Russia and the Vatican establish full diplomatic ties

Brick by Brick, the Church will breath united with two lungs once more.  Let’s hear it for Benedict, the Pope of Christian Unity!

By DANIELA PETROFF (AP) – 3 hours ago

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI and visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed Thursday to upgrade Vatican-Kremlin relations to full diplomatic ties, the Vatican said.

The step forward on the diplomatic front comes at the same time as a warming in previously tense relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican.

A Vatican statement said Benedict and Medvedev agreed that Russia will upgrade its representation at the Vatican from a special mission to embassy level and that the Vatican will reciprocate in Moscow.

The two men also discussed challenges to “security and peace” in the world and “themes of mutual interest such as the value of the family and the contribution of believers to the life of Russia,” the Vatican said.

Medvedev, on a one-day visit to Rome, met with the German pope for 30 minutes, speaking through interpreters. He had earlier met with Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

After decades of hostility between the Vatican and the Kremlin during the Cold War, the major breakthrough came when former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with Pope John Paul II in December 1989.

But the lifting of restrictions on religion led to new tensions with the Orthodox church, which accused the Vatican of poaching for souls in traditional Orthodox territory — a charge the Vatican denied.

The standoff prevented John Paul II of fulfilling his wish of making a pilgrimage to Russia.

Vatican officials, however, say that despite improved atmosphere such a trip is not on Benedict’s agenda now. The Vatican statement after Thursday’s meeting did not mention it.

Benedict had met with Medvedev’s predecessor, Vladimir Putin, two years ago. As a gift, Medvedev presented Benedict with 22 volumes of an encyclopedia on the Russian Orthodox Church to complete a set brought by Putin.

How to raise a child to have Faith, when you have none yourself?

That’s the question asked in today’s New York Times.

I had been potential prey for a religious organization, in part, because I had no faith of my own. As an adult, still with no faith, I long for it – yet as an adult it can be so much harder to find. Children don’t intellectualize everything; they’re willing to take a leap of faith (pun intended), whereas my inner checklist starts crossing off potential belief systems based on various principles or doctrine that I simply can’t force myself to align with. Yet when I cut through our neighborhood church to get from one side of the street to the other, I envy the women kneeling alone praying in the resounding quiet. And when I see the groups of happy families filing out after Sunday baptisms, I feel a little pinch in my heart.

I want Nina to have that, not just as an inoculation against those who would prey on her, but also for the comforts and the bonds that faith seems to bring. I’m still not sure what faith that will be, but I’m ready to start exploring. I figure we can explore together. In a best-case scenario we’ll find something that both enlightens us individually and brings us closer as mother and daughter. Worst-case scenario, we jettison it for something else or nothing at all.

I know there’s an equally compelling case to be made for just letting your child come to religion naturally, to wait for them to start asking questions and then talk with them about options and let them choose their own path. But, in my case, that didn’t work. And now as an adult, I find myself often coming back to song lyrics by Conor Oberst: “Why are you afraid to dream of God, when it’s salvation that you want?” I don’t want to be afraid to dream anymore, not for myself or for my daughter.

Read the whole thing at the link above.

B16 on William of St Thierry

In yesterday’s weekly General Audience, Pope Benedict taught us about William of St Thierry, a 12th century Cistercian monk. Our Holy Father summarized William’s vision for the spiritual journey in this paragraph:

To learn to love requires a long and demanding journey, which William articulated in four stages, corresponding to man’s age: infancy, youth, maturity and old age. In this itinerary the person must impose on himself an effective ascesis, a strong control of himself to eliminate every disordered affection, every shadow of egoism, and to unify his life in God, source, goal and force of love, until attaining the summit of the spiritual life, which William defines as “wisdom.” At the conclusion of this ascetic itinerary, one feels great serenity and sweetness. All man’s faculties — intelligence, will, affection — rest in God, known and loved in Christ.

He also affirmed William’s teaching on growing in heartfelt intimacy with our Lord:

…William speaks of this radical vocation of love for God, which is the secret of a successful and happy life, and which he describes as an incessant and growing desire, inspired by God himself in the heart of man…Striking is the fact that William, in speaking of the love of God, attributes notable importance to the emotional dimension. Indeed, dear friends, our heart is made of flesh, and when we love God, who is Love itself, how can we not express in this relationship with the Lord also our most human feelings, such as tenderness, sensitivity, delicacy? The Lord himself, becoming man, wished to love us with a heart of flesh!

If you’re looking for reading material, a book containing some of William’s advice to his brother monks — which the Pope mentions in his talk — is available from Amazon.

Courtesies

Tom Peters has been regarded as a biz guru since he co-authored the groundbreaking book “In Search of Excellence” in the early 1980’s.  Lately, in addition to business theory and practice, he’s been stressing the ‘soft,’ the abstract – as evidenced by his recent post on the “Eight Courtesies.”

This is all well and good, and will certainly make the world – and the workplace – a more pleasant place.  A certain (superficial?) amount of progress in these areas can be achieved by our mere natural efforts.  But to make serious progress, we need the grace of God that is available to us by virtue of the sacrifice of Jesus.  Our cooperation with this grace will not only enable us to practice the Eight Courtesies, but to practice them with joy, and to look forward to the opportunities.  That grace is an irreplaceable element in our battle to overcome the selfishness that prevents us from exercising virtue in our lives.

Of all the reasons…

I’ve seen a lot of reasons why Notre Dame should have fired Charlie Weiss, but TIme Magazine taakes the cake with this one.

Notre Dame is 6-6 this season, and Weis, 54, didn’t do much better in his previous four seasons as coach. While the Fighting Irish have won 11 national championships in their storied history, the team has not won one for 21 years. And while some may point to the shortcomings of its coach or players, a more fundamental reason may lie in a crisis of the Catholic faith.

In Notre Dame’s glory days, Catholic secondary schools were prime recruiting centers. Priests and nuns would ask for prayers for “the boys” on Saturdays and would encourage their best athletes to attend Notre Dame. But many forces, including abuse by priests, have damaged American Catholicism and crippled the parochial school system.

Practicing the fundamentals

When I played junior high basketball, our coach had us spend as much time practicing the fundamentals as he did having us play the game during practice.  Bounce passes, chest passes, dribbling drills, lay-ups and free throws until we were sick of them.  All we wanted to do was scrimmage – i.e., actually practice playing basketball – in preparation for the games.  Our coach insisted that our persistent work on the basics would lead to solid execution in actual games.

That’s what I sensed Pope Benedict was doing in his homily for First Vespers of the first Sunday in Advent.  He begins by reminding us of a deficiency with which many of us are afflicted:  God is visiting us, but we are often too busy to notice!

…in this case it is a visit of God: He enters my life and wants to address me. We all experience in daily life having little time for the Lord and little time for ourselves. We end up by being absorbed in “doing.” Is it not true that often activity possesses us, that society with its many interests monopolizes our attention? Is it not true that we dedicate much time to amusements and leisure of different kinds? Sometimes things “trap” us.

Then he reminds us of the basics that we need to ‘practice’:

Pause in silence
Perceive something of his love
Keep an interior diary of this love
Contemplate the Lord who is present
Listen to God as he speaks to us in Sacred Scripture
Listen to God as he speaks to us in the liturgical year
Listen to God as he speaks to us in the saints
Listen to God as he speaks to us in the events of daily life
Listen to God as he speaks to us in the whole of creation

Our Holy Father asks:

Should not the certainty of his presence help us to see the world with different eyes?

If we ‘practice the fundamentals’ presented by Pope Benedict, then, when we are ‘in the game’ of real life, we will be more able to execute:  to be humble, to give of ourselves in love, to extend mercy…even to our enemies!  We will be better prepared to live the radically virtuous lives to which Jesus calls us.

More great catechesis

In tune with my post on my class reunion are these true stories from the Kansas City Star (click for more)

Seated in the front of the church waiting for Mass to start one Sunday morning, her 4-year-old began to get antsy. She absentmindedly handed him her rosary, hoping it would keep him quiet for a few minutes.

You can imagine her chagrin when he began twirling the beads above his head and announced in his very loud baritone voice, “Hang on Jesus, you’re going for a ride!”

At the age of 6, Patrick Burke’s daughter asked why they didn’t go to church.

I thought, “Wow, my daughter is ready to attend Mass!” But I also thought that at that age you can’t understand the great significance of the Mass, and trying to explain it would be silly. That next Sunday we went to Mass and sat in the front row so we could watch the priest, be close to the ceremonies and gain all the knowledge being imparted. Normally a child would whisper when surrounded by a large number of strange people and in a strange place.

But at the Offertory, when it was as quiet as quiet can be, when the priest was adding water and wine to the chalice, my daughter, full of wonder, leaned over to me and whispered in her tiny but magnified little voice, “Daddy, is he making a martini?”

The priest briefly looked at us in surprise. Then the first row laughed and the next three rows snickered, then the next three rows behind them wanted to know who said what in the first row to cause Father to look up so surprised.

My response was to turn bright red, give my daughter a hug and whisper, “I will explain all this to you later.”

America’s Joyous Future.

Scenes from a reunion…

My 2oth High School reunion was last night.  I didn’t go.  Shame on me, maybe, but I haven’t talked to these people in 15-20 years, and I see no reason to play one-upsmanship now.  But in the prelude to reunion, I learned a bit about many of them as most are on Facebook.

There were 106 of us in the graduating class from Bishop Hafey in Hazleton.  Eleven of my ‘closest’ friends from back then identify themselves as Atheist, Agnostic, No religion, Catholic Background – practicing pagan, and Taoist.  I was pretty shocked.  In fact I have friended a few of them on facebook just to figure out what happened.  I am certain that there are a lot more, and suspect only 10% of the class is nominally Christian.  When they read my profile, I am sure they will all be equally shocked (‘Hey, we thought this guy was smart?’) They all came from catholic families — what happened?

UPDATE:

15 minutes after publishing this post almost in answer to my question, I came across this article at the New Liturgical Movement.  Talk about apropo!

Death of a Saint(*)

Today is the anniversary of the Death of one of my favorite (soon to be official I hope) Saints.  Dorothy Day, died 29 years ago today.  A one time radical communist, anarchist, courageous pacifist, two common law marriages, an abortion, oh yeah — and a conversion.

You can google her to read more,  I find her to be very challenging to my own concept of what it means to be a Christian in Western Society.  I have radically bucked against most of her views on society and labled her a radical leftist — but she is so compelling I keep coming back to learn more.

She is the author of my favorite quote about our faith — “Christianity is not just about comforting the afflicted, but also about afflicting the comfortable.”

I read a story, I think in Father Martin’s ‘My Life with the Saints’ where in the early 1970’s a priest came to her Catholic Worker House in NEw York, and celebrated Mass on the Kitchen table using a coffee cup for a Chalice.  After Mass while everyone was socializing with the priest, Dorothy was in the back yard, burying the cup to ensure that it would not be profaned by drinking from it again.

Healing prayers in Dallas on Wednesday

On Wednesday, December 2nd, at Gate of Heaven Church, 40 Machell Ave in Dallas, there will be an “Evening of Prayer & Healing” beginning at 6:30pm.  Mass will be celebrated, followed by individual prayers for healing/blessing.  Fr Daniel Toomey welcomes all to come with expectant faith in Jesus Christ to receive prayers for physical, mental, and spiritual health.  Please pass the word around via your email list and by word of mouth.

The battle to focus

In the course of our daily lives, in many different ways, words are foisted upon us in which we have absolutely no interest.  This past Tuesday (all within a two-hour period) I was forced to endure the television playing in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, the radio blaring in the auto parts store, and the protracted cell phone conversation of the guy directly behind me in line at the post office.

I wonder if the habitual blocking-out of these undesired words makes it more difficult for us to concentrate on words that we really do want to hear.  For example, when we’re at Mass, do we find our mind wandering while the priest prays the Eucharistic Prayer, or while Sacred Scripture is being proclaimed in the Liturgy of the Word?

If we struggle with the latter, perhaps these words of St Caesarius of Arles will motivate us to try harder to remain distraction-free while the Word of God is proclaimed:

…just as we take care when we receive the Body of Christ so that no part of it falls to the ground, so should we likewise ensure that the Word of God which is given to us is not lost to our souls because we are speaking or thinking about something different.  One who listens negligently to God’s Word is just as guilty as one who, through carelessness, allows Christ’s Body to fall to the ground.

Death Certificate found on the Shroud of Turin?

I don’t know what to make of this, but it’s interesting.  It doesn’t fall into the same category of nonsense as the ‘discovery’ of the Jesus Family tomb a year or two ago.

 

A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the “death certificate” imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the crucified Jesus.

Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, said “I think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth.” She said that she had reconstructed it from fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing imprinted on the cloth together with the image of the crucified man.

The shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral and is to be put in display next spring, is regarded by many scholars as a medieval forgery. A 1988 carbon dating of a fragment of the cloth dated it to the Middle Ages.

However Dr Frale, who is to publish her findings in a new book, La Sindone di Gesu Nazareno (The Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth) said that the inscription provided “historical date consistent with the Gospels account”. The letters, barely visible to the naked eye, were first spotted during an examination of the shroud in 1978, and others have since come to light.

Some scholars have suggested that the writing is from a reliquary attached to the cloth in medieval times. But Dr Frale said that the text could not have been written by a medieval Christian because it did not refer to Jesus as Christ but as “the Nazarene”. This would have been “heretical” in the Middle Ages since it defined Jesus as “only a man” rather than the Son of God.Like the image of the man himself the letters are in reverse and only make sense in negative photographs. Dr Frale told La Repubblica that under Jewish burial practices current at the time of Christ in a Roman colony such as Palestine, a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave.

A death certificate was therefore glued to the burial shroud to identify it for later retrieval, and was usually stuck to the cloth around the face. This had apparently been done in the case of Jesus even though he was buried not in a common grave but in the tomb offered by Joseph of Arimathea.

Dr Frale said that many of the letters were missing, with Jesus for example referred to as “(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos” and only the “iber” of “Tiberiou” surviving. Her reconstruction, however, suggested that the certificate read: “In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year”. It ends “signed by” but the signature has not survived.

Read More here

A word from an ex-archeologist (me) on the opinion of some scholars that it is a medievil forgery:  The principal reason for this was the Radiocarbon 14 dating that was done a couple decades ago.  This is really not a very informative method of dating this, because the accuracy of Carbon 14 dating is a range of 500 years or so, due to the half-life decay of carbon 14 being a little over 500 years.  Which further means that the absolute youngest item you could date with this method would be from the 1500’s — BUT you wouldn’t know if it was really from 1000AD or 1500.  Fruther, you have to use many samples to get an accurate sample.  This wasn’t done on the shroud.  Further, the shroud had been ‘repaired’ at various times in its life.    Go to this site for a fair critique of the Carbon Dating.

 

Story behind hymn ‘Now Thank We All Our God’

German pastor Martin Rinkart served in the walled town of Eilenburg during the horrors of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648. Eilenburg became an overcrowded refuge for the surrounding area. The fugitives suffered from epidemic and famine. At the beginning of 1637, the year of the Great Pestilence, there were four ministers in Eilenburg. But one abandoned his post for healthier areas and could not be persuaded to return. Pastor Rinkhart officiated at the funerals of the other two.

As the only pastor left, he often conducted services for as many as 40 to 50 persons a day–some 4,480 in all. In May of that year, his own wife died. By the end of the year, the refugees had to be buried in trenches without services. Yet, while living in a world dominated by death, Rinkart wrote this timeless prayer of thanksgiving for his children:

Now thank we all our God With hearts and hands and voices;
Who wondrous things hath done, In whom this world rejoices.
Who, from our mother’s arms, Hath led us on our way,
With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today.

Pop over to the Deacon’s Bench, and listen to the hymn

‘Women Religious not complying with Vatican Study’

Hope you’re sitting down.

With about half of the responses from the nation’s 59,000 women religious accounted for, only about one percent answered, as directed, most or all of the questions contained in the study’s working paper, officially called an Instrumentum Laboris, according to one informed source.

By contrast, according to the source, congregations representing, by far, the greater majority of women religious decided not to comply and answered only a few, or none, of the questions. Many of the 340 U.S. apostolic congregation heads instead sent letters to Millea stating that what they were sending was what the Vatican was looking for.

“Cover letters [to Millea] have been respectful and kind,” one woman, familiar with the responses, told NCR. “Many of the letters have essentially said that what we have to say about ourselves has already been said in our religious constitutions.”…

All along, said one woman religious, the challenge has been to respond to the Vatican in a way that breaks a cycle of violence. She said that the women religious communities have attempted to respond by using a language “devoid of the violence” they found in the Vatican questionnaire and within the wider study. She characterized the congregation responses as “creative and affirming,” and part of an effort to set a positive example in “nonviolent resistance.”

“On the one hand we didn’t want to roll over and play dead,” she said. “So the question was, “How do you step outside a violent framework and do something new?’ That was the challenge that emerged.” One congregation, she said, cited a U.S. bishops’ statement concerning domestic abuse in its response letter to Millea. “The point is, there have to be more than two choices: Take the abuse and offer it up, or kill the abuser.“

un–…believable.

Read more at the National Catholic Distorter, but don’t linger there — you might need to have the ’spirit of Vatican II’ exorcised later.



Knife put to Pro-Lifer’s throat at clinic

A woman pulled a knife on a pro-life protester and held it to her throat outside an abortion clinic, two abortion protesters say.  The pro-lifers said they were confronted by 25-year-old Mechelle Talluah Hall as she entered the Building for Women in Duluth, Minn., Nov. 24.  “We asked the woman, ‘Please don’t take the life of your little unborn baby. We care about what happens to them,’” pro-lifer Sarah Winandy told KBJR-TV.  Winandy said that’s when the woman pulled the knife out of her purse and attacked fellow abortion protester Leah Winandy.  “She said, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t talk to me. Don’t come near me!’” said Leah Winandy.

 

Read more at World Net Daily

Pat Buchannan asks, ‘Is the church militant back?’

The new spirit was first manifest last spring, when scores of bishops denounced Notre Dame for inviting Barack Obama, a NARAL icon, to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree.

Among the motives behind the new militancy is surely the wilding attack on Pope Benedict for reconciling with the Society of St. Pius X, one of whose bishops had questioned the Holocaust. The pope was unaware of this, and the bishop apologized. To no avail. Rising in viciousness, the attacks went on for weeks. Having turned the other cheek, the church got it smacked.

In his May address to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke said, “In a culture which embraces an agenda of death, Catholics and Catholic institutions are necessarily counter-cultural.”

Exactly. Catholicism is necessarily an adversary faith and culture in an America where a triumphant secularism has captured the heights, from Hollywood to the media, the arts and the academy, and relishes nothing more than insults to and blasphemous mockery of the Church of Rome.

Our new battling bishops may be surprised to find they have a large cheering section among a heretofore silent and sullen faithful who have been desperate to find a few clerical champions.

Read on Here

Be thankful ye are alive today

From the History of the Plymouth Colony written by William Bradford in 1650.

Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the fast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. They had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. And for the season it was winter, and they know that the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men–and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. If it be said they had a ship to succor them, it is true; but what heard they daily from the master and company? But that with speed they should look out a place (with their shallop) where they would be, at some near distance; for the season was such that he would not stir from thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them, where they would be, and he might go without danger; and that victuals consumed space but he must and would keep sufficient for themselves and their return. Yea, it was muttered by some that if they got not a place in time, they would turn them and their goods ashore and leave them. Let it also be considered what weak hopes of supply and succor they left behind them, that might bear up their minds in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving Day!

And in case you weren’t a reader of our blog last year, check out Glenn’s classic Thanksgiving Day post.

Retreat pics (click to enlarge)

Conference #2 (Saturday morning)

Prayers at supper to welcome the Lord's Day

Benediction

Sunday Mass

Concluding meal (lunch on Sunday)