Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
News Report: Pope Paul VI to be beatified in October
Hat tip to Deacon Greg on this one! The following comes from The Tablet:
The Vatican has recognised a supposed miracle attributed to Paul VI's intercession and will beatify the late Italian pope in October, a Vatican source said on Tuesday.
According to the Italian news agency ANSA, the apparent miracle identified by the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints was the healing of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.
ANSA said the beatification could occur on 19 October after the synod of bishops' meeting.
Paul VI, who reigned between 1963 and 1978, was praised for his efforts to seek closer ties with other Christian denominations but his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae was controversial for spelling out a ban on all forms of artificial contraception.
CNS has further details about the miracle:
The miracle being considered involves the birth of a baby in California in the 1990s, although to protect the family's privacy, the child's name and city have not been released. Credere said the mother's pregnancy was at risk, and with it the life and health of the baby. Doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy, but instead she sought prayers from an Italian nun who was a family friend. Praying, the nun placed on the woman's belly a holy card with Pope Paul's photograph and a piece of his vestment.
The baby was born healthy. For Pope Paul's sainthood cause, physicians continued monitoring the child's health up to the age of 12 and everything was normal, Credere reported.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Fr. Dwight Longenecker: On Punching Heretics
There was an odious man named Frank in our fundamentalist church when I was a boy who had a brood of badly behaved children. When one of them would act up, Frank would haul the miscreant out of the sanctuary and wallop him. When he would re-appear with the unfortunate sprog, Frank would mutter sanctimoniously, “Sometimes we need to administer love to our children.”
The memory brings to mind another fracas at church in an earlier time. At the Council of Nicea, Bishop Nicholas of Myra punched the heretic Arius in the face. Arius had been asked to defend his doctrine that Jesus Christ was only a created being and not God incarnate. The future Santa Claus, fed up with this nonsense, got up and administered some love. St. Nicholas is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Some work. Some wonder.
Nicholas was not the only one of the Fathers inclined to physical expressions of orthodoxy. St. John Chrysostom was so troubled by Christians who advocated teetotalism that he preached a homily encouraging the faithful to revolt:
Most of us would hesitate to follow John Chrysostom’s robust advice. Explaining to the sheriff that we had struck the progressive Christian because he had “blasphemed the King of Angels” is not our style. Our new beatitude is “blessed are the milquetoast for they shall inherit a peaceful life.” We prefer to do battle with words, not swords, for we are sure that fingers tapping keyboards are more effective than fists striking faces.Paul is not ashamed. . .in writing to Timothy, to bid him take refuge in the healing virtue of wine drinking. Not to drink wine? God forbid! For such precepts belong to heretics. . . .Should you hear any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God; go up to him and rebuke him; and should it be necessary to inflict blows, spare not to do so. Smite him on the face; strike his mouth; sanctify your hand with the blow, and if any should accuse you, and drag you to the place of justice, follow them, and when the judge. . .calls you to account, say boldly that the man blasphemed the King of angels!
Read the rest here.
Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism
The following comes from Archbishop Chaput:
I want to start with a simple statement of fact. All Christian life is a paradox. What I mean is this.
In Isaiah 55, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts [higher] than your thoughts” (8-9). Then in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, “You therefore must be perfect, [even] as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48).
Scripture tells us that God is utterly different from us, vastly higher than us. Then it tells us to become like him. Therein lies the paradox. The task seems impossible. And yet weknow it to be possible. We know it through the witness of the saints. In Hebrew, God is called hakadosh, “the Holy One,” with the word kadosh meaning holy. Our English word “saint” derives from the Latin word sanctus, which means the same thing: holy. Holy does not mean “good,” though holy people are always good and often – though not always – nice. St. Jerome was certainly holy and good, but “nice” might not be the first word that springs to mind in remembering him.
Holy means “other than.” It means different from the world; set apart from the profane; sacred. The saints are ordinary men and women — persons with every kind of talent, weakness and personality — who took a different path, one step at a time, away from the routine habits of the world. They fell in love with God. They followed him. They conformed their lives to him in simple ways that became extraordinary ways. And now their example and their intercession give us hope that we can do the same.
I mention all this because my job today is to talk about “St. Francis and Western Catholicism.” I’m a Capuchin Franciscan, so I’m happy to do that. But I want to do it by posing three questions: Who is Francis, this pope? Who was Francis, the man of Assisi? And after 800 years, what, if anything, can a man from the Middle Ages teach us about being alive and free and human?
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