Easter season — the season of new life.

The focus of these readings is typically the preaching of St. Peter, and Peter always preaches about the Resurrection. But the Resurrection isn’t only the content of Peter’s preaching; it’s also the means or energy of his preaching and his whole ministry.

Clarence Jordan, a Protestant minister, once said, “The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship; not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away Church.”

Of course, we know that Jesus rose physically from the dead, and the grave really was empty. But Jordan was making an important point. What makes the Christian faith convincing today is a “carried-away Church,” and if this is true about the Church, it’s also true about the priesthood — without which there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist there is no Church.

The health of the Church depends directly on the spirit of her priests. So priests need to be more than simply honest or diligent or even faithful. We need to be carried away by our love for God, our love for the Church, and our love for the Catholic faith.

A feature of many priestly lives these days is an attitude toward the Church that could be called “pastoral despair.” In one sense, it’s a good thing to be tempted by despair about the Church, or at least by despondency, because that’s a sign that our hearts are unsettled and longing for something more.

If we aren’t in some ways disappointed in ourselves and in the Church, disappointed in how our Catholic people live their faith, then it’s probably a sign that we’ve made peace with the current situation. And that’s never good.

Because of Easter, however, we’re not permitted real despair. Just recently, I attended the ordination of Bishop Gerald Dino of the Byzantine Eparchy of Van Nuys. During his episcopal ordination ceremony, at many points the community sang, “Christ is risen from the dead! By death He trampled death; and to those in the tombs He granted life!” What a wonderful way to capture the Easter spirit.

Yes, we should grieve for the Church; that’s a sign of our love. But as St. Paul says, “We do not grieve as those who have no hope.” We learn from the Resurrection accounts in Scripture that we should not look for the Risen Lord among the dead but among the living.

We have hope because it is the risen Christ who has willed that his Church be the principal form of his visible presence in the world. We know with confidence that in the Church, God — as in Christ — is reconciling the world to himself.

We need to remember this because sometimes we priests become cynical. We know ourselves too well. We sometimes don’t really believe that God can do anything new in us. We accommodate to sin and failure and death. But Easter reminds us that any despair or despondency we have should be turned away because “Jesus trampled death, and to those in the tombs He grants life.”

We’ve been talking about the “new evangelization” for more than twenty years in the Church, as if it were some kind of magic platitude. Now we know what it means. And yes, the latest Pew Research Center data are very unsettling — but also very valuable. They show us exactly how fluid, weak, and unreliable “American Catholic identity” has become.

The place of the Catholic Church in the United States is much more precarious than we like to think, and the large number of people that self-identify as Catholics nationally is seriously misleading. In fact, we — and by “we,” I mean Catholic leaders in my generation especially — have done a bad job of forming and keeping our people. We’ve been deeply naive about the congeniality of American culture toward Catholic belief.

In general, sacramental practice and Mass attendance are declining, and young people are not stepping up to take leadership in the Church in the way their parents and grandparents did. Plenty of exceptions do exist, but overall the picture is not good.

This national softening trend applies especially in places like Colorado and other western states, where the Church is young and the environment is very secular. But it’s happening here in Rhode Island and everywhere else.

There’s more hostility to the Catholic Church in more state assemblies today than at any time in the past eighty years, and the clergy sex-abuse scandal is only one of the reasons why, and often not even the most important reason. Nor will the influx of Latinos into our country automatically renew or sustain the Church.

The data show that Latinos in the United States abandon the Catholic Church at about the same rate as every other ethnic group. The secularizing fallout of American political and consumer culture, along with the cafeteria effect of so many religious choices, undermines the Catholic roots of Latinos.

That means we need to think of the Church in America as a missionary church, and each of us priests as a missionary priest. We’ve probably known this all along, but now it has an immediate, practical urgency. Catholic demography is changing. So is our political environment.

Additionally, we can’t count on the continued financial health of the Church in our country if our active Catholic base diminishes over the next generation — which is quite possible and already happening.

Of course, we need to balance these concerns with our strengths. Compared to the Church elsewhere in the world, our priests, parishes, diocesan programs, renewal communities, finances, and patterns of religious practice are quite strong.

The Church here is healthier, with more energy and better leadership at many different levels, than nearly anywhere else in the world. So we have the freedom to do something about our problems. But we need to be realists.

The conflicts facing the U.S. Church over the past decade, external and internal — from the abortion issue to immigration to war and peace to marriage and family life — will probably continue for the foreseeable future. These struggles will require an example of leadership to sustain our people and draw others to the Church. And that example has to start with our priests.

We need to “do” the Church differently in the next twenty-five years. How will we build a truly integrated Latino-Anglo Catholic identity? How will we educate our people in the faith if we can’t sustain our schools? How will we really cultivate more priestly vocations? How will we build new churches? Who will take the place of dying religious communities?

These are huge strategic questions pressing in on us right now —today. And the people best equipped to think about these things and lead others to think and act on them are, again, our priests.

As a result, I think priests today need at least three things.

First, they need help in understanding and developing the inherent leadership skills God gave them.

One of the ironies of priesthood is that God calls us to be the leaders of our people — and then too often nobody in the Church actually teaches us how to do that. That’s why, at least in our Colorado experience, the “Good Leaders, Good Shepherds” Catholic Leadership Institute is so important, and why I urge all our priests to pursue it in the Archdiocese of Denver. Our men who’ve been through the program give it very high marks. It’s headquartered in Pennsylvania, and with Bishop Tobin’s blessing, I’d encourage you to check it out or look for something similar.

Second, priests need real fraternity — a proper, intimate, brotherly spirit of friendship and mutual support, something like the best qualities of religious life but tailored to life in the world.

In the years ahead, “loner” priests — the kind of men we all know, men who find a safe spot within the eccentric limits and habits they build around their priesthood like a fort — simply won’t survive. The world will be too heavy on them.

Of course, we all talk about supporting each other. We all pay that lip service to fraternity. But when we go home today, we should ask ourselves, what have we actually done this past month to prove it to our brothers?

Third, we need purification. Priesthood, like marriage, is a radical choice — all or nothing. But we all tend to accumulate the junk of a comfortable life, the habits and pleasures that dull the purpose to which we committed ourselves on the day of our ordination.

If we want our people to live Jesus Christ vigorously and courageously, why would they do that if they don’t see it, and admire it, in the Church’s priests?

The most urgent need for the Church in our day is a rebirth of faith and missionary spirit in our people. But that will never happen, and it can’t ever happen, until we ourselves have a renewal of priestly life. Priests need to be who Christ called them to be — his friends and disciples — and need to call those of us who are bishops to be the same. If we can accomplish that priestly renewal together, with the grace of Jesus Christ, then God can achieve anything through us. God already did it once. That’s the reason we’re here today.

I want to close with just a few words about the four pillars of priestly formation — the human, the spiritual, the intellectual, and the pastoral dimensions.

While I was celebrating Mass the week after Easter, I noticed that these dimensions of our formation closely resemble the qualities of the early Church described in the Acts of the Apostles. Acts tells us that the early disciples “devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.”

The word devote means to give our hearts, our minds, and our whole selves. At ordination, we devoted our lives to the teaching of the apostles. The intellectual life of the Church is not the property of theologians alone, or even primarily. Catholic intellectual life should be a love that each priest shares.

The communal life — this is how we receive our ongoing human formation — is for us our relationships with our brothers in the priesthood. We also experience these relationships with the people in our parishes and through these relationships we learn to become more human.

We find our pastoral formation in “the breaking of bread.” The Eucharist is at the heart of our pastoral ministry and it’s in our celebration of the Eucharist, as well in our reflections together, that we learn to be better pastors when we preach, when we celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, when we anoint the sick, and when we prepare people for marriage and for baptism.

And finally, I can’t stress this enough: We need a lifelong devotion to prayer. Our spiritual life is the engine that drives the whole of our life. If we don’t pray, then we can’t claim to have a real relationship with Jesus risen from the dead. Prayer is a sign of our faith, that Jesus has not left us but is with us still.

Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote about the various kinds of leadership in the Church. He spoke about intellectual leadership, devotional leadership, and political leadership.

I long for these faithful Catholic leadership qualities in the priests of the United States. It’s vital that we become intellectual leaders, knowing our faith and understanding our culture, and, through that, becoming guides for the intellectual growth of our fellow Christians.

The saints embody the devotional life of the Church, but it’s important for each of us to remember that we individually are also called to be saints. Holiness should shape our leadership in all we say and do.

And priests are called to political leadership, too. We’re responsible for the governance of the Church — in our parishes, but also in our dioceses. We need to govern as good shepherds and good fathers, loving our people, and giving them clear and courageous leadership when that’s important, and even when it’s unpopular.

I want to conclude on this last point of leadership because I was in Washington last week and was struck by the strength, simplicity, and goodness of Benedict XVI as a pastor.

I’ve admired Joseph Ratzinger as a thinker for many years, but I really didn’t expect to be so moved by his visit. He has a gift for what has been called affirmative orthodoxy. That sounds complicated —he’s a theologian, after all — but it really isn’t.

Benedict has the talent for being very frank about sin and calling people back to fidelity. And yet, at the same time, he illuminates that fidelity with warmth in a way that reveals its beauty and disarms the people who hear him.

His warning about the “silent apostasy” of many Catholic laypeople and even some clergy has stayed with me because he said it in a spirit of love, not rebuke.

Apostasy is an interesting word. It comes from the Greek verb apostanai — which means to revolt or desert, literally “to stand away from.”

For Benedict, our people and priests don’t need to renounce publicly their Catholic faith to be apostates. They simply need to be silent when their baptism demands that they speak out, to be cowards when Jesus needs them and asks them to have courage.

Benedict beautifully described the American Catholic community as being large and influential — but, even more important, diverse in its origin, creative, generous, and full of religious fervor.

He reminded us all that American Catholics need to use our numbers and influence and creativity and generosity and fervor to enter into the public square in an active, faithful, and life-giving way.

He called us to bring Christian hope to the public debate, to be clear and united in our Catholic presence in society, and to be a leaven in our nation’s public life. That work needs to begin here, today, right now.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is archbishop of Denver. This essay is adapted from a speech given in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 21, 2008.

A bit late in the month, but thanks to Argent by the Tiber for this lovely reflection on a time of year that's laden for me, like for many others, with indelible memories of Marian offerings and celebrations throughout this most beautiful of months. This particular poem also evokes for me Gerard Manley Hopkins as well as Marcel Proust's loving recollection of his own childhood Mays in rural France.

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THE MONTH OF MARY

The daffodils dance at the dawning,
The May bells make clamor and sing;
What, then, is this season, good mother,
When flowers such loveliness bring?
It is the sweet month of Our Lady,
Whose Son is our Savior and King.

The violets waft their faint incense,
In glory the gillblooms blow;
What, then, is this season, dear mother,
That lilies are sisters of snow?
It is the rich month of Our Lady,
When beauty and loveliness flow.

The south wind's a song of love's triumph,
Twined round a child's laugh in the lane;
What, then, is this season, O mother!
When fragrance grows vocal in rain?
It is the lush month of Our Lady,
Madonna of bliss and of pain.

Like cordons of honor, the poplars,
That stand, rigged in green, in the night,
Let us form, then, for Mary, O mother!
Our own little pageant of white.
It is the glad month of Our Lady,
Earth's fairest, and Heaven's delight!

J. Corson Miller
from The Magnificat. Volume LXX. Number 1. May 1942

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Padre Pio's shrine
may outdraw Lourdes


The shrine is located in southwest Italy; the saint's remains are on display in Santa Maria delle Grazie church where he was buried,
next to the modern shrine which opened in 2004.


Rome, May. 8, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Italian business magazine Economy is forecasting that in the future, 9 million people will visit Padre Pio’s shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo each year.

If that prediction proves accurate, Padre Pio's shrine will surpass the Marian shrine at Lourdes, which now draws about 8 million pilgrims annually. Only the Vatican attracts more religious tourism.



Economy predicts that the shrine's popularity will soar now that Padre Pio’s body is on display. Due to popular demand the period of the body’s showing has already been extended to September 2009; original plans had been for the public veneration to continue only for a few months.




Pilgrims waiting in line to venerate the saint's remains now on display.

The saint's massive worldwide following is said to include many celebrities, including Sophia Loren, the late writer Graham Greene, Irish soccer player Damien Duff (who reportedly played with a relic of the saint in one of his boots), and Carlo Ancelotti, the coach of the AC Milan soccer team, who prays to the saint during games.

One Catholic magazine once found that far more Italian Catholics pray to the Padre Pio than to Jesus or Mary.

Church’s criteria
for confirming Marian apparitions



Rome, May 8, 2008 (CNA)- Salvatore M. Perrella, an expert in dogma and Mariology from the Mariunum Pontifical School in Rome, explained this week the criteria used by the Church to determine the legitimacy of Marian apparitions. His explanation comes in the wake of the Church’s approval of the apparitions of Our Lady of Laus in France.

In an article for L’Osservatore Romano, Perrella cited Jesuit Father Giandomenico Mucci to explain the difference between a vision and an apparition. The first is of a spiritual nature, while the second is of a physical one. That is, the seer has a real and sensible experience of the one in the apparition.

After explaining the Church’s process for verifying Marian apparitions was discussed at the Lateran Council and the Council of Trent, Perrella explained that currently “discernment about the veracity” of alleged apparitions “falls to the diocesan bishop or archbishop — and in recent times to the episcopal conference in question — and to the Pope.”

He also pointed out that the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith drafted an internal and secret document on February 25, 1978, after four years of study, signed by the prefect Cardinal Franjo Seper to be used by the competent authorities” in evaluating supernatural occurrences.

Perrella went on to point out that the CDF instructed that for an investigation to proceed, “precise information” should be gathered about the various aspects of the alleged apparitions such as testimonies of conversions, theological analysis of the message of the apparitions, a medical and psychological review of the seer or visionary, including his or her educational level, an examination of their spiritual life, their level of communion with the Church, miraculous healings and occurrences, and other factors.

After a detailed examination of the numerous events related to apparitions, Perrella said, the Church “has approved a total of 11 apparitions out of 295 that have been studied — including now the 12th, which are those of Our Lady of Laus, approved on May 4, 2008.”

“Once verified and authenticated by Church authorities, the extraordinary manifestations may be freely embraced, as faith is reserved only to the public Revelation of God which ended with the death of the last Apostle,” he said.

In any case, Perrella stressed, the apparitions approved by the Church only manifest the evangelical mission of Mary throughout the history of the Church, which has been to point the way to the Father’s house through faith in the Lord Jesus.

Such revelations, while they help to increase faith, “do not add to the Revelation given to the Church in Sacred Scripture, but rather they help to make it current during a specific period in history,” he said.

ON COMMUNION FOR PRO-ABORTION POLS:
A Primer on Canon 915
By Barbara Kralis



Apparently, this article was written in 2004, but most of it remains valid. The number of bishops openly saying they would not give Communion to known pro-abortion politicians may be different today - I have not yet read an up-to-date listing of these 'good' bishops. It's very distressing when someone like Cardinal O'Malley openly says he will not deny Communion in these circumstances.



Unquestionably, canon 915 is the most discussed canon in the Codex Iuris Canonici, or Code of Canon Law, in recent Church history. Many in the media have reported on the January 8, 2004 canonical actions of Archbishop Raymond Burke, then bishop of the La Crosse, Wisconsin diocese.

Archbishop Burke’s discipline on legislators has rocked the Catholic Church worldwide. Because of misinformation, speculation and outright resentment, confusion reigns regarding the Archbishop's promulgation of his 'canonical notification' based on canon 915, the official communication of what the Church's discipline is.

I would like to make some important clarifications, with appropriate documentation, in hopes that people of all faiths will understand the Archbishop's actions, why it was appropriate for him to discipline persistent, obstinate, manifest pro abortion Catholic legislators, and why no other U.S. Bishop can refuse to immediately follow the same procedures in their own dioceses. All Bishops must protect the Eucharist from sacrilege.

As Bishop of the over 200,000 Catholics in the diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin for the past nine years, Raymond L. Burke, D.D., J.C.D., a doctor of canon law, first conducted private communications to three 'Catholic' legislators, imploring them, "to make their consciences correct with Magisterial teachings."

After all three politicians refused to meet with him, saying they instead reject the Church's infallible teachings, Archbishop Burke, as 'Priest, Prophet and King,' then took the necessary steps to issue the four paragraph 'canonical notification' to address the scandal they were causing in his diocese by their conduct 'which is seriously, clearly and steadfastly contrary to the moral norm' (EE n.37).

The notification declares: "...Catholic legislators who are members of the faithful of the Diocese of La Crosse and who continue to support procured abortion or euthanasia may not present themselves to receive Holy Communion. They are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, should they present themselves, until such time as they publicly renounce their support of these most unjust practices" (canon 915).

Archbishop Burke exhorted, "No good bishops could stand by and let this happen. These public legislators are in grave sin."

In fact, on February 2, 2004, Archbishop Burke, with apostolic daring, challenged Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley, stating that if leading Democratic presidential candidate, pro-abortion ‘Catholic’ John Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, came up to [Burke] for the Eucharist, he Burke] would deny him Communion. Archbishop O'Malley still held to his false policy that Kerry would not be denied Communion in the Boston diocese.

On April 6, 2004, Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz, D.D., S.T.D., of the Lincoln, NE diocese, stated through his office to this writer that his diocese would deny Holy Communion to any manifest, persistent, obstinate sinner.

Referring to canon 915, Bishop Bruskewitz said, "We agree completely with Archbishop Raymond Burke in the action he has taken and we would take the same action in the diocese of Lincoln with regard to manifest, persistent, obstinate sinners, including politicians, regardless of which diocese they are from."

Bishop Bruskewitz in May 15, 1996,l, issued a successful diocesan synodal law, still enforced today, which carries an automatic penalty of excommunication.

Informing all Catholics in his diocese of the list of dissenting organizations whose activities are contrary to the Catholic Faith, Bruskewitz has literally ‘cleaned house.’

In an exclusive interview with this writer (www.catholic.org), Bishop Robert Francis Vasa, M.Div., J.C.L., Bishop of Baker, Oregon, said in July 2004 that he absolutely would agree with Archbishop Burke and Bishop Bruskewitz’s canoncial diocesan disciplines.

Bishop Vasa said, "I literally could not give Holy Communion to a professed and actively committed pro-choice politician."

In August, 2004, three Southern Catholic bishops promulgated diocesan wide disciplines which would deny the Eucharist to pro-abortion legislators in their dioceses. The bishops are Archbishop John F. Donoghue (Atlanta), Bishop Peter Jugis (Charlotte) and Bishop Robert J. Baker (Charleston).

In the past several years, only several other U.S. Bishops have made half hearted attempts to stop the sacrilegious Holy Communions and scandals caused by pro-abortion politicians in their dioceses. Unfortunately, they all stopped short of publicly promulgating a canonical notification of canon 915.

There is no easy way to find out if a politician in your diocese is Catholic unless he advertised himself as such. La Crosse's Dr. Arthur Hippler, Director of Office of Justice and Peace, told this writer:

"We have the so-called 'Blue Book’, which lists politicians in the State of Wisconsin but the book doesn't list religious denomination. We have no exact count how many Catholic politicians there are in the diocese. In the case of the politicians with whom His Excellency corresponded, he had letters from the lay faithful, asking him to address such-and-such politician, who was Catholic and pro-abortion. The Bishop was responding to scandal among the faithful."

This confirms just how imperative it is for the laity to write letters and to send ‘denunciation packages’ to their Bishops in protest to these scandalous so-called Catholic pro-abortion legislators.

To help you do this, Chuck Wilson, Executive director of St. Joseph Foundation, San Antonio, TX , an independent apostolate comprised of canonical lawyers and advisors, have prepared a ‘generic denunciation package.’ It is available free of charge, with no obligation on your part, to anyone who wishes to denounce a politician to his bishop, who has the power to do something.

It would be up to the individual person (cosigners are also encouraged) to collect the evidence, but the simple package makes that preparation easier. Contact Chuck Wilson to email you your ‘generic denunciation package’ at: CWilson@St-Joseph-Foundation.org

Most everyone in La Crosse is waiting to see how the new Bishop, still unnamed, will uphold the notification. I spoke to La Crosse's Chancellor, Mr. Benedict T. Nguyen about this.

"The new Bishop will understand the notification was given in response to the specific scandalous situations that existed in the diocese. If a new Bishop coming in says that these conditions have not been met, he would cause great confusion," said Nguyen.

Archbishop Burke further clarified, "If there was a contradiction in this 'notification' with the next Bishop of La Crosse, the people certainly could go to Rome for clarification."

The Code of Canon Law is not 'Puritanism.' The canonical laws are indeed the Church’s Sacred Discipline and are binding on Catholics who reject these laws and know they are rejecting the Church.

All diocesan priests and deacons are ecclesiastically bound to obey the canonical notification (c.915). Canon 915 places the responsibility on the minister - 'ne admittantur' - who, in some canonists' opinion, could be punished according to canon 1389 §2, should he unlawfully administer the sacrament with the consequent danger of scandal for the rest of the faithful.

In addition, canon 1339 prescribes the possibility of punishing any person who causes grave scandal by any violation of a divine or ecclesiastical law.

The Code of Canon Law (CIC), or "Codex Iuris Canonici" has always been in effect. It was codified in l917 and contained 2,414 canons. It was revised in l983 by Pope John Paul II and contains 1,752 canons.

Canon 915 is promulgated within CIC, Book IV, "The Sanctifying Office of the Church," within Title III, "The Blessed Eucharist," within Chapter I, "The Celebration of the Eucharist," within Article 2, "Participation in the Blessed Eucharist." Neither this canon 915 nor Bishop Burke's 'notification' applies to the reception of the other Sacraments.

Cases considered in this canon 915 also include: 1] any interdict or excommunication ferendæ sententiæ (one inflicted by the superior); 2] the same penalties latæ sententiæ (inflicted by the perpetrator on himself...by his very act); 3] grave manifest sin, obstinately maintained, which could be the case of the estimated 500 Catholic pro-abortion politicians in the U.S.

Divorced and remarried Catholics also fall under this canon 915. As some canonists point out, citing Pope John Paul II, regarding canon 915: "In the case of the above 3], attention must be paid to the clear discipline of the church in cases of Catholics who: a) prefer to contract a merely civil marriage and who reject or at least defer the religious marriage; b) divorced persons who have remarried.

In the first case, the pastors of the Church will, regrettably, not be able to admit them to the sacraments; and in the second case, the Church reaffirms its practice of not admitting them to Eucharistic communion from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church, which is signified and effected by the Eucharist" (JPII, Ap.Exhort. FC nos. 82, 84; AAS nos. 74, l83, l85; TPS n. 27 [1982] § 71, 73; PCLT: HCDCRC).

The revised l997 CCC also addressed divorced and remarried Catholics, saying they may receive the Eucharist if, 'they have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence' ('frater soror' or as brother and sister) (CCC ¶ 1650).

Canon 915 is a 'sacramental law' that talks about the Eucharist and how not to suffer scandal; it is not a penal law. There are four parts to canon 915 that must be satisfied: 1) The sin must be obstinate; 2) the person in question must persist in the sin; 3) the person in question must be a 'manifest' (that is 'public') sinner; and, 4) it must be a grave sin.

When all requirements are met, the Bishop, bound by canon 915 to protect the integrity of the Eucharist, must give the public notification to his priests and deacons not to allow sacrilegious Communions, and to not cause scandal to the people. The Bishop here is not putting 'sanction' on the persons in question; they have, in fact, fallen under the canon 915 sacramental prohibition themselves.

Some say there are contradictions concerning the canonical notification (c.915) and the application of justice of other 'human rights.' Let me explain.

On November 11, 2003, during the USCCB's Fall plenary meeting of its 275 active bishop members, attempt was made by several bishops to consider which Catholic politicians who dissent from Magisterial teachings should be denied the Sacrament of Holy Communion, including the abuse of such human rights as the death penalty, questions of war and peace, the role of marriage and family, the rights of parents to choose the best education for their children, the priority for the poor, welcome for immigrants. These Bishops were trying to revive from the grave the late Cardinal Bernardin's false 'seamless garment theory.'

Archbishop Burke said on EWTN's interview, "The 'seamless garment' can be interpreted incorrectly. Many fail to recognize the particular gravity of abortion and euthanasia. These are the gravest matters. If we care about abortion and euthanasia, all the other (human rights) will be therefore cared for."

Some Catholics, both clergy and laity, falsely say that the death penalty is on a par with abortion and euthanasia, and therefore anyone who defends the death penalty should be disciplined under canon 915. Archbishop Burke says they are wrong:

"Pope John Paul II's 'Gospel of Life' teaches clearly the death penalty is not on a par with abortion and euthanasia. Abortion is the greatest evil attack on innocent, defenseless life. John Paul II said it is difficult to understand why a State would have to put someone to death (EV n.56), but it is not a definite exclusion (CIC, c. 2267). To say the death penalty is on the same level is not correct."

Chancellor Nguyen said, when asked if supporting the Iraq War, as some Bishops have claimed, was a condition for imposing canon 915, "Pope John Paul II certainly criticized the American invasion of Iraq, but he at no time 'condemned' the war, that is, issued a statement binding on the conscience of the faithful."

Do the Bishops really believe that the above mentioned social issues constitute mortal sin and grounds of excommunication in the same way that abortion/euthanasia, cloning, IVF, sodomy, and contracepting do? Are these other human rights to be classed in the same category as infallible teachings in faith and morals? Alternatively, are our U.S. Bishops just creating a diversion against canon 915?

Do the Bishops now rescind what they stated back in 1998: "Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community" (LGL n.23).

Pope John Paul II teaches in his l988 Apostolic Exhortation, "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights - for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture - is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination" (CL n.38).

Bishops are, as 'Priest, Prophet and King,' called to 'govern' and 'correct.' An unworthy public or private Holy Communion, willfully chosen by an obstinate, persistent, manifest sinner 'of his own volition,' is a grave, serious matter.

When a 'pro death' Catholic politician disregards a bishop's directive and comes to Holy Communion 'of his own volition,' and the bishop or priest does not deny them as canon 915 directs them to do, the bishop or priest is doing evil (CIC, n.1755), and what Pope Paul VI condemned when he said "one cannot do evil so that good may follow there from" (HV n.14; Rom.3:8).

According to the principle of double effect, even in a moral dilemma the act in question must be good or at least neutral. One may not do evil in order to accomplish good. The end does not justify the means.

We next approach the erroneous understanding of separation of church and state and canon 915. Archbishop Burke said, "There's an ongoing scandal in our country with pro abortion politicians. If they want to remain Catholic, they need to know how to act. They must publicly rescind their support for abortion and euthanasia. 'What the majority wants' is an erroneous argument if it is contrary to natural laws and God's laws. A few decades of very weak catechesis manifested itself in confusion of what is truly right and truly wrong. My priests (in La Crosse) have been grateful for the clear direction of my Pastoral Letter. I have asked them to preach from it on the Sunday of January 18 or Sunday of January 25. I've told them to give the people the document to study."

Regarding the proper understanding of separation of church and state, Chancellor Nguyen said, "Archbishop Burke is not asking the legislators to impose beliefs distinctive to the Catholic faith on an unwilling populace. It would be a sad day for America when only Catholics believe in the protection of innocent life. Rather, he is calling upon them to defend innocent human life, which is a basic responsibility of all civil institutions.

Archbishop Burke is not trying to 'influence legislation.' Rather, as a pastor of the faithful in the Diocese, Archbishop Burke is protecting the dignity of the sacraments, and addressing the grave scandal of Catholic legislators who fail to defend innocent life. It is the obligation of the Bishop to follow canon law for the salvation of souls."

The CDF's 'Doctrinal Note' regarding the participation of Catholics in politics (November 24, 2002): "John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a 'grave and clear obligation to oppose' any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them [DN n.4; cf. JPII, EV n.73].

Shortly after the CDF's issuance of 'Doctrinal Note,' in the CDW's December, 2002 Notitiae edition, we read from its former Prefect, Cardinal Medina-Estevez:

"Another fundamental right of the faithful, as noted in Canon 213, is 'the right to receive assistance by the sacred Pastors from the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the word of God and the Sacraments'. In view of the law that 'sacred ministers may not deny the sacraments to those who opportunely ask for them if they are properly disposed and are not prohibited by law from receiving them' (Canon 843 ¶1), there should be no such refusal to any Catholic who presents himself for Holy Communion at Mass, except in cases presenting a danger of grave scandal to other believers arising out of the person's unrepented public sin or obstinate heresy or schism, publicly professed or declared."

In January 2003, two months after the CDF's 'Doctrinal Note' was issued, both Massachusetts' Senators Kennedy and Kerry cited church-state separation as their guiding principle.

Kerry, who was running for president, said: "As a Catholic, I have enormous respect for the words and teachings of the Vatican, but as a public servant I've never forgotten the lasting legacy of President Kennedy, who made clear that in accordance with the separation of church and state no elected official should be 'limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation [sic].’ "

The Pope and diocesan bishops possess legislative power and they have a right to enact laws for their dioceses, including penal laws, which impose latæ sententiæ penalties (canon 1315, canon 1318). The Church has an innate and proper right to coerce offending members by means of penal laws or sacramental disciplines (canon 1311).

The Code of Canon Law further instructs bishops: "A person is to be punished with a just penalty, who, at a public event or assembly, or in a published writing, or by otherwise using the means of social communication, utters blasphemy, or gravely harms public morals, or rails at or excites hatred of or contempt for religion or the Church" (canon 1369).

Furthermore, the Code of Canon Law states that "A person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latæ sententiæ excommunication" (canon 1398), and "[those] who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion" (canon 915).

Charles Wilson, Executive Director of The Saint Joseph Foundation said, "Dust has gathered on the canon law books of bishops across the country. The bishops haven't used the Church's penal system in years, despite obvious and serious canonical infractions especially by Catholic politicians," he said.

Known courageous world bishops who did uphold canon 915 include Archbishop George Pell of Sydney. Moreover, San Diego's Bishop Leo Maher, in l989, informed Catholic pro-abortion assemblywoman Lucy Killea that she was banned from receiving Holy Communion under canon 915. Yet, neighboring Bishop Quinn of Sacramento criticized Maher and told Killea she could receive in his diocese, anytime, any place.

In 2001, the Archbishop of Lima and Primate of Peru, Juan Luis Cardinal Cipriani and Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, 2003, both said they would deny Communion according to canon 915. Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera in l999 said pro-abortion Catholics in his diocese were excommunicated.

The Catholic Church consistently teaches that Catholics who are in the state of grave sin should not receive Holy Communion, for this itself is a grave sin and a sign of grave contradiction. St. Paul teaches this in 1 Cor. 11:27-29, as does the CCC (1385, 1415). Even in the parish Missalettes throughout the U.S., Catholics who are in grave sin are warned not to receive the Eucharist (11/29/99 NCCB).

St. Thomas Aquinas answers, "A distinction must be made among sinners: some are secret; others are notorious, either from evidence of the fact, as public usurers, or public robbers or from being denounced as evil men by some ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Therefore Holy Communion ought not to be given to open sinners when they ask for it" (STh, III: q 80: art 6).

Today, abortion is thriving. Abortion clinics supply the medical establishment a virtually endless supply of human tissue that would otherwise be unavailable had our Catholic Bishops enforced canon 915. Pharmaceutical companies and research hospitals all pay top dollars for organs, limbs and tissue from l.5 million 'recorded' aborted babies each year.

How many unborn children would have surely been saved from the death of abortion had the 195 Bishops, 30 years ago, spoken out on the canonical law canon 915?

Six Bishops out of the 195 U.S. dioceses had the rectitude of intention to follow the clearly defined canonical disciplines of the Catholic Church. Before Vatican II, clergy were vigilant to protect the Eucharist from sacrilege. Today, most clergy are more likely to deny the Eucharist to the faithful whose posture is one of reverent kneeling, rather than standing.

Bishop Bruskewitz’s Vicar General, Monsignor Timothy J. Thorburn, J.C.L., addressed this writer’s question of whether Lincoln’s synodal law applied to legislators from other dioceses that were manifestly pro-abortion. Monsignor Thorburn answered it is best for ministers of Holy Communion to err on the side of reverence of the Eucharist:

"If I had denied holy Communion to someone who is known to be manifest, persistent and obstinate in his grave sin and he later demonstrates that he had, in fact, publicly denied his promotion of, say, abortion, I then would publicly apologize to him."

Archbishop Burke said the most compelling reason why he issued the canonical notification (c.915) was the many letters written by his flock to press him to refuse the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians.

"It's a serious situation in our country; we need more good statesmen...I did not excommunicate these politicians; however, if they persist in their sin in a public way, there will be further disciplines against the politicians."

There we have it, our marching orders! Let us start lobbying (writing letters, making phone calls, sending emails, mailing denunciation packages) to our Bishops today! Tell them the sacrilegious Communions by pro-abortion politicians scandalize you.

Abbreviations: AN = Acerbo nimis; AAS = Acta Apostolicae Sedis; EE = Ecclesia De Eucharistia; EV = Evangelium vitae; FC = Familiaris consortio; CIC = Codex Iuris Canonici or Code of Canon Law; CCC = Catechism of Catholic Church; NCCB = National Conference of Catholic Bishops; USCCB = United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; CL = Christifideles laici; CDF = Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; CDW = Congregation of Divine Worship; TPS = The Pope speaks; LGL = Living the Gospel of Life; DN = Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life; c. = Canon; PG = Patrologia Graeca; HV = Humanae vitae; JPII = Pope John Paul II; STh = Summa Theologiæ; HI = Homiliæ in Isaiam; PCLT = Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts; HCDCRC = Holy Communion and Divorced, Civilly Remarried Catholics.



Barbara Kralis, the article's author, writes for various Christian and conservative publications. She is a regular columnist at Catholic Online, RenewAmerica.us, Life Issues, The Wanderer newspaper, New Oxford Review Magazine, Washington Dispatch, Catholic Citizens, Illinois Leader, NewsBull, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Phil Brennan’s WOW, ChronWatch and others. Her first journalism position was with Boston Herald Traveler, l964. Barbara published and edited 'Semper Fidelis' Catholic print newsletter. She and her husband, Mitch, live in the great State of Texas, and co-direct the Jesus Through Mary Catholic Foundation. She can be reached at: Avemaria@earthlink.net


Contact: Jesus Through Mary

Messori criticizes Catholics
who want to minimize
the role of Mary



Italian and Spanish editions of Hypothesis on Mary.
Sorry for the fuzzy photos- they come from literal thumbnails
on Messori's site.


Rome, May 9, 2008 (CNA) - Vitorrio Messori, the most popular Italian Catholic writer has slammed so-called “adult” Catholics who want to minimize the role of the Virgin Mary, just days before the presentation of his new book “Hypothesis About Mary” in Spain.

The best-selling author of books such as “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” addresses who Mary is for believers in his new work, the credibility of apparitions in Lourdes and Fatima and Mary’s role in Christian belief. The new book has yet to be translated into English.

Messori confesses that years ago he was asked to write a book about Mary, but the proposal “seemed extravagant.” However, little by little, he realized that “the Mother is discovered afterwards, when one has entered into a relationship with the Son…Then we realize that the discreet presence of Mary is essential.”

According to Messori, the fact that certain Catholics “are ashamed” of Mary is due “above all to a Protestant influence on Catholicism. Reformation theology has always been convinced that what is given to the Mother of God is taken away from the Son.

In reality, the truth is the opposite: wherever Mary is eclipsed, Jesus disappears as well, either before or after. As almost five centuries of experience shows, the faith has been preserved much better between Catholics and Orthodox, who give Mary the role that is hers. The fact is that this Woman is the guarantor of the truth of the Incarnation: it is her flesh, it is her uterus that guarantees that God has truly been made man.”

“Many theologians,” he went on, “believe that Marian devotion isn’t ‘elegant,’ and they think that it is a sentimental deviation unworthy of adults. And it is true that, often times, devotion to Mary has been mere sentimentalism; but what I have tried to show in my book, where there is no rhetoric, is that there can exist a ‘manly’ devotion, in the truest sense of the word, like the Medieval knights for example.”

Starting with the Enlightenment, he said, “a culture understood only in an academic and scholastic sense has been exalted. In reality, while this culture can lead to pride, the humility of the ignorant according to the world makes him more willing to understand the Mystery of a God who wanted to become a child, who we know knew how to read but who we are not sure knew how to write.”

Therefore, in “Hypothesis About Mary,” Messori explains that he seeks to convey that “without Mary Christianity is incomplete. What’s more, without Mary the faith itself is in danger, is unbalanced and without strong roots… In fact, in the book I show how the Marian presence prevents the faith from falling into error. It is an essential element of equilibrium, it’s not an optional choice,” he said.

======================================================================

It must be noted that Messori's first book was IPOSTESI SU GESU (Hypothesis on Jesus) published in 1976. It was not till 1984 that he came out with his second book, the international best-seller published in English as THE RATZINGER REPORT.

Interestingly, the conclusion he comes to in his scholarly examination of the Jesus question in the 1976 book is the Christian conviction expressed by Pope Benedict XVI in JESUS OF NAZARETH - that 'the most plausible of the hypotheses about Jesus is that proposed by the faith, and reason tells us to bet on the historicity of the Gospels.'

After THE RATZINGER REPORT ('Rapporto sulla Fede' in the original Italian), Messori has written 14 other books on religious themes, including the 1994 'Crossing the Threshold of Hope', his interview book with John Paul II who evidently admired Messori's work 10 years earlier with Cardinal Ratzinger.

In JESUS OF NAZARETH, Pope Benedict cites one of Messori's books, the 1992 'Pati sotto Pontio Pilato?' (Did he suffer under Pontius Pilate?), in which Messori examined the Gospel accounts of the Passion of Christ in the light of recent archeological discoveries.

For those who read Italian, Messori's website
www.et-et.it/
is a source of good information. It includes a regularly updated file of all his articles, as well.

____________________________
JUBILEE YEAR OF ST. PAUL



Here is more detail about the plenary indulgence available during the coming Pauline jubilee year, reported earlier in NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT:



PLENARY INDULGENCE
DURING THE PAULINE YEAR

VATICAN CITY, 10 MAY 2008 (VIS) – According to a decree made public today and signed by Cardinal James Francis Stafford and Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, O.F.M. Conv., respectively penitentiary major and regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, Benedict XVI will grant the faithful Plenary Indulgence for the occasion of the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of the Apostle Paul.

The Plenary Indulgence will be valid throughout the Pauline Year from 28 June 2008 to 29 June 2009.

"With the imminence of the liturgical Solemnity of the Prince of the Apostles", says the decree, "the Supreme Pontiff … wishes, in good time, to provide for the faithful with spiritual treasures for their own sanctification, that they may renew and reinforce … their purpose of supernatural salvation from the moment of the First Vespers of the aforementioned Solemnity, principally in honour of the Apostle of the Gentiles the two-thousandth anniversary of whose earthly birth is now approaching.

"In fact, the gift of indulgences which the Roman Pontiff offers the Universal Church, facilitates the way to interior purification which, while rendering honour to the Blessed Apostle Paul, exalts supernatural life in the hearts of the faithful and spurs them on … to produce fruits of good works".

The means to obtain the Plenary Indulgence are as follows:

"All Christian faithful – truly repentant, duly purified by the Sacrament of Penance and restored with Holy Communion – who undertake a pious visit in the form of a pilgrimage to the papal basilica of St. Paul on Rome’s Via Ostiense and pray in accordance with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, are granted and imparted Plenary Indulgence for the temporal punishment of their sins, once they have obtained sacramental remission and forgiveness for their shortcomings.

"Plenary Indulgence may be gained by the Christian faithful, either for themselves or for the deceased, as many times as the aforementioned acts are undertaken; it remains the case, however, that Plenary Indulgence may be obtained only once a day.

"In order that the prayers pronounced on these holy visits may lead and draw the souls of the faithful to a more intense veneration of the memory of St. Paul, the following conditions are laid down: the faithful, apart from pronouncing their own prayers before the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, ... must go to the altar of the Confession and pray the ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Creed’, adding pious invocations in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Paul; and such acts of devotion must remain closely linked to the memory of the Prince of the Apostles St. Peter".

"Christian faithful from the various local Churches, under the usual conditions (sacramental Confession, Eucharistic communion, prayer in keeping with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff) and completely unattached to any form of sin, may still obtain the Plenary Indulgence if they participate devotedly in a religious function or in a pious exercise held publicly in honour of the Apostle of the Gentiles: on the days of the solemn opening and closing of the Pauline Year in any place of worship; on other days determined by the local ordinary, in holy places named for St. Paul and, for the good of the faithful, in other places designated by the ordinary[the diocesan bishop]".

The document concludes by recalling how the faithful who, "through sickness or other legitimate or important reason", are unable to leave their homes, may still obtain the Plenary Indulgence if, with the soul completely removed from attachment to any form of sin and with the intention of observing, as soon as they can, the usual three conditions, "spiritually unite themselves to a Jubilee celebration in honour of St. Paul, offering their prayers and suffering to God for the unity of Christians".

Spokesman for Marian shrine at Laus
says Vatican OK came because
seer Benoite Rencurel was beatified



Spirit Daily is a catchall site for Catholic news with an emphasis on what might call the popular devotional aspects of the faith. For one, the site appears to believe in the authenticity of the Medjugorje apparitions, attributing to John Paul II a supposed statement that Medjugorje is 'the fulfillment of Fatima', and actively promoting Medjugorje organized pilprimages on its site.


May 13, 2008 - The communications director for a shrine at Laus, France, where an apparition has attained unusually high Church approval says the approval came during the beatification process of the seer there, Benoîte Rencurel, who saw Mary from 1664 until her death in 1718.

"It is the longest apparition of Mary of all the history in the Catholic Church, because Mary appeared for 54 years," that spokesman, Guillaume d'Alançon, told Spirit Daily, underlining various aspects of the apparition's significance.

The only major apparition approaching that length of time has been Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where reputed appearances have been ongoing for half that time -- 27 years.

He said that while local bishops through the centuries had recognized Benoîte's apparitions, Laus has been thrust into an elite class because it is now backed by a canonical letter from the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has now formalized the seer's mysticism -- a key part of her cause.

"It was necessary to have this text recognize the reality of Mary's manifestation," said d'Alançon, adding that the sanctuary is now "waiting for a miracle" that will open the way to the final recognition of Benoîte as "blessed" -- the last stage before a full canonization process (which would necessitate two fully documented miraculous cures). "We are hoping for those miracles," he said.

[All previous stories about this mention that Benoite Rencurel was beatified in 1984. Perhaps the spokesman meant canonization, for which a second miracle is necessary, in addition to the miracle that led to the candidate's beatification. I need to check back.]

The shrine is located south of Grenoble in the French Alps and seemed to come out of nowhere last week when news services carried reports that the bishop had made another declaration of its authenticity.

That declaration was at an extraordinary Mass with eighty cardinals and bishops present -- something that would not have occurred without Rome's unusual entrance into the matter.

While hundreds of apparitions, visions, and miraculous statues related to Mary have been approved since the first century (when the Blessed Mother appeared at Zaragoza, Spain, and then soon after in Le Puy, France), the text from the Vatican separates it, placing Laus in a tier of apparitions that in modern times includes Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe, Knock, LaSalette, Kibeho, and a handful of other appearances.

It is not known how many sites have been visited by pontiffs during the Church's entire 2,000-year history.

D'Alançon said that in 1855 Rome acknowledged Laus less directly when Pope Pius IX sent a bishop to visit the shrine and then again at the end of the 19th century when Pope Leo XIII declared the church there a basilica.

Such are all stages in gauging degrees of acceptance -- which often takes unique pathways. The highest level is considered to be an actual visit by a Pontiff, which has occurred at Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, and Knock.

D'Alançon said 120,000 visit the French shrine each year -- a number destined to increase in wake of the higher level of approval.

The most important message, said the spokesman, is reconciliation with God and partaking in the "sacrament of penance." He denied that there was a prophecy from Benoîte pronouncing that Laus would be "forgotten and ignored" until just before the last times (as has been widely reported on blogs).

"There is no prophecy on the end times," said the spokesman. "The prophecy is about the sanctuary not being destroyed, but there are no other predictions. The prophecy known is that the sanctuary will last until the end of the world."

=====================================================================


Here's one of the MSM stories indicated today in Spirit Daily:

The Virgin Mary's place
in the Kern County sun
Twenty years after a woman said the Virgin Mary appeared to her, hundreds still attend
Our Lady of the Rock gatherings in the Mojave. Despite disavowal by the church, followers say they draw comfort.

By Paloma Esquivel, Staff Writer

May 13, 2008


CALIFORNIA CITY — Even as the early morning chill lingered in this spot of desolate desert most frequented by dune buggies and dirt bikes, the sunlight was fierce, highlighting every shadow and making even the faintest color bright.

A string of worn flags around an altar housing a statue of the Virgin Mary stood out in the light and hinted at the festive gathering that would soon take shape.

By 7 a.m. scores of people had already arrived, carrying bottles of water, ice chests and rosaries. A few women carried roses, tulips and calla lilies and set them lovingly on the ground near the altar.

"I look forward to these days," said Rosie Gaines, 77, a retired aircraft worker from Lancaster. "I find it emotional here."

Gaines and nearly 1,000 others assembled last month at a barren site known as Our Lady of the Rock. On the 13th of every month, they say, the Virgin Mary appears and speaks to a woman named Maria Paula Acuña. Crowds have gathered here, about 10 miles north of California City, for nearly 20 years.

Some visitors photograph the sun, saying they see Mary in the images. Some are just curious, some seek miracles and some say they want to feel closer to God. Each 13th they create a fleeting community of faith in the desert.

Reported sightings of the Virgin Mary are widespread. Her image has been perceived in windows, gold nuggets, pieces of chocolate and, perhaps most infamously, on tortillas. In rarer instances, people say Mary speaks to them.

Scholars who have studied the phenomenon see a pattern: Publicity draws the curious and faithful, but the excitement quickly fizzles. Rarely is a lasting community forged, said Lisa Bitel, a professor of history and religion at USC who is co-writing a book on Our Lady of the Rock.

In 1990, Acuña said, she had a vision of the Virgin Mary in Lopez Canyon near her home in Pacoima. Her 3-year-old daughter, the youngest of six children, had leukemia, and the Virgin cured her, she said.

Acuña returned to the site, and as word spread of her vision, bigger and bigger crowds joined her until the property owners complained, and the gathering soon moved to its current location.

On this spring day, Acuña arrived in a white van, smiling and wearing a full-length white habit. She stepped out of the van and the crowd ran to her: "My brother has cancer." "My cousin is sick." "Please, mother!"

Acuña smiled but kept quiet. A man in a T-shirt reading "Our Lady of the Rock" told the crowd to save their petitions for "Mother Acuña" for later. For now, just let her walk, he said.

"I believe there are people who can intercede for God or the Virgin Mary," said Linda Mora, 60, of Montebello as she walked alongside Acuña.

There will always be naysayers who don't believe, she said, but "if it makes people happy, if people believe, then they should just leave us alone."

As Acuña walked down the road, followed by musicians, someone suddenly said, "She sees something." The message rippled through the crowd. Many dropped to their knees and turned to watch Acuña, who fell to her knees and whispered words of prayer.

Acuña smiles knowingly and often. She can be friendly but doesn't seem to posses the magnetic allure one might attribute to a telegenic preacher. She does not belong to an established religious order.

Thirteen years ago, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese disavowed the reported apparitions, saying followers were "in danger of being misled" and that the archdiocese found doctrinal, canonical and financial irregularities among organizers of the ceremonies in the desert. The archdiocese has not changed its position on the desert gatherings.

Bitel said people who report apparitions are on the fringes of organized religion. Some of those drawn to these seers, as they are known, say they attend church regularly but are looking for a connection that eludes them inside the parish. Others have eschewed organized Christian denominations but still believe in the Virgin Mary.

Seers are often women or children, often poor or working class, Bitel said. They're "people who are disenfranchised from the traditional leadership of the church, people who couldn't be priests or bishops or popes but who obviously have some spiritual influence," she said.

There have been a few similar cases around the country.

In the 1990s, hundreds of thousands flocked to the Georgia farm of housewife Nancy Fowler after she claimed to see the Virgin Mary. Fowler read messages of faith to the crowd but also predicted disasters, saying in 1993 that she had visions of Chinese soldiers occupying American soil.

Though Fowler stopped making announcements in 1998, dozens of followers still stop to pray daily at religious statues surrounding her home.

In Bayside, N.Y., Veronica Lueken said the Virgin appeared to her shortly after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. She led thousands of followers for more than 20 years. Even after her death in 1995, hundreds have continued gathering at a shrine known as Our Lady of the Roses, where Lueken often spoke.

Acuña, for her part, is reclusive, saying she cannot speak about her past without the permission of a "spiritual father," whom she refuses to name. Information about her past is scarce. She was born in Sonora, Mexico, and came to the United States 38 years ago "for the same reason everyone comes, to look for a better life for my children," she said.

Acuña says she lives in a trailer in California City, in Kern County, with four women, whom she calls "sisters," though they do not appear to be recognized by any church. They manage a nonprofit known as the Marian Movement of Southern California that reports tens of thousands of dollars in donations every year.

The group passes its days praying the rosary, making embroidered textiles for donations and preaching to inmates at the nearby jail, Acuña said.

"I am poor, but I am happy," she said.

Like others, Acuña's messages can tilt toward the apocalyptic. In one of her sermons a few years ago, she said the world would end in four years, Bitel said. But the majority of her followers seem not to dwell on these points.

"One feels closer to God here," said Alberto Ramos, 51, of Los Angeles, who has been coming to the site with his four brothers for nearly a year.

"I've seen the body of Christ. I've seen angels. I've seen the Virgin," Ramos said, flipping through a stack of Polaroid pictures. In one, dark rings appeared around the sun. In another, the silhouette of a woman seemed to shade the sun.

Others say they feel closer to Mary or even the Catholic Church by coming here.

Later, Acuña put her hands on every person who approached her. Erika Lopez, 25, glanced down on her daughter's bald head briefly before handing her to Acuña, along with a quickly scribbled note: "Paulina Lopez, Bakersfield, 4 years old, kidney cancer." Acuña smiled at the girl and prayed briefly before returning her to her mother.

A few minutes later, Cynthia Muro's family asked Acuña to pray over the 21-year-old, who appeared to have difficulty walking and moving her arms. Acuña squeezed her hands, and asked her to lift her arms up and then out, all the while murmuring prayers.

"She needs physical therapy," Acuña told the woman's family. "There's a problem with her nerves." They smiled politely and walked away.

After Acuña made her way through the crowd, people returned to their cars, and one by one they drove off. A woman sold the flowers that adorned the altar for $5 apiece. A pair of men raffled off framed paintings of the Virgin that had been laid at a nearby cross.

The tents, umbrellas and folding chairs were packed away, and, slowly but steadily, the community that had appeared for a few hours in the desert disappeared.

Visible and invisible;
The role of the priest
by KENNETH BAKER, SJ
Editor

May 2008


St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars and patron of diocesan priests, is reported to have said that, if the priest really understood what he was doing during the Mass when he consecrates bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, he would die on the spot. I assume that he is referring here to the statement in the Bible that no one can see God and live.

The Catholic priest, as preacher of the Word and minister of the sacraments, acts and speaks in the visible world of time and space but, since his sacramental words are effective, he causes things to happen in the world of the spirit that cannot be seen with human eyes.

When the priest says “This is my body,” and “I absolve you from your sins,” and “I baptize you,” things change in the real world. Bread becomes the Body of Christ, mortal sins are forgiven and grace rushes in, a child of sinful Adam becomes a child of God and heir of heaven.

No other words uttered by human beings have this same power and effectiveness as the sacramental words of the ordained priest. Every day people say many things, but the words themselves are a movement of air and molecules and nothing happens in the real world.

The reason for this is that the properly ordained priest is an instrument of Christ—Christ works in and through him in order to communicate his life of grace to individual men and women. Sometimes priests actually experience the power of Christ flowing through them as they absolve a sinner or confect the Eucharist at Mass.

I believe it was St. Augustine who said that a sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace. Since the sacraments were established by Jesus Christ, who is both God and man, they cause what they signify by reason of the divine power of Christ operating through them.

Thus the priest is a living instrument of Christ, since it is Jesus Christ himself who, by his divine power operating through the priest, changes wine into his own Blood, and makes a “new creature” out of the person who is baptized. We have here something like a new incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

Divine or sanctifying grace, which is invisible and communicated to us through the Word and the sacraments administered by the priest, is the most important reality in this world. It is the most important reality because it is a participation in the life of God, which means eternal existence with God in a state of blessedness and joy for all eternity for those who die in the state of grace. Everything in this earth changes and passes away, but the grace of God endures forever.

Since the priest has been chosen by God for the lofty role of being his ambassador on earth, and since God works through him in his preaching and in his sacramental ministry, the priest does something no one else can do. Because in some way the salvation of others depends on him, he should treasure the gift of the priesthood, thank God for being chosen, and strive to imitate the meek and humble Christ who works through him.

No other vocation on this earth can compare with that of the priest, who daily acts in a visible way with visible things like bread and wine and water and oil but whose significant effect is spiritual and therefore invisible.

It is a great honor to be called to be a priest, but it also involves a great responsibility. The priest should be aware of his great powers and dignity and at the same time thank God for his gifts and pray constantly to be worthy of his calling to be a minister of both the visible and the invisible.

Why do Catholics Have a Pope?
by Sarah Jennings
Family Editor


Jennings was an evangelical Protestant who converted to Catholicism. Crosswalk is an evangelical Protestant site.





Pope: From the Greek word papas, a term of endearment meaning "papa" or "daddy."

With the recent, historic visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the U.S., many Christians may be wondering what exactly Catholics believe about the robed figure with the German accent and his line of predecessors. Why do Catholics have a Pope? Do Catholics worship him? Is his authority political, spiritual, or is he just a figurehead?

While I had a basic understanding of the Catholic papacy before his visit, I didn't fully grasp it. So, in an effort to better understand this central figure in Christendom and to help Christians more effectively dialogue, I dove into some heady reading materials from both Catholic and non-Catholic sources. Hopefully, my explanation here will offer some clarity on what Catholics really believe.

First, a summary: For Catholics, the Pope is more than a ceremonial leader. The Pope is considered the spiritual successor to the Apostle Peter. As successor to the "Chair of Peter," he is the Supreme Pastor of the Catholic Church, God's steward ordained to authoritatively teach, unify, and protect God's people, keeping them free from error and deception (CCC 882, 890).

Of his many official titles, the Pope is the Bishop of Rome and the head of the Magisterium (the teaching authority of the Church made up of the college of Bishops). He holds the final word on matters of faith and morals (known as "papal infallibility"). In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (937): The Pope enjoys, by divine institution, 'supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls' (CD 2)."

There's a lot of strong wording here, but before we dive into some of the details, it's important to clarify that Catholics, in fact, do not worship the Pope or see him as a replacement of Christ or the Heavenly Father. From the Catholic perspective, the office of the papacy affirms Christ's Kingship and the Church's confidence in the Holy Spirit to guide believers. So, to fully understand the relationship Catholics have with the man they call both "Papa" and "Supreme Pontiff," let's look at a source all Christians have in common: Scripture.


Matthew 16: 13-19

While Catholic doctrine pulls from many Scriptures when defining Church authority, Matthew 16:13-19 is one of the most important. Indeed, Catholic teachings point to Matthew 16: 18 as the moment when Christ officially instituted Peter as the first Pope, so it's worth spending the bulk of our time here.

The scene opens with Jesus and the Twelve in the region of Caesarea Philippi – an area where ancient pagan worship of the Greek god Pan – the god of Spring and shepherds – once flourished (Ray 1999, 32-33).

It was a dramatic place located on the side of a mountain with a sheer rock wall overshadowing the town with Pan's namesake, Paneas. Adding to the already stunning landscape, a temple to the Roman Caesar Augustus stood at the wall's highest point. The scene is ripe with symbolism for Catholics.

Catholic apologist Stephen Ray points out, "By choosing this location for the appointment, Jesus clearly shows that he is setting up his divine kingdom in opposition to the worldly kingdom of the Roman Caesars, who claimed divinity for themselves" (1999, 32).

When Jesus came to the region of Ceasarea Philippi, he asked his disciples "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

"But what about you?' he asked. "Who do you say I am?'

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

The Catholic Church sees three important points here:

- The Primacy of Simon Bar-Jonah above the other apostles demonstrated through his divinely-inspired response to Jesus.

- The establishment of Simon Bar-Jonah, renamed "Peter," as the Rock from which Christ expressed intention to build His Church.

- The handing over of the keys to the kingdom with the authority to "loose" and "bind."


Simon's divinely-inspired response

While our ears may have become numb to these passages over the centuries, this moment was, no doubt, as dramatic as the surrounding landscape – one on which Protestants and Catholics alike hinge their faith.

Jesus' earthly ministry had made waves among the Jews and Gentiles. The apostles here recount how, in awe of Jesus' teaching and miracles, many surmised he must be an Old Testament prophet come back from the dead. But the truth about Jesus' identity was even more astonishing than the rumors, so amazing that even His closest followers had yet to make the connection.

When Jesus turns to His chosen twelve to identify Him, Simon Bar-Jonah ("son of Jonah") speaks first among all – a pattern of leadership the Catholic Church teaches can be found throughout the New Testament (CCC 880).

In this defining moment, Simon asserts Jesus is not merely a prophet but the Messiah, God Incarnate. The Apostle's astounding profession of faith – directly inspired by the Heavenly Father – leads into Christ's words that for Catholics have had tangible implications to this very day.


The renaming of Simon

---

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

---

When a person in the Bible is renamed, it is a sign of God's intention to work in a special way through that individual. Abram became the father of nations after being renamed "Abraham," and Sarai the mother after being renamed "Sarah." Other pivotal renamings in Biblical history include Jacob becoming "Israel" and Saul becoming "Paul."

In regards to Catholic doctrine, the implication of Simon's new name is easiest to understand when going back to Jesus' native language, Aramaic -- the language scholars believe the original words were spoken (Ray 1999, 34).

Unlike modern English and New Testament Greek, the Aramaic word for "Peter" and the word "rock" are identical: Kepha. So this verse, when spoken, would have sounded something like this:

---

And I tell you that you are Rock (Kepha), and on this rock (kepha) I will build my church…

---

Catholic doctrine asserts that linguistically, Christ links the person and position of Peter – not Himself or a general profession of faith – to the founding of His Church here (CCC 881).

While both Christ and the Apostles are referred to as "rocks" (kepha) and "small stones" (Greek, petros) in other areas of Scripture, Catholic teaching points to Peter as the only person in the Bible given the proper name "Kepha," later spelled "Cephas"(Ray 1999, 35).

While some Christians might see the assertion that Peter was the rock upon which Christ would build His Church as an affront to Christ's Headship and status as the true Rock, Catholics take a different view. To better understand why, let's move to the next Scripture, involving the keys to the kingdom.


The keys to the kingdom

---

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

---

If you've ever seen the official Papal seal, you'll notice a set of golden keys included in it. Catholic teaching puts this verse in context with Isaiah 22: 22, where God tells Isaiah to go to King Hezekiah's steward, Shebna, and inform him of God's intention to replace him with Eliakim. In regards to the new steward, Eliakim, God says: I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.

In Old Testament times, the steward of the palace was the king's right-hand man, the second-in-command. When the king was away, the royal steward was keeper of the keys to the kingdom, ruling in the king's stead. While he looked after the affairs of the kingdom as the king instructed, he never replaced the king but awaited his return. When the present steward died (or in this case, when the Almighty intervened), the office was filled by another.

The office of the Papacy works in the same manner. Catholics believe Christ, to ensure the unity and health of His flock, gave Peter governing authority over His Church by handing over the keys to His Kingdom.

Like the ancient "key keepers," Catholics do not believe the Pope is the new king but instead a steward awaiting the King's return. Even the Pope's title "Father" imitates the role and title of the steward of Judah, also called "father." Until Christ's second coming, the keys will be passed on to each successor to the Papal office (Ray 1999, 29-40; CCC 857-860).

Now, what do the terms "binding" and "loosing" refer to? These words sounded strange to my modern ears, so I looked for some historical context. Apparently, the terms were common in Rabbinic canon-law, representing the legislative and judicial powers held by a Rabbi (Ray 1999, 40).

In this context, Catholics view Peter's key-keeping status as one that makes him "Supreme Pastor," with final authority over what is permitted and what is denied in matters of doctrine and spiritual discipline.


How does Papal Infallibility work?

The issue of religious authority brings up an often misunderstood doctrine of Catholic teaching: Papal infallibility. We see that Catholics believe the Pope has great authority in matters of the faith, but this doesn't mean that Catholics believe every word the Pope says comes straight from the Heavenly Father like Peter's first pronouncement.

Papal infallibility refers to the belief that while all Christians have personal access to the Holy Spirit in prayer, Christ promised a unique protection over the Apostles’ teachings, ensuring they would preach without error (John 16: 12-15).

In order for a papal teaching to be considered free of error or "infallible," the Pope must a) be speaking on a matter of faith and morals (not on his recent vacation plans) and b) make it clear he is speaking from the "Chair of Peter" and that what he is about to say is binding.

Back to the concept of guardianship, the Catholic Church teaches that infallible statements are for affirming what has always been true and is not a method of creating new beliefs. (CCC 86, 888-891) Official statements of infallibility are rare today – the last one was made in 1950, long before Pope Benedict XVI.

An important clarification: Papal Infallibility refers to doctrine being protected from error, not the man holding the Papal office being free of imperfection or sin.

Catholics point to Peter's sinfulness as an example of failings in a Pope, and John Paul II was known to confess his sins weekly.


Servant of the Servants of God

One last "key" element of Catholic teaching on the Papacy is worth mentioning. As is typical with the Christian faith, a great paradox exists that endears Catholics further to their "Papa."

Three times after Christ's resurrection, Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, and in response to each of Peter's professions of love, Jesus instructed him to feed and care for His sheep (John 21: 15-17). Catholics believe that in imitation of Christ, Peter's successor is a shepherd called to embrace the biblical model of servant-leadership, earning him the official title "Servant of the Servants of God."

The sacrifices made of Pontiffs are often so great, that it is not uncommon for Popes, including the current Pope, to accept their appointment out of a sense of obedience instead of personal desire. So the office, while powerful, is meant to be authoritative in nature, not authoritarian like a dictatorship.





Sources:

1. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition. 1997. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

2. Ray, Stephen. 1999. Footnotes in Upon This Rock, 32-40. San Fransisc Ignatius Press.

3. Joyce, G.H. 1910. “Pope,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII. New York: Robert Appleton Company. www.newadvent.org/cathen/12260a.htm

4. Toner, P.J. 1910. “Infallibility” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII. New York: Robert Appleton Company. www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm

5. Wikipedia.org, 2008. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope.

6. Archdiocese of Lincoln’s wesbite, 2008. “Ask the Register,” www.dioceseoflincoln.org/purple/pope/index.htm

7. St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church website, Picayune, Mississippi, 2008. “I’m Glad You Asked!” www.scborromeo.org/glad/c5.htm

8. Rodriquez, Pedro, “The Papacy and Primacy of Peter,” reprinted on www.ewtn.org from “The Primacy of the Pope in the Church,” from Catholic Position Papers, September, 1981 -- Japan Edition (http://www.ewtn.org/faith/teachings/papab1.htm).

9. Mirus, Jeffrey, Ph.D. “Papal Infallibility” posted on www.ewtn.org, (http://www.ewtn.org/faith/teachings/papac2.htm)

10. Kellmeyer, Steve. 2000. Bible Basics, 107-111. Steubenville, OH: Basilica Press.

Find this article at: www.crosswalk.com/spirituallife/11574606/

REFLECTIONS ON CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE EUCHARIST
By Father John Zuhsldorf o{]:¬)

May 24-25, 2008


I picked this up from a round-up of prior Corpus Christi posts that Fr. Z. put together on his blog. It sort of sums up for me the significance of all the unexpected pleasures one keeps getting these days about the liturgy.

After the ever-awesome and literally spine-tingling solemnity of the Holy Father's liturgies on Corpus Domini last Thursday, I had the added pleasure last night of watching an EWTN coverage of a Corpus Christi procession, Adoration and Benediction that lasted all of one and a half hours, during which every silence - during the procession and the Adoration that followed - was scrupulously respected to my great and happy surprise. The first time it happened, I thought the audio had simply faded out until finally the tinkling of a handbell broke it, and I realized what it had been ... and it was that way throughout whenever silence was called for. God bless whoever was directing that coverage at EWTN.





The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, or Corpus Christi, celebrates the Eucharist in more focused way than Holy Thursday. It was established by Pope Urban IV in 1264 and its Mass and Office composed by St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274).

In anticipation of the universal feast, in 1246 Robert of Thourotte, Bishop of Liège in Belgium, had instituted a feast for the Eucharist at the request of an Augustinian nun and mystic St. Juliana of Cornillon (+1252).

The feast of Corpus Christi was inspired by a great miracle. In 1263 a German priest, Peter of Prague, stopped at Bolsena in Italy on his way to Rome. He had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Host. At the tomb of the virgin martyr St. Christina, Peter celebrated Mass. At the consecration blood began to drip from the Host. It bled over his hands onto the linen corporal spread upon the altar.

Fr. Peter stopped the Mass and asked to be taken to Pope Urban in nearby Orvieto where he was in residence with his court. St. Bonaventure (+1274) and St. Thomas were also there.

The Pope listened to the priest’s account and began a complete investigation. Urban ordered the bishop of the diocese to bring to Orvieto both the Host and the stained linen corporal. The Pope made a great procession with the entire papal court out of Orvieto to meet the other procession approaching with the Host and corporal.

St. Julianna urged Pope Urban to institute a universal feast and Aquinas, inspired by the Augustinian mystic, drafted an Office and Mass for the new feast day.

The relics are still venerated in the great cathedral or “Duomo” of Orvieto which was built for their display, the cornerstone having been laid in 1290. The cathedral and the gold reliquary are wonders of medieval period. Do not miss them if you travel to Italy.

*****

I have heard from many places that the customs of Corpus Christi processions, Forty Hours Devotion, and Eucharistic Adoration are returning in force.

People want and need these things.

They help us to be better Catholic Christians through contact with Christ.

The bad old days of post-Conciliar denigration of these necessary practices lingers a bit but the aging-hippie priests and liturgists are losing ground under the two-fold pincer of common sense and a genuine Catholic love of Jesus.

In the seminary I attended in the 1980’s we were informed with a superior sneer towards those quaint old processions and devotions that, “Jesus said ‘Take and eat, not sit and look!’”

Somehow, “looking” was opposed to “receiving”. This is the same error, I think, inherent in the puzzling idea that if people aren’t constantly singing or carrying stuff during Mass they are not “actively” participating as if listening and watching can only be “passive”.

Younger people no longer have that baggage, happily. They desire the good things of our Catholic inheritance. They resist passé attempts to make Jesus “smaller”. They want much more, as much as the Church can give.

Remember: none of this is the fault of the Council itself. If blame must be assigned it rests on the shoulders of those who misappropriated the Council’s authority to sustain their own ideas.

Those oh so enlightened experts of the Council’s “spirit” will benignly indulge the view that old rites and customs once served a purpose long ago, perhaps for the ignorant old-world peasant and unschooled new-world immigrant, but our shiny new up-to-date man – er um – person doesn’t need those things anymore. In this modern age man has changed. Eucharistic devotions would be harmful rather than helpful. They must never be permitted! We won’t crawl in submission before God anymore. We stand! We do not go in archaic triumphal processions or kneel to Him as judgmental King. We take him/she/it/ourselves by the hand as helping Buddy! We are grown up now, not child-like peasant slaves before a master who is lord and father of our household.

We have changed and so old things are no longer suitable.

Wrong.

Mayhaps passing details of society have changed, its fashions and ideas shifting like sandbars, but man has not changed, however well dressed or sophisticated.

Admittedly there is wider education now and greater affluence in first world countries. Many advances have been attained. But we, as human beings, have not changed. We poor fallen souls, citizens of modern society and newly arrived immigrants equally, all need concrete things through which by our senses we can perceive invisible realities. Urbane schooling and wealth might well be greater obstacles to the spiritual life than poverty and ignorance, urban or rustic.

Man remains human always, good but wounded.

In 1986 the English edition of Joseph Ratzinger’s Feast of Faith was published by Ignatius Press. In that volume Benedict XVI reflected on the feast of Corpus Christi. His Holiness juxtaposed the sad decline of Eucharistic devotions after the Second Vatican Council with what the Council of Trent taught. Although the anti-triumphalism of some post-Conciliar liturgists had repressed Eucharistic exposition, adoration and processions,

---

...the Council of Trent had been far less inhibited. It said that the purpose of Corpus Christi was to arouse gratitude in the hearts of men and to remind them of their common Lord. (cf. Decr. desc. Euch., c. 5; DS 1644).

Here in a nutshell, we have in fact three purposes: Corpus Christi is to counter man’s forgetfulness, to elicit his thankfulness, and it has something to do with fellowship, with that unifying power which is at work where people are looking for the one Lord. A great deal could be said about this; for with our computers, meetings and appointments we have become appallingly thoughtless and forgetful (pp. 128-9).

Let us consider Trent again for a moment. There we find the unqualified statement that Corpus Christi celebrates Christ’s triumph, his victory over death.

Just as, according to our Bavarian custom, Christ was honored in the terms of a great state visit, Trent harks back to the practice of the ancient Romans who honored their victorious generals by holding triumphal processions on their return. The purpose of Christ’s campaign was to eliminate death, that death which devours time and makes us cultivate the lie in order to forget or “kill” time.

… Far from detracting from the primacy of reception which is expressed in the gifts of bread and wine, it actually reveals fully and for the first time what “receiving” really means, namely, giving the Lord the reception due to the Victor.

To receive him means to worship him; to receive him means precisely, Quantum potes tantum aude – dare to do as much as you can. (p. 130).

---

Our Holy Father Pope Benedict has changed the conversation. He has set in motion his "Marshall Plan" to reinvigorate our Catholic identity especially through a shift in liturgical awareness and practice. Liturgy is, after all, the tip of the spear.

Summorum Pontificum is exerting its gravitational pull on liturgical worship. A new wave of Catholics desire all that Holy Church has to offer. Our world needs an encounter with Mystery in the midst of ever more difficult challenges.

Vatican cardinal presides
at traditional FSSP ordinations



LINCOLN, Nebraska, May 30, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the president of the Ecclesia Dei commission, presided at the ordination of priests for the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP, from its Latin initials), a community of priests dedicated to the traditional Roman liturgy, on May 30.

The ordination ceremony, using the extraordinary form of the liturgy, was broadcast by the EWTN television network.


Here are some basic pictures from Father Zuhlsdorf's impressive video-cap 'coverage' of the event to illustrate this report from a local newspaper. Other than Father Z's brief running comments on his videocaps, It's the only story I've seen so far, so it will have to do, even if it is reported from an uninformed point of view:








Priests from Nebraska lead
resurgence of Latin Mass

by Christopher Burbach

Released : Saturday, May 31, 2008 4:00 AM

May 31--LINCOLN -- A cardinal from the Vatican, surrounded by 50 priests.

Gregorian chants floating through clouds of incense.

A 3 1/2 -hour Mass, sung in Latin, mostly by priests facing the altar.

A cathedral packed to standing-room-only with lots of families with lots of children, women and girls in veils, men in suits, boys in neckties and close-cropped haircuts.

Catholics kneeling to take communion.

The ordination at Lincoln's Cathedral of the Risen Christ on Friday seemed oh-so-retro. But it was hardly an exercise in nostalgia. It was more like back to the future for a small but growing minority that seeks a louder voice in the Roman Catholic Church -- those devoted to the old Latin liturgy known as the Tridentine Mass.

It's a big deal for Catholics because many equate bringing back the Tridentine Mass, which dates to the 16th century, with rejecting the 1960s reforms of Vatican II. [Not 'rejecting the reforms', but as an exemplary antidote to abuses of the reform!]

Proponents see it as finally bringing back sacredness, God-oriented reverence and tradition that had been left behind.

Whatever the reaction, Friday's events in Lincoln were a further sign that the Latin Mass is on a rebound some 40 years after it was replaced, in the wake of Vatican II, by the modern Mass. The newer rite is celebrated in the local language with the priest facing the congregation.

The Latin Mass was largely shunned for nearly 20 years. It began a comeback when Pope John Paul II approved its use in 1984, then further encouraged its use in 1988 with a letter known as Ecclesia Dei Adflicta.

The rebound accelerated last year when Pope Benedict XVI decreed, in a document called a motu proprio, that priests no longer needed their bishops' approval to say the old Latin Mass, or as the Pope calls it, the extraordinary form of the Roman rite.

Denton, Neb., a small town outside Lincoln, is a center of the movement. It's home to Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, which prepares men from all over the world to be priests in the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. That organization is the largest of the priestly societies authorized by the Vatican to preserve ancient liturgical traditions.

Friday's service in the Lincoln cathedral was the ordination of four Fraternity of St. Peter priests. They were ordained by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, head of the Vatican department that oversees matters regarding the Latin Mass.

His appearance in Lincoln was not only a sign of the Nebraska seminary's importance to Rome, but also a further symbol of encouragement from a Pope seen as friendly to those who love the Latin Mass.

The ordination Mass was televised live on Eternal Word Television Network, an international Catholic cable network.

Like many of the 800-plus people at Friday's ordination, Wyoming Catholic College teacher Thaddeus Kozinski saw Friday's ordination in the context of Pope Benedict's recent U.S. visit and last year's papal decree.

"What you're seeing is a resurgence in traditional Catholicism and a public vindication of it," Kozinski said as he and his family joined a throng chatting on the cathedral steps after the service. "It's not marginalized anymore."

Kozinski said he hopes his fellow devotees of the Latin Mass will respond with joy and gratitude to God.

About 300 Latin Masses are offered each Sunday in the United States, according to the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, an Illinois-based lay group that promotes the old liturgy. That's up from about 175 a Sunday in 2001.

Latin Masses are offered each Sunday at such churches as Immaculate Conception Church, on South 24th Street in Omaha, and St. Francis of Assisi Church, 1145 South St. in Lincoln. About 250 people combined attend the three Masses at Immaculate Conception.

"It's a drop in the bucket," said Mary Kraychy, executive director of the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei. "But it's growing."

The Denton institution is the Fraternity of St. Peter's English-speaking seminary. The fraternity also has a seminary in Germany. Currently, 45 seminarians are enrolled at Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The seminary recently was expanded to accommodate 100 students, said the Rev. Joseph Lee, a priest of the society. It draws seminarians from around the world and sends priests around the world.

The Fraternity of St. Peter has nearly 200 priests worldwide. Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary also is one of the largest providers of training for priests who wish to learn the old Latin Mass. Since June 2007, priests from more than 60 dioceses have been trained.

The society moved the seminary to Nebraska from Pennsylvania in 2000. Lincoln Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz invited the society to his diocese, but the seminary is independent of the diocese. Rather, the society reports directly to Rome.

Demand from priests and parishioners has increased since Benedict XVI's much-anticipated 2007 decree, Lee said. The pope wanted to make sure that the extraordinary form of the Roman rite is preserved and made available to Catholics who desire it, Lee said.

What Benedict XVI didn't intend with the decree, and he said so himself in a letter to bishops, was for the Latin Mass to replace the modern Mass, known as the Novus Ordo. The Pope refers to that liturgy as the ordinary form of the Roman rite.

"It (the decree) doesn't require it. and it doesn't encourage replacing the Novus Ordo," said Eileen Burke-Sullivan, an assistant professor of theology at Creighton University. "The emotional and spiritual needs of people are very varied. There isn't one size that fits all."

Devotees of the Latin Mass include older Catholics who grew up with it and wish it had never gone away, as well as younger people raised on modern Masses.

Omahan Erin Sullivan grew up on English-speaking Masses but found a church home where the Tridentine Mass was offered. For about five years, she and her husband, Jim, and their children attended Latin Mass at St. Patrick Catholic Church. They moved about a year ago, with their seven children, to Immaculate Conception when Omaha Archbishop Elden Curtiss gave that parish to the Fraternity of St. Peter to administer.

Sullivan, who sang in the choir at Friday's ordination, said she was attracted to the Tridentine Mass by "its beauty and its reverence, its silence and its solemnity."

"When you attend the Latin Mass, there's no doubt that there's something holy and special going on," she said.

====================================================================

Having been alerted earlier by the good people at New Liturgical Movement about the Mass, I tuned in to EWTN on Friday morning at 11 a.m. and found myself caught up in what proved to be three-and-a-half hours of a rite I had never watched before - although much of it was, of course, the traditional Mass. I dimly remember being at an ordination ceremony for a family friend when I was 5 or 6 years old but I remember nothing of that experience except the prostration, and the only Novus Ordo ordinations in my experience were those we have seen with Pope Benedict so far.

What impressed me right away, besides the traditional hieratic look of all the participants - in which everyone entitled to wearing a biretta wore at some point the biretta of his rank (black for the priests) - was the attendance at this very comtenporary church. Not only were the pews full, but the congregation appeared very representative of American society as it is today. And that most of the women wore veils (white was the preferred color), including the children (girls)! And the participation of everyone in the standard Latin responses. And how, of course, everyone came up to the communion rail and knelt to receive Communion. And the occasional wailing of a baby or a crying child, which is part of the mental soundtrack I have of the Masses of my youth.

AS Father Z notes in his blog, EWTN - very wisely - simply telecast the Mass without overlying commentary. [So I was very annoyed this afternoon when EWTN's broadcast of the Marian event at St. Peter's Square had the unforgivably rage-inducing Vatican Radio commentator translating the Pope's words over the Pope's voice, so that all one really heard of him was when he ended a paragraph later than the translator.! I tell you commentators like these are an occasion of sin!!!] Which is why, Father Z's blog has provided very useful information about the ordination itself on his long post on 5/30.

www.wdtprs.com/blog/

Here now are more pictures from Father Z. As his interest was primarily the liturgy, his videocaps did not include any of the congregation.


The four ordinands carrying the chasubles with which they will be invested.



The first laying of hands is by the Cardinal. Note the ecclesiastical glove used by the Cardinal:



It's the turn of the other prelates and priests present to 'lay hands' on the ordinands:



Investing the ordinands with the chasuble. Fr. Z points out that the backs of the chasubles are first left rolled up.



The ordinands' hands are next anointed with the Chrism. Fr. Z says their hands are bound with a tergimanium,
with which they will clean their hands afterwards. Many priests keep theirs and are buried with them, he adds.
The fourth photo shows them cleaning their hands with lemons, bread and water.



In the traditio the priests receive a chalice with wine and the paten with a Host as the sign that
they may consecrate the Eucharist.








The vestments worn by the principal celebrants.











A Te Deum concluded the rites.



All the prelates and priests processed to the Church steps, after which the entire suite knelt to receive
the Apostolic Blessing from the cardinal.



=====================================================================

Let me use the opportunity to bring out two photos from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's celebration of the traditional Mass for the Fraternity of St. Peter on two different occasions. In the second photo, he is wearing a cope as well as ecclesiastical gloves.



Weimar, 1999.


Wigratbad, 1990.

[Unfortunately, the second photo has 'faded' colors because of the file-type conversion from its original GIF format].

Unveiling the Icon:
Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy
Posted by D Mac

May 21, 2008


Thanks to NLM for calling attention to this item on a blog that I should be following regularly.


The Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy in Chicago has announced a special event on May 31st: the televised unveiling of the iconic monstrance which will be the centerpiece of the forthcoming Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy, a very unique and beautiful place for prayer currently in its final planning stages.

The unveiling will be televised in English, Spanish and Polish on EWTN, with yours truly serving together with Fr. Thomas Loya to provide "color commentary" for the event.

The Sanctuary is the special project and devotion of Fr. Anthony Bus, a Resurrectionist priest and pastor of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish, who, in a mystical experience, literally heard the Virgin Mary ask him to build a sanctuary dedicated to her Son. His inspiring story is chronicled in the hugely successful book, A Mother's Plea.

The iconic monstrance is shown in the photo in one of its early stages. How it looks now is a carefully guarded secret, though I did get a sneak preview last week with its fullness of color and gold leaf, and it is truly stunning.

The monstrance is actually a large, hard-carved wooden sculpture shown in the sketch as it will appear in its architectural setting, (and in true Chicago fashion it has already been described as "the largest monstrance in the world.")

It combines the two adoring angels and the golden Ark drawn from the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Solomon, but then shows it in its Christian fulfillment: the Virgin Mary now appears as the new Ark, and in her "womb" will be Christ as the New Law of Love and Mercy, the Blessed Sacrament for adoration.

The Jewish roots of Christianity are here recognized and admired, but shown in Christian fulfillment. The architectural setting will be one of the most sophisticated uses of the "New Classicism" movement, with every part thought through as a presentation of theological realities recalling the Old Testament time of shadow, the New Testament time of image, and the anticipating the glory of heaven.

The unveiling will be followed by a week of 24-hour adoration at St. Stanislaus Church in the actual monstrance.

The Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy is more than just another pious project. It is living proof that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Second Spring of the Church. At its heart is the worship of God and the sanctification of humanity through the Divine Mercy. Its art and architecture will blaze new trails in the recovery of Beauty.

It recovers Catholicism's biblical origins in the old covenant and displays heavenly glory to us. It will, no doubt, become a spiritual "umbilical cord" of God's Mercy for the world.

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CMR is a group blog that won as Best New Catholic Blog in the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards, and which states its purpose as follows: "The purpose of this blog is as an outlet for sometimes ill considered but occasionally pithy commentary by my cohorts and me. We intend to comment on Church related issues as it relates to its transformation, now begun, into a lean and mean evangelization machine. Also within our purview will be politics, current events, and hopefully some occasional humor as well."

I have not been able to figure out the membership of the group nor where they are based.

OUR LADY’S ENGLAND

Sculpture Recalls Marian Shrine Destruction

BY BRYAN BERRY

REGISTER CORRESPONDENT

June 1-7, 2008 Issue | Posted 5/27/08 at 4:26 PM

Posted in the June 2 online issue of the NC Register
 
LONDON — For five years, a group of 60 Catholics and Anglicans has been visiting the 84 Marian shrines in England that had been destroyed during the Reformation.

“We offered prayers and sacrifices to make reparation and atonement for our sins and the sins of our country,” said Frances Scarr, chairman of Art and Reconciliation Trust, at a press conference April 29. The conference was held, appropriately enough, at the Charterhouse, where proto-martyr St. John Houghton had served and where St. Thomas More had received spiritual formation during his four-year residency as a young man.

The “fruit of that prayer and sacrifice,” Scarr said, is a memorial, a sculpture entitled Mary Most Holy, which is scheduled to be unveiled next year in Chelsea near the very spot where the Marian shrines were burned. Cromwell, instigator of the burnings, was himself beheaded at Henry VIII’s order in 1540.

The artist behind Mary Most Holy is Paul Day, a leading English sculptor who sculpted the large memorial to the Battle of Britain (1940) that stands by the Thames near the Houses of Parliament.

Mary Most Holy “is not just about reparation but is also very much about reconciliation,” Scarr said at the conference. “I hope that when we come together before this monument we will ask for God’s forgiveness and through the intercession of Mary, we will pray that she will help us put behind our turbulent past and lead us forward in unity, peace, and reconciliation.”

“When you bring things out from the past, you have to make sure that everyone sees it as a way to move forward,” Marist Father Noel Wynn, director of the Catholic shrine at Walsingham, said. “The danger is that people might see this as a way to apportion blame.”  That’s not the project’s intent.

Thousands of pilgrims, mainly Anglican and Catholic, visit the Catholic and Anglican shrines at present-day Walsingham, which also has ruins of the monastery destroyed during Henry VIII’s reign.

Art and Reconciliation Trust’s trustees include two Anglicans who are on the College of Guardians, the group that governs the Anglican shrine in Walsingham. One of these, Canon Martin Warner, the head of the College of Guardians, serves at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Patrons of the Mary Most Holy sculpture include Msgr. Graham Leonard, the former Anglican Bishop of London, who entered the Catholic Church in 1994 and served as president of the Path to Rome conferences, as well as Edward Fitzalan-Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, the highest-ranking duke and Catholic in England.

The Mary Most Holy sculpture will be a bronze triptych about 12 feet high and 10 feet wide. In the two side panels, iconoclastic thugs in modern dress are smashing the statues with sledgehammers. Some mock the figure of Jesus on the cross; one, however, mournfully cradles the decapitated head of Mary — “suddenly realizing that he is destroying the heritage that he and his family and his family’s family were devoted to,” sculptor Day said in an interview the day before the press conference. In the background are headless saints, their hands folded in prayer.

Paul Day himself has been influenced by the three main religious groups (Catholic, Anglican, Puritan) involved in the 16th- and 17th-century religious controversies in England. Day received eight years of instruction as a boy in a Church of England primary school in Horsham, his hometown, and for seven years was a member of a “brilliant Baptist church.” For the past 15 years the 41-year-old sculptor and his wife have lived in the town of Beaune in the Burgundy region of France, where Day has been greatly influenced by the medieval art in Catholic churches.

“I am absolutely convinced that Christ is not only God’s revelation to man but he’s my personal savior,” Day said. Although he doesn’t regularly attend church (there are no Protestant churches in Beaune), “it would be lovely to be in Christian fellowship,” Day says. “The differences that divide Catholics, Anglicans and Baptists are important, but they are not insurmountable. The shared foundation of truth is absolutely what matters.”

In the central panel of Mary Most Holy are the figures of Mary and the child Jesus, flanked by two figures, one penitent and the other adoring, on a “bare, ruined” street, as Day describes it. Despite the destruction in the two side panels, “the mood of the sculpture is ultimately very positive,” Day explains.

“In a piece which is otherwise quite complicated, Mary and Jesus stand proud and are clear” — as if emerging unvanquished by the divisions among Christians shown in the side panels. “Reconciliation requires confrontation with the truth of the past,” Day said at the press conference.

Since the Second Vatican Council, Anglicans and Catholics have become more open to each other than before, says Richard Mortimer, an Anglican who serves at Westminster Abbey Library in London. Nowadays “there’s the awareness that all Christians together are a minority in this country.”

The percentage of English Protestants and Catholics who worship in churches is so low that, in any given week, “there are almost as many Sikhs worshipping in their temples as there are Christians — Protestants and Catholics — in churches,” Mortimer observes.

“Most people in England — which after all is quite Godless and secular — don’t have a heart for purification and reparation,” admits Antonia Moffat, a Catholic lay leader who helped organize 100 all-night Eucharistic vigils of prayer and reparation in London and Walsingham. “We don’t need to apportion blame for the past, but, as a nation, England wronged Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and his Holy Mother and we need to make reparation.”

On busy Bayswater Road in central London, near the spot at Tyburn where Saints John Houghton, Edmund Campion, Oliver Plunket, and the other 105 Catholic martyrs were executed, stands a convent. Here is a shrine to the martyrs and Perpetual Adoration of the Eucharist by the 25 cloistered nuns in the Tyburn Benedictine order.

“We pray for the conversion of England,” Mother Simeon, prioress of the order, said. The order’s charism reflects the martyrs’ sacrifice, she said, adding, “The martyrs died for their loyalty to the pope and for the Holy Eucharist, and they died praying for the conversion of their country.”

Bryan Berry is based in

Joliet, Illinois.

Thanks to Philippe Guy and Gregor Kollmorgen at

for following a May 31 ordination by the FSSP at their original monastery in Wigratzbad, Germany.





Just as the good people of FSSP had four new priests ordained in Lincoln, Nebraska, on May 31, Feast of the Visitation and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, their 'mother house' in Bavaria welcomed 8 new priests, also with a Curial official conferring Holy Orders.

In this case, Mons. Albert Ranjith, secretary of the Cognregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments. Guy explains that the liturgical color was blue, the day being a Marian feast, for which the Curch in Germany is allowed to use blue. I find their use of something like Wedgwood blue very elegant and strikingly unusual.

I've chosen a few pictures to highlight the similarity in the ordination rites, the inherent solemnity of the TLM, and group photos marking the occasion.

The teaching that women cannot be priests:
Neither despotic nor patriarchal – just faithful
...and infallible by this analysis

By Christopher Zehnder

June 1, 2008


It has been 14 years since Pope John Paul II issued his controversial apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, declaring that the Church has no authority to ordain women as priests.

Though the Pope issued the letter “in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance,” doubt about women’s ordination continues unabated. It still seems a matter open to debate.

The decree issued last week by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will do little to still the debate. The decree – that “both he who has attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, and the woman who has attempted to receive the said sacrament, incurs in latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See” – is an important and welcome sign that the Holy See is exercising its role as pastor as well as teacher.

However, it will be perceived in many circles as just another exercise of a raw, despotic, “patriarchal” power by the Church, to keep women down. Many indeed will claim this.

But others more moderate will speak in respectful tones of the Church’s “authentic” teaching -- of the need to listen thoughtfully to magisterial teaching -- while they gut the teaching of its authority by appealing to “conscience” and to queerly conceived notions of the “development of doctrine.”

Such moderate folk might disapprove, even publicly, of attempts to ordain women, but only because such attempts are “not yet approved” by the Church. The unspoken assumption is, of course, that the Church eventually will approve women’s ordination; that the Church’s teaching that women’s ordination is not possible is a teaching subject to change.

Catholics who so opine like to point to the fact that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is not an ex cathedra statement. If it is not ex cathedra, so the reasoning goes, it is not infallible. If it is not infallible, it is not irreformable. And if it is not irreformable, it can change. The assumption, of course, in all this is that the only infallible papal teachings are ex cathedra ones.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, however, has disagreed with this assumption. In a Responsum ad dubium asking whether the teaching on woman’s ordination found in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis “is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith,” the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith answered, yes.

In explanation, he wrote: “This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

In this Responsum, Ratzinger pointed to a little understood truth – that the Church teaches infallibly not only when she speaks through ecumenical councils or through solemn (ex cathedra) papal decrees, but when she exercises the “ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

What is the “ordinary and universal Magisterium”? It is a mode of teaching that involves both the Pope and the bishops. It is distinct from an ecumenical council; for, as the Second Vatican Council’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Lumen Gentium) says, the college of bishops teach infallibly when, “even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.”

How that agreement manifests itself may vary; the council defines no necessary formula for it. Traditionally, however, reception of a teaching by the bishops of the world, without formal protest, has been seen to constitute agreement. It has never been a matter of tallying votes, as if the bishops formed a parliament. Rather, episcopal approval can be the simple acquiescence of the college or order of bishops to a papal teaching.

Whether the bishops personally agree with the pope is of no account. What is important is whether, in their official capacity as the successors of the apostles, the bishops receive papal teaching as the teaching of the Church.

Whatever the personal opinions of each and every bishop on women’s ordination might be, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis has been received by the college of bishops throughout the world. This alone doesn’t mean the document contains infallible teaching; other things must be present – i.e., the teaching must clearly be reiterated teaching with roots in tradition and it must bind the faithful to a definitive assent of faith.

In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul clearly indicates that he is teaching in accord with tradition and not introducing an innovation when he says, “The teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents.”

Yet, was he binding the faithful to a definitive assent of faith?

This is an important question, for how a Pope states a teaching indicates how he expects the teaching to be received. Again, as Lumen Gentium says, “Religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will.”

The Council then adds that the Pope’s “mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking."

In saying, "the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will," the Council declares that one is to give his religious submission of mind and will to the degree demanded by the character of a magisterial statement.

If the Pope is clearly speaking as the successor of St. Peter, declaring a matter having to do with faith and morals, and binding the faithful to a definitive assent to his decision, his “manifest mind and will” is to teach infallibly. For how can one expect another to give a definitive assent of faith to anything but the truth?

If we look at Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, we can see that this is precisely what the Pope is doing. The defining paragraph reads thus:

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Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

---

It is clear from this passage that the Pope was addressing a matter of faith (“a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself”) and that he was speaking as the successor to St. Peter (“in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren”).

But the clinching passage is that “this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II was exercising his supreme teaching authority in a non-solemn (non-ex cathedra) fashion to define a teaching of the Church; namely, that “the Church has no authority whatsoever” to ordain women to the priesthood.

In declaring this teaching, the Pope was only, as we Americans say, “doing his job.”

The Pope is not the supreme autocrat of the Church; though his authority is absolute, it is only so within limits set by the One whom the Pope serves as vicar.

One of these limits – and, perhaps, the most important one -- is that of truth, divinely revealed truth. The Pope may only declare what he has received as the truth. In the case of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the truth is that only men may serve as priests.

In declaring this, Pope John Paul II was not acting the despot, patriarchal or otherwise, but as a faithful and careful steward and caretaker of his Master’s goods, His gift to His faithful in the Church.

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He makes a convincing argument, though I must admit I had never before considered the Magisterium in the context of the distinctions made - although as a conventionally pliant and obedient Catholic, I have always held intuitively that the Pope, any Pope, can only teach what he has received as the deposit of faith, neither more nor less. Therefore, I could never understand dissenting bishops who defy the Pope. I can understand they may dissent, but not that they therefore defy and disobey the Vicar of Christ, wh ois, after all, Pastor of the Universal Church, and whose teaching is valid not for a single diocese alone, but for the worldwide Church.

By the way, whatever happens to those women after they are 'ordained'? We never get to hear about them again, it seems, after all the hooplah of their 'ordination'. What kind of ministry to they carry out afterwards? And for whom? In what parishes? Does anyone actually seek them out to say Mass or hear confession and things like that?