Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Fr. Robert Barron on One More Empty Church
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Friday, July 15, 2011
BLESSED JOHN PAUL II: ANOTHER PATRON FOR EUROPE?
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Pope Benedict Prays for Europe
The following comes from the CNA:
Pope Benedict said on June 8 that he hopes his visit to Croatia this past weekend “will bear abundant fruit for Croatian families, the entire nation and throughout Europe.”
The Pope said at the Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter’s Square that the June 4-5 visit was characterized by what he called “an intense spirit of faith.” In today's review of the trip, he said that he primarily wanted to highlight his message to families delivered at the first annual Croatian National Family Day on Sunday morning.
In an era of divorce and separation, the Pope said that “the fidelity of spouses has become in itself a significant sign of the love of Christ.” He described this witness as “the first education in the faith” by which “children learn, without anything being said, that God is love, loyal, patient, respectful and generous.”
“Faith in the God, who is love, is primarily transmitted through the testimony of a faithful conjugal love, which naturally translates into love for children, the fruit of such a union.”
Pope Benedict also recalled with affection his meeting with over 50,000 youngsters in Zagreb’s Ban Jelacic Square on Saturday night.
“There I was able to meet the new Croatian generation, and I felt the full force of their young faith, animated by a great enthusiasm for life and its meaning, for the good, for freedom, that is to say for God.”
He explained that he was able to remind the young people that God loved them first, a discovery that the Pope said “keeps us always disciples and, therefore, always young in spirit!”
On Sunday evening, just prior to leaving Croatia, the Pope prayed second vespers – or evening prayers – at the tomb of the former Archbishop of Zagreb, Blessed Aloysius Stepinac, in Zagreb’s cathedral. Blessed Aloysius was the leader of Croatia’s Catholics through the Nazi invasion of the Second World War and then the communist oppression in the subsequent years. He was jailed following a show-trial in 1952, died under house arrest in 1960 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1998.
“In the light of his testimony,” said Pope Benedict said at today’s audience, “I encouraged bishops and priests in their ministry, urging them to communion and apostolate.”
Finally, the Pope commented upon his meeting with representatives of civil society – academics, cultural figures and business leaders– at Croatia’s National Theatre in Zagreb on Saturday evening. There he had outlined the importance of Europe to the Church and the world.
“Once again it has been made clear to all that Europe has a profound vocation to preserve and renew a humanism that has Christian roots and that can be defined as ‘catholic,’ that is, universal and whole.”
“It is a humanism that lies at the center of the human being’s conscience, its transcendent openness and, at the same time, its historical reality, which is capable of inspiring political projects that are diverse but convergent in building a substantial democracy based on the ethical values rooted in human nature itself.”
The Pope then asked the pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square to pray to “the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Croatians,” before imparting his apostolic blessing.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Pope Benedict: Europe doomed if conscience isn’t rediscovered
Europe is doomed if it doesn’t rediscover the true meaning of conscience, warned Pope Benedict XVI on the first day of his visit to Croatia.
“If, in keeping with the prevailing modern idea, conscience is reduced to the subjective field to which religion and morality have been banished, then the crisis of the West has no remedy and Europe is destined to collapse in on itself,” the Pope told a gathering of members from Croatia’s civil society in the capital of Zagreb on June 4.
“If, on the other hand, conscience is rediscovered as the place in which to listen to truth and good, the place of responsibility before God and before fellow human beings – in other words, the bulwark against all forms of tyranny – then there is hope for the future.”
Several hundred key figures from the world of Croatian politics, academia, culture, arts and sport gathered at the country’s national theatre to hear the Pope. His speech echoed his prior warnings against the “dictatorship of relativism.”
He told the assembled dignitaries that many of the “great achievements of the modern age” such as “the recognition and guarantee of freedom of conscience, of human rights, of the freedom of science and hence of a free society” would be undone unless “reason and freedom” were kept rooted in “their transcendent foundation” of God.
To make his point, the Pope drew upon the life and work of Father Ruder Josip Boskovic, an early 18th century Croatian Jesuit, who was a great theologian, physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and poet.
Boskovic, said the Pope, was a clear example of “the happy symbiosis of faith and scholarship” in which “there is study of multiple branches of knowledge, but there is also a passion for unity,” and where learning is both “diversified and capable of synthesis.”
This forming of consciences rooted in faith and reason is where “the Church makes her most specific and valuable contribution to society,” said the Pope, stressing that this formation should begin in the home, the parish and the school.
In this way children “learn what it means for a community to be built upon gift, not upon economic interests or ideology, but upon love,” and so society is transformed for the better.
Pope Benedict explained that the impact of living in this selfless way, when “learnt in infancy and adolescence, is then lived out in every area of life, in games, in sport, in interpersonal relations, in art, in voluntary service to the poor and the suffering.”
And once this way of life has taken root, "it can be applied to the most complex areas of political and economic life so as to build up a polis that is welcoming and hospitable, but at the same time not empty, not falsely neutral, but rich in humanity, with a strongly ethical dimension.”
The Pope is visiting Croatia to celebrate the local church’s annual family day on June 5. Over 300,000 are expected to attend the Mass at a local Zagreb racetrack. The visit will last only two days, concluding tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Pope expected to create new dicastery to re-evangelize Europe, US
The following comes from the CNA:Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican correspondent for the daily Il Giornale who is usually well-informed on new appointments at the Vatican, wrote today that “Benedict does not cease to surprise: in the upcoming week the creation of a new dicastery of the Roman Curia dedicated to the evangelization of the West will be announced, and be presided over by Archbishop Rino Fisichella.”
The following comes from the CNA:
The new dicastery is aimed at evangelizing “countries where the Gospel has been announced centuries ago, but where its presence in their peoples' daily life seems to be lost. Europe, the United States and Latin America would be the areas of influence of the new structure,” Il Giornale says.
According to Tornielli, the new dicastery would be “the most important novelty of Pope Benedict’s pontificate, a Pope that, according to the expectations, was supposed to slim down the Roman Curia.”
Tornielli says that the idea of such a dicastery was first proposed to Pope John Paul II by Msgr. Luigi Giussani, the late founder of the Italian-born movement Comunione e Liberazione (Community and Liberation), but the idea did not move ahead.
In response to the question of how the idea resurfaced, Tornielli says, according to “authoritative sources,” the proposal of the dicastery comes from the Patriarch of Venice, Italy Cardinal Angelo Scola.
During his tenure as Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, Cardinal Scola promoted intense reflection on the loss of Christian identity in Europe. The Patriarch of Venice was also a member of Communion and Liberation, and in his current position has shown significant concern for the de-Christianization of Europe and the Western world.
Fisichella, the currently embattled head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, succeeded Angelo Scola as Rector of the Lateran University and as such, shared the same concerns of his predecessor.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
George Weigel speaks on combating European cultural decline
The following comes from the CNA:
In a talk delivered today in Paris, noted author George Weigel discussed the evangelization of the European culture and offered his advice on how to spark a renewal. Pointing to the “demographic winter” gripping much of the continent, Weigel described it as a portent of the future, unless Europeans insist on the place of Christian values in society and combat relativism with truth.
Weigel gave his speech at the Lustiger Symposium at the Collèges des Bernardins in Paris through a pre-recorded video.
Opening his address with a reflection on the writings of the late Pope John Paul II, Weigel discussed the 2003 encyclical, “Ecclesia in Europa,” calling it “a papal report card” on modern Europe, which showed “mixed grades.”
Of the greatest concern to the late Pontiff, said Weigel, was the lack of hope he saw in modern European culture as demonstrated by its failure to create “successor generations.”
Weigel noted that “while Europe’s demographic winter was undoubtedly the result of a complex of causes, something was clearly awry in the realm of the human spirit when an entire continent – wealthier, healthier, and more secure than ever before – was depopulating itself, not because of war, natural disaster, or plague, but by its own will.”
Pointing out that the last century was one of the the bloodiest in Europe's history, Weigel quoted Cardinal Jean Marie Lustiger to say that a collective post-war “guilt” still hangs over Europe.
“Here, Lustiger had in mind 'the proclamation of freedom [which] became the will to dominate…the pursuit of equality [which] produced slavery,' and 'the affirmation of brotherhood [which] became the origin of bloody struggles and of hopeless divisions,'” the American scholar said.
Accoring to Weigel, Cardinal Lustiger described that guilt in a 1981 address to the diplomatic corps in Bonn, saying, “as if exhausted by violence, Europe is hardly capable of transmitting life to new generations; poor, wounded Europe is causing the springs of life to run dry. The fruitfulness of love is under attack and the fruits of love are being aborted.”
In addition to Lustiger, Weigel noted that John Paul II also wrote on the “soul-withering effects” of post-war European guilt, which he attributed to Europeans betraying the values that were inspired in their culture by Christianity.
If there is no God, said John Paul II, Europeans “have no one from whom they can seek forgiveness.”
This hopelessness, said Weigel, has transformed into a “nihilism” and an “aggressive secularism” within European culture and has resulted in what then-Cardinal Ratzinger has called a “dictatorship of relativism.”
Europe, by extension, effects the whole of the West, argued Weigel. The importance of its evangelization, therefore, cannot be overstated. Drawing from the writings of both Jean Marie Lustiger and Pope John Paul II, he spoke on the hope for the renewal of Christian culture in Europe and presented what he called his fine-tuning of a “culture-first” strategy.
The first step in the process of Christian renewal, the Catholic author said, is that “intolerance in the name of 'tolerance' must be named for what it is and publicly condemned.” According to Weigel, Biblical morality is being treated in European culture with “bigotry and intolerance” and this is an “uncivil act that must be named as such.” But the prime example of this intolerance is the European Union and individual states believing that they have the authority to redefine marriage – a human institution that “antedates the state ontologically as well as historically,” he said.
Secondly, Weigel argued that Catholic Christians must speak openly “about the empirically demonstrable and deplorable effects of the sexual revolution on individuals and society.” In addition to this, he argued that Catholics need to bring about a “new appreciation of the dignity and nobility of human love” as illustrated in John Paul II's “Theology of the Body.”
“This weapon in the conversion of culture ought to be fully and unapologetically deployed,” Weigel argued, “and if that requires making the public claim that the Catholic Church understands human sexuality better than the prophets of sexual liberation, then so be it.”
The American intellectual also asserted that the Church needs to be vindicated from the “black legends” that circulate around its history, such as the Crusades, Galileo's trial and the Inquisition.
“I raise these matters of historical record, not to score debating points,” Weigel clarified, “but to suggest that part of the challenge we face today is to recognize, with John Paul II and Cardinal Lustiger, that Europe (and indeed the entire West) is suffering from a false story about itself, and about the relationship of biblical religion to its formation and its history.”
Finally, Weigel advised, the Church must continue to develop a “rich interior life,” and at the same time, find “winsome ways to make the Church's proposal to a post-Christian Europe.” One way to do this, he suggested, is for members of the Church to join with men and women “of conscience,” who may not be believers, to publicly challenge “the ever-more-ominous dictatorship of relativism.”
Speaking to the Europeans in attendance at the Collèges des Bernardins symposium, Weigel concluded by saying, “I commend that more combative stance to you, who stand watch over the societies that gave birth to my own, in contesting for the causes we share.”
“You will not find Americans lacking as allies in the 21st century, as you did not find us lacking as allies in the century just past.”
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Holy Father on the Great Monastery of Cluny
The following comes from the Sacred Destinations site: The Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy was the center of a major monastic movement in the Middle Ages. Its church was the largest Christian building in the world until St. Peter's Basilica was rebuilt in Rome in the 16th century.
Today, one transept of the 12th-century abbey church remains, along with 15th-century abbots' residences and 18th-century convent buildings. The site also includes pleasant gardens and a museum with Romanesque artifacts.
Founded in 910, the Abbey at Cluny was the center of a monastic reform movement that would spread throughout Europe. The abbey was built on a forested hunting preserve donated by William I the Pious, duke of Aquitaine and count of Auvergne.
Unlike most monastic patrons, William relieved the monks of Cluny of all obligations to him except for their prayers for his soul. It was much more common for patrons to retain some proprietary interest in the abbey and they usually expected to install their relatives as abbots. Thus Cluny was able to avoid the secular entanglements that plagued many other monasteries. Cluny answered to the Pope alone, and would come to develop very close ties with the papacy.
The Abbey of Cluny was founded by Benedictine monks who wished to observe closer adherence to the Benedictine rule. One distinction was their commitment to offer perpetual prayer, emphasizing liturgy and spiritual pursuits over labor and other monastic activities.
At Cluny the liturgy was extensive and beautiful in inspiring surroundings, reflecting the new personally-felt wave of piety of the 11th century. Monastic intercession appeared indispensable to achieving a state of grace, and lay rulers competed to be remembered in Cluny's endless prayers, inspiring the endowments in land and benefices that made other arts possible.
To read more check out the Sacred Destinations site.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Pro-life Prophet of Great Britain
Great Britain has a prophetic voice speaking out for life! Check out this article on Cardinal Keith O'Brien's Easter sermon here.
