tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5428825023305903822024-03-13T22:11:41.323-07:00SBC WatchThe Truth about Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Richmond, New HampshireUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-54859349418239294802016-01-26T16:50:00.001-08:002016-01-26T16:50:17.693-08:00About Immaculate Heart of Mary School at Saint Benedict Center<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Immaculate Heart of Mary School is a traditional primary and secondary school (K-12) in the Catholic tradition, run by the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire. This is in the Keene area, part of the Monadnock Region.<br />
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For students from grades K through twelve, Immaculate Heart of Mary School offers an integrated curriculum, laying a solid foundation in the liberal arts, Latin, music, history and the highest scholastic arts.<br />
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<a href="http://www.ihmsnh.org/" target="_blank">Go to the Immaculate Heart of Mary School website.</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.ihmsnh.org/" target="_blank"><img alt="IHM_School_Site" class="aligncenter wp-image-50002 size-large" src="http://catholicism.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/01/IHM_School_Site-1024x533.png" height="206" width="400" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-19510977430784597372011-08-06T07:20:00.000-07:002011-08-06T07:22:37.114-07:00SBC Triumphs, Chapel Moves Forward<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The following is excerpted from <a href="http://catholicism.org/ad-rem-no-163.html">"Victory! And a Building Project"</a> at SBC's main site. We here at SBC Watch are overjoyed!<br />
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<div align="CENTER">****************<br />
<br />
<blockquote><b>A Major Legal Victory<br />
</b></blockquote></div><blockquote>We have fought six years for our right to build. In a landmark civil and religious rights case in New Hampshire, a Cheshire County Superior Court judge ruled that our right of free exercise was violated by the Town of Richmond. This was the judge’s decision in a motion for summary judgment. (You can read <a href="http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/SaintBenedictCenterSJOrder.pdf" target="_blank">a PDF of that order</a>.) It took a long time, but rather than allow the case to go to trial, the Town elected <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/4092" target="_blank">to settle out of court</a>. The settlement included a cash payment from the Town’s insurance carrier.<br />
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We invested most of that settlement money, after paying <a href="http://www.wadleighlaw.com/" target="_blank">our attorneys</a>, on needed building repairs and maintenance of our present physical plant, which is now more functional and beautiful than ever. Even with the cash settlement in hand, we could not build the chapel, because the litigation was not yet over (<i>keep reading to see why</i>).<br />
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The Town also agreed, <i>almost a year later</i>, to drop the outlandish thirty plus conditions the Planning Board imposed on us. It was these conditions — some impossible, some illegal, all expensive — that brought us to the courts in the first place. The litigation was complicated by a group of “interveners,” Richmond residents hostile to the Center, who became a third party to the case. They dragged things out and made the proceedings more costly for both the Town and the Center.<br />
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But now it’s finally over, appeals and all — <i>after two agonizing years of site plan review and four years of litigation</i> — and we have prevailed! Or, rather, Our Lady has prevailed through us. <i>Deo Gratias! </i></blockquote></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-24677740131354534202011-05-04T07:13:00.000-07:002011-05-04T07:14:34.135-07:00SBC Will Have a Papal Knight at Their Conference!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">From <a href="http://brotherandre.stblogs.com/2011/05/04/coulombe/" target="_blank">Brother André Marie's Blog... </a><br />
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<blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">The theme of this year’s conference will be <b>Right and Freedom: Catholic Considerations on Misused Concepts</b>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Included in the list of speakers is author, papal historian, and lecturer, Charles A. Coulombe, K.C.S.S. By order of Pope John Paul II, Mr. Coulombe was created a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_St._Sylvester" target="_blank">Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester</a> for his services rendered to the Holy See. Author of the chart-climbing <i>The Pope’s Legion</i>, and <i>Puritan’s Empire: A Catholic Perspective on American History</i>, Coulombe is recognized internationally for his in-depth knowledge of Vatican politics and the influence of Catholicism in America and Europe. His audiences regularly range from graduate students at Oxford University, England to the New Mexico Military Institute, from which he graduated. His international articles have appeared in the <i>New Oxford Review</i>, <i>National Catholic Register</i>, <i>American Thinker</i>, <i>Los Angeles Catholic Mission</i>, <i>Monarchy Canada</i>, and <i>The Irish Democrat</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Read the full press release <a href="http://www.catholic.org/prwire/headline.php?ID=9894" target="_blank">here</a>. Learn more about the conference <a href="http://cat.catholicism.org/2011/04/16/2011-saint-benedict-center-conference/" target="_blank">here</a>.</div></blockquote></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-30244498773556191412011-04-11T06:55:00.000-07:002011-04-11T06:55:59.686-07:00About Father Leonard Feeney, M.I.C.M.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Leonard Feeney was born in Lynn, Massachusetts on February 15, 1897. On the eve of Our Lady's Nativity, September 7, 1914, he entered the Jesuit Novitiate of Saint Andrew in upstate New York. During his 14 year formation as a Jesuit, he studied in England, Wales, Belgium, France, and the U.S.A. At the end of a brilliant scholasticate and theologate, he took religious vows as a son of Saint Ignatius, and was ordained a priest on June 20, 1928.<br />
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Father Feeney then embarked on what would become one of the most celebrated careers any priest could enjoy as a writer, lecturer and editor. During the 1930's he was literary editor of <em>America</em>, the Jesuit-run Catholic monthly. At the same time, <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?target=categories&category_id=151">his books</a>, published by some of the major publishers of that time, were becoming standards in Catholic schools and homes all across the country. They include Riddle and Reverie (MacMillan, 1936), Song for a Listener (MacMillan, 1936), You'd Better Come Quietly (Sheed and Ward, 1939), The Leonard Feeney Omnibus (Sheed and Ward, 1943), Your Second Childhood (Bruce Publishing Company, 1945) Mother Seton, an American Woman (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1948),<em> <em><a href="http://store.catholicism.org/survival-till-seventeen.html">Survival Till Seventeen</a> </em></em>(Sheed and Ward, 1948).<br />
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Father's genius as a writer, speaker and theologian, was attested to by some of the most prominent Catholic figures of his day. Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that the only substitute he would allow on his radio show was Father Feeney. Frank Sheed, of Sheed and Ward said, "For Father Feeney, dogma is not only true; it is breathlessly exciting. That is his special vocation. . . to make his readers feel the thrill." During Father's days at Oxford, Lord Cecil, the famous Oxford don admitted, "I am getting more out of my association with Leonard Feeney than he could possibly get from me." Of the Jesuit's writing, Cecil said, "it shines with a pure, clear light."<br />
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In 1942, during the height of his literary fame, Father Feeney was transferred by his Jesuit superiors to Saint Benedict Center, a Catholic student center which had been founded two years earlier by Catherine Goddard Clarke. Mrs. Clarke had sought the permission of the then-Archbishop of Boston, William Cardinal O'Connell, to establish an educational oasis of Catholic truth close to the renowned secular universities in that area. The Cardinal readily agreed to the project, admonishing Mrs. Clarke to "teach the Faith without compromise." So it was that Saint Benedict Center quietly came into existence that year at the intersection of Bow and Arrow Streets in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.<br />
The Center's initial purpose was to provide religious instruction for the Catholic students of the universities and, in keeping with the instructions of Cardinal O'Connell, its policy was to teach the authentic doctrines of the Church through the study of Holy Scripture, and the writings of the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints of the Church. This program of studies achieved immediate success, filling the spiritual vacuum created by an obvious deficiency in the neighboring academic institutions. The Center was attended in large and growing numbers.<br />
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With Father Feeney's transfer to Saint Benedict Center, a whole new era in his life — and in the lives of countless others — was to commence. Within three years, he came to see clearly that the Church was headed down a dangerous path of compromise and accommodation, leading to what is now universally recognized as a "crisis in the Church." Not only did Father see the problem before anybody else, he also saw the primary cause: the obscuring of the Catholic Church's teaching <a href="http://catholicism.org/category/outside-the-church-there-is-no-salvation">"outside the Church, there is no salvation" (extra ecclesiam nulla salus)</a>.<br />
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In 1949, with the loyal support of those who had become his spiritual children, Father Feeney founded the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. From the foundation of the Congregation until his death in 1978, Father Feeney continued to teach his disciples and form them into a community of apostles dedicated, not only to the restoration of the Dogma of Faith, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, but also to the conversion of the United States of America to the One, True Faith, outside of which no one at all is saved.<br />
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After Father Feeney’s death in 1978, the great Scottish apostle of Christ the King, Hamish Fraser, eulogized him as "one of the most outstanding prophets of our time. For not only did he most accurately diagnose the contemporary malaise, long before others became aware of it; he also put his finger on the very omission which was both symptom and cause of the plague of liberal indifferentism which eventually surfaced as post-Conciliar Neomodernism and oecumania."</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-33483614916549357452011-04-11T06:52:00.000-07:002011-04-11T06:52:33.279-07:00About Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="author_description"> <ul style="text-align: left;"><li> <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?target=categories&category_id=277" target="_blank">Read Brother Francis' Books</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://store.catholicism.org/browse-by-speaker/br-francis-maluf-m-i-c-m-.html" target="_blank">Listen to His Lectures</a>. </li>
</ul><br />
Brother Francis was born, in the town of Mashrah, Lebanon, about thirty miles from Beirut, in 1913. His given name was Fakhri Boutros Maluf. The <a href="http://maloofsinternational.org/" target="_blank">Maluf</a> family is descended from the ancient <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghassanids" target="_blank">Ghassanids</a>, Christian and Catholic Arabs who courageously kept the Faith in the face of Moslem aggression.<br />
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Though poor, Fakhri’s family saw to his education, which was provided at home, in a small school that his father operated. In 1934, Fakhri graduated from the <a href="http://www.aub.edu.lb/" target="_blank">American University of Beirut</a> with a Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics. From 1934 to 1939, he taught physics at that same University. <br />
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In 1939, he moved to the United States to attend the <a href="http://www.umich.edu/" target="_blank">University of Michigan, Ann Arbor</a>, where he received first an M.A. and, in 1942, a Ph.D. in philosophy. After receiving his Ph.D., he continued post-graduate studies at <a href="http://www.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard University</a> and <a href="http://www.sbu.edu/" target="_blank">Saint Bonaventure University.</a><br />
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From 1942 to 1945, Dr. Maluf taught mathematics and science at <a href="http://www.holycross.edu/" target="_blank">Holy Cross College</a> in Worcester, Massachusetts. From 1945 to 1949, he taught philosophy, theology, and mathematics at <a href="http://www.bc.edu/" target="_blank">Boston College</a>.<br />
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In addition to his academic career, Dr. Maluf's first decade in America was filled with great religious activity. On the Feast of St. Andrew (Nov. 30) in 1940, he became a Catholic. (Although he came from an historic Catholic family, his father had become a Mason and raised the children with no religion.) Two years later, he met <a href="http://www.catholicism.org/father-feeney.html" target="_blank">Father Leonard Feeney</a>, chaplain of Saint Benedict Center. In 1949, Dr. Maluf and two other professors at Boston College were dismissed from the faculty after charging the College, in a letter to Pope Pius XII and the Superior General of the Jesuit Order, with promoting the liberal doctrine of salvation outside the Church. That same year, Dr. Maluf became one of the pioneer members of Father Feeney’s religious Order, the <a href="http://www.catholicism.org/our-congregation.html" target="_blank">Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary</a>, eventually taking the vows of religion and the name Brother Francis, after Saint Francis Xavier.<br />
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Since that time, Brother Francis continued to teach Sacred Scripture, philosophy, theology, science and mathematics at various levels. For many years he was the Superior of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary monastery in Richmond, New Hampshire. While in his 90s, he continued to give weekly lectures on various topics, teach high school, head the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies, and oversee the publishing apostolate of Saint Benedict Center.<br />
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On July 19, 2009, Brother Francis marked his 96<sup>th</sup> birthday. On September 5 of that year — a first Saturday — Brother went to his reward.<br />
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Although our Order is of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, Brother Francis was a <a href="http://www.melkite.org/Melkite.htm" target="_blank">Melkite Rite (Byzantine) Catholic</a>.<b> </b><br />
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<b>Please read <a href="http://catholicism.org/brother-francis-obiturary.html">Brother Francis’ Obituary</a> and the <i>Ad Rem</i>, <a href="http://catholicism.org/ad-rem-no-116.html">The Funeral of Brother Francis, in Thoughts and Pictures</a>.</b><br />
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He gave numerous lectures and courses that are available on our online store in <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?target=categories&category_id=277" target="_blank">books</a> or on <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/browse-by-speaker/br-francis-maluf-m-i-c-m-.html" target="_blank">audio</a>.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-59103675520791307902011-04-11T06:48:00.000-07:002011-04-11T06:48:34.935-07:00About Brother Andre Marie, M.I.C.M.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Brother Andre Marie graduated from that city's <a href="http://www.holycrosstigers.com/">Holy Cross School</a> in 1988. He went on to study at <a href="http://www.lsu.edu/">Louisiana State University's</a> (LSU) main campus in Baton Rouge, on full scholarship as a music major. After three years at LSU, he transferred to <a href="http://www.holyapostles.edu/">Holy Apostles College and Seminary</a>, in Cromwell, Connecticut, where he took a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spring of 1993 (major in Humanities with a minor in Philosophy). In September of 2007, he received the degree of Master of Arts in Theology, <i>Summa cum Laude</i>, also from Holy Apostles.<br />
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He entered as a postulant for the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in May of 1993, and went on to the novitiate on Christmas of that year. He made profession of vows on Epiphany of 1996.<br />
Since 1993, he was mentored in philosophy and theology by <a href="http://www.catholicism.org/brother-francis_bio.html">Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M., Ph.D.</a>, a published philosopher of note.<br />
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His apostolic work has included various facets of the publishing apostolate of the congregation. For ten years, he was also part of the community's small "mission band" of brothers who traveled to different cities distributing literature to interested persons in an effort to spread the Catholic Faith and bring wayward Catholics back to a sacramental life. He oversaw that apostolate for four years.<br />
He has edited three of the Order's books, published dozens of articles, and presented numerous <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/browse-by-speaker/br-andre-marie-m-i-c-m-prior-1.html" target="_blank">lectures</a> in apologetics, the history of doctrine, the Church's ecumenical councils, ecclesiology, and devotional topics. He is currently giving lectures on making America Catholic as part of the <a href="http://www.sbcconference.com/the-catholic-america-tour/" target="_blank">"Catholic America Tour."</a><br />
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Since 2002, he has been Prior of St. Benedict Center, an apostolate of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire.<br />
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Past memberships include the <a href="http://www.kofc.org/un/index.cfm">Knights of Columbus</a>, the <a href="http://www.iteaonline.org/">Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association</a>, and <a href="http://www.sinfonia.org/">Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia</a>. Brother maintains a weblog called <a href="http://brotherandre.stblogs.com/">Brother André Marie’s Theology Blog</a>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-76315518488384087072011-01-29T16:31:00.001-08:002011-01-29T16:31:34.586-08:00Battle over Richmond project isn’t over yet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h4>St. Benedict’s and neighbors ask judge for help</h4><h5>By Kyle Jarvis <br />
Sentinel Staff</h5><div class="timestamp" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px;">Published: <br />
<div class="timestamp">Sunday, January 23, 2011 8:47 AM EST</div></div><div id="storytext">Though the town of Richmond and the St. Benedict Center settled a religious discrimination lawsuit last year, the legal battle rages on.<br />
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The center is asking the court to approve an agreement previously negotiated with the town on conditions of approval for a proposed construction project, while a group of residents, including abutters to the center’s property, is asking the court to send the matter back to the town’s planning and zoning boards. Residents say they’d then have a chance to be heard.<br />
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At a hearing in Cheshire County Superior Court Thursday, the center and the group of residents each argued that town officials have not followed the proper process on a previous court order.<br />
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The discrimination lawsuit stemmed from the center’s plans to build a 10,000-square-foot school and chapel on its Fay Martin Road property.<br />
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Following several hearings, the project received approval from the town’s planning and zoning boards, but with that approval came a list of 30 conditions.<br />
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The center argued it could never meet all 30 conditions, which amounted to a violation of its constitutional rights under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and Judge Philip P. Mangones agreed.<br />
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Rather than go to trial, the town settled for $1.15 million. It was hailed as one of the largest settlements of its kind.<br />
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In April, officials from the center met several times with some members of the planning board and board of selectmen to revisit the conditions, said Michael J. Tierney, the center’s attorney. The result was a revised list of 23 conditions.<br />
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In June, the center and the town asked Mangones to approve the conditions. The judge Mangones declined the request, instead ordering the town to seek “meaningful input” from the planning board and zoning board.<br />
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“It is not clear ... that the planning board and zoning board of adjustment, as the entities with the power to make decisions with respect to land use issues, had authorized counsel to enter this settlement,” Mangones said in the order from June.<br />
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Then, things changed when some planning board members made 21 changes to the new revisions, “which I argued are more onerous than the 23 conditions agreed upon in April,” Tierney said.<br />
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But the full planning board never gave the okay for going ahead with the changes, according to two planning board members, which didn’t sit well with Tierney and the residents.<br />
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At least two planning board members claim a selectman told them their input wasn’t needed.<br />
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Mangones took the matter under advisement and will be issuing a ruling.<br />
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Richmond attorney Daniel J. Mullen could not be reached for comment on the town’s position.<br />
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Kyle Jarvis can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1433, or <a href="mailto:kjarvis@keenesentinel.com">kjarvis@keenesentinel.com</a></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-74332685619770643282010-12-31T21:49:00.000-08:002010-12-31T21:49:44.500-08:00Letter to the Editor: Jesus Insulted at Christmas<h1><a href="http://www.keenesentinel.com/articles/2010/12/31/opinion/letters_editor/free/id_422830.txt">Spotlight photo was insulting to all Christians</a></h1><div style="float: right;"><div id="photo" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><div align="center"><a href="http://adsys.townnews.com/c10382859/creative/keenesentinel.com/opinion+letters_editor+instory/240372-1288622348.jpg?r=http://www.roofsplus.com/" target="_blank"><br />
</a></div></div><br />
</div><div class="timestamp" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px;">Published: Friday, December 31, 2010</div>“ ’tis the season,” right?<br />
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It seems as though ’tis the season to insult and revile Christ and Christianity!<br />
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I refer to the photograph in your Spotlight section of Thursday, Dec. 9, “celebrating” holiday concerts and shows in the region.<br />
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This offensive photograph purports to publicize a show called “Jewmongous” which “pokes fun at the producer’s Jewish heritage and modern Jewish life.”<br />
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So I ask, why in heaven’s name does one of the figures in the picture obviously represent Jesus Christ? Is he a part of modern Jewish life? I don’t think so. Too bad the makeup man did not include the blood streaming from his head and face as a result of that crown of thorns and a torn bloody cloak from the terrible scourging he received.<br />
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This is funny? It is an outright mockery of Christ and every Christian, no matter what his or her affiliation, should be outraged at the newspaper’s selection of this particular photograph from the show.<br />
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Would you print such a depiction of Mohammad? I seriously doubt it, as it would call upon your heads a fatwah (sentence of death for blasphemy).<br />
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Remember the cartoonist in the Netherlands? He still fears for his life long after the incident and is under 24-hour guard.<br />
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Shame on you!<br />
<br />
ELEONORE VILLARRUBIA<br />
<br />
22 Fatima Way<br />
<br />
Richmond<br />
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Edited for style.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-764439116730626232010-12-27T18:49:00.000-08:002010-12-27T18:49:34.137-08:00Merry, Marian Christmas!This is from the main SBC site: <br />
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<blockquote>To all our tertiaries, friends, benefactors, and regular readers, I express the heartfelt wishes of all the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brothers and Sisters: May the tender Virgin and St. Joseph bring Jesus into your homes, and may the grace of God the Father, the wisdom of His eternal Child, and the charity of Their Holy Ghost be with you all this Christmas. <br />
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Please feel free to read our <a href="http://catholicism.org/tag/christmas">Christmas selections</a> on this site, as well as my <a href="http://www.catholicism.org/downloads/Christmas2010LetterWeb.pdf" target="_blank">Christmas Letter</a>. <br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><br />
— <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1467026195" target="_blank">Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M. (Prior)</a></div></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-3990739947132932752010-12-24T18:37:00.000-08:002010-12-24T19:08:59.538-08:00Welcome to the New SBC Watch!SBC Watch is back. We're under new management.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-78547234183271703812010-09-23T13:25:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.329-08:00The Fire of PentecostBy <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/briankelly">Brian Kelly</a><br />Summer begins on my calendar after our May Procession. In meteorological time, it begins June 1. What this means is that the season of summer extends through the warmest months of the year, which in the Northern Hemisphere are June, July, and August. I only discovered today, while beginning this article, that in Great Britain and Ireland (and other northern countries) summer follows weather, or meteorological time. In Shakespeare’s <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> the play takes place during the shortest night of the year, June 21, although this is not, in meteorological time, mid summer. That would be mid July. <img alt="" class="mceWPmore mceItemNoResize" mce_src="http://catholicism.org/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" src="http://catholicism.org/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" title="More..." /><br /><a name='more'></a><br />However, in North America we start our summer with the summer solstice, June 21, which, I think, makes more sense because it marks the longest day of the year, and even though the days begin to slowly grow shorter after the summer solstice, June, July, and August are the months with the longest days of the year overall. School time, of course, summer begins when school gets out, or, on the average, Memorial Day, the last Monday in May. In the Southern Hemisphere our summer is their winter; so June 21 for them is the winter solstice.<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pentecost</b></div>Liturgically, in the summer, the Church lives in the season of Pentecost. On Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the Birthday of the Church, the Day the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, descended on the fearful Apostles and changed hesitant men into roaring lions for Christ.<br />“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak” (Acts 2:2).<br />The Holy Spirit, who is everywhere, made His presence known in this place, in this city of Jerusalem, in this house of the family of Saint Mark, in this Upper Room of the house where the Holy Eucharist was instituted, by way of a “mighty wind” and “fire.”<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Fire</b></div>The sun in the summer is high in the sky and gives off its greatest light and heat during the season of Pentecost. The sun is fire, and without fire there is no light and no heat. There is a trinity in all created things. Light proceeds from the fire, as the Son from the Father, and heat proceeds from the fire and light, as the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and Son as Love.<br />Why did the Third Person of the Trinity appear as tongues of fire upon the heads of the Apostles? What is it about this material element, or rather, its manifestation as light and heat, which makes it so spiritual that indeed, although invisible itself, all material things must be seen by means of it and, although unfelt itself, makes all things warm that are touched by it. Fire, by its nature, is material, but it is the closest of all material things to immaterial realities.<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b> <span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;">The Greek Philosophers on Change and the Causes of Change</span></b></div>Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, who lived around the fifth century B.C., was convinced that fire was cause of everything in the cosmos. He was one of many philosophers of that time who studied at Ionia (Miletus, in today’s western coast of Turkey) at the school founded by Thales, the father of western philosophy. The thinkers of that Eleatic school, as it was called, were looking for the ultimate causes of the material universe, and they were stuck in the material realm until Anaxagoras came along. He came up with the idea that <i>nous</i>, or mind, was the ultimate reality that formed all things, and that purpose (telos) was behind the order in the cosmos. However, Plato said that he fell short of attributing design, and, therefore, knowledge to his nous. The Greeks, among others, believed that there were four ultimate elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Thales thought that water was the ultimate element from which all things arise and participate in. Anaxamenes thought that air was the basic element. Heraclitus considered it to be fire, because, he said all things are in flux and always changing and fire underlies all change. He was the first philosopher to use the term <i>logos</i> (reason or word) although he did not rise to the spiritual realm with that concept as Plato did later. For him, <i>logos</i>, was creative of all things, but still material, although utterly ethereal, containing all things, even opposites.<br />This kind of speculation may not seem very brilliant to us, but we must remember that the ancient Greeks were pagans and had no knowledge of holy scripture, hence creation from nothing by an Omnipotent God. By the light of reason alone they were unable to entertain the concept of a beginning (creation), believing that matter, even if formless, or chaotic, was eternal and infinite. In fact one of their philosophers, Anaxamander, posited that the cosmos arose out a force that was limitless and infinite. He was a fascinating thinker and studied directly under Thales. He was, among many other things, an astronomer and mathematician and he calculated solstices and equinoxes. He had a peculiar theory that the Earth, which he held to be cylindrical, was orbited by a revolving dome that was punctured with holes and that outside the dome was fire, hence the stars were merely small holes in the canopy and the sun was a big one. Nevertheless, I was always impressed by Heraclitus, whose errors, like other Greek philosophers, helped the advance of natural wisdom as much as his correct theories. If we understand by “fire,” in Heraclitus’ thought, the reality of “change,” then that element takes on a deeper significance that mere flames, light, and heat.<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Fire in Nature</b></div>But enough of that. It is fire that I wish to write about, albeit briefly, in its relation to our Faith. The word “fire” in holy scripture is used analogously and really, spiritually and physically. When Jesus said, “I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled? (Luke 12:49), He was, of course, speaking analogously of spiritual fire. As was His Precursor, John the Baptist, when he told the penitents who had come to his baptism: “I indeed baptize you in the water unto penance, but he that shall come after me, is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire” (Matt. 3:11).<br />Heraclitus made a good point when he spoke of the power of this incandescent, or flaming, combustion of fuel and oxygen, that seems to defy an adequate definition. Physical fire is not limited to what we are familiar with everyday; lightning is fire; and the sun and stars are fire, but much hotter than the flames that end up as carbon gas in our ordinary experience.<br />The fire of the sun is the cause of almost all energy related substantial change: photosynthesis and evaporation, which give us plant life and rain; without CO2 in the atmosphere and H2O plants would not live, nor animals, nor man. Carbon dioxide is what plants take in to grow (call it plant "respiration") like our lungs do air. We exhale CO2 on account of our 98.6 degree body’s fire. What we produce in CO2 is not enough for plant life, but it helps. Volcanoes certainly exude a lot, as do forest fires, and all decomposing fossil fuels.<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Fire in Supernature</b></div>Point being: fire changes things. When Jesus calls us to penance, and fills the world with the grace for all men to amend their lives, He likens it to casting fire upon the earth. We need the fire of grace from the Spirit of Christ to do penance and “change our minds” as the Greek word for penance, <i>metanoia</i>, implies. The sacrament of baptism does even more. The baptized become members of the Mystical Body of Christ and are “washed” (baptizein, in Greek, means “to wash”) from all sin by the fire of the Holy Ghost. That is why John the Baptist was so excited about Jesus’ baptism, which was far greater than his. As the church teaches us, the grace of baptism (and all the sacraments) works ex opere operato, from the act itself of receiving the sacrament; all that is needed for those with personal (and original) sin is Faith and sorrow for sin, and all sin and punishment due to sin is wiped out. That’s a change worthy of supernatural fire, isn’t it? How much of a change? How about being translated from mere children of Adam to becoming children of God and heirs to the kingdom of heaven!<br />When we see or feel fire we stand away from it lest we get burnt. For all the good that it does for us, it can also kill us. But God has other things that he does with material fire, and you will be surprised to know what He does.<br />He sometimes manifested His presence in the Old Testament by fire. God spoke to Moses in a burning bush, and that fire, although material with flames and all, did not consume the bush. The laws of nature were suspended by the Author of nature, so that Moses would realize who it was who was speaking to him. A pillar of fire led Moses and the Israelites through the desert nights on their way to the Promised Land. An angel from heaven took a burning coal from heaven’s thurible and purified the lips of Isaias the prophet with it. This fire did no harm, but purified him. And, speaking about suspending the laws of nature, when God punished Pharaoh and the Egyptians for refusing to allow the Israelites to depart their land, one of His punishments was fiery hail. How could hail be on fire? Well, God can make anything, except a contradiction, which is not a thing. Fiery hail is not a contradiction, as would be dry rain, or a square circle.<br />“And the hail and fire mixed with it drove on together: and it was of so great bigness, as never before was seen in the whole land of Egypt since that nation was founded. And the hail destroyed through all the land of Egypt all things that were in the fields, both man and beast: and the hail smote every herb of the field, and it broke every tree of the country” (Exodus 9:24&25).<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Purifying Fire</b></div>So fire, material fire, can purify. This is what the fire in purgatory does. It purifies the souls waiting there to be taken as perfect vessels to heaven. Even here on earth fire purifies, as you know. Pure iron is extracted from impurities in iron ore by fire, and iron is purified by fire again to make steel. Iron and brass were being produced by Adam’s grandson Tubalcain. Even steel is mentioned in the Bible (Jeremais 15:12). Today there’s about 1300 million tons of it produced annually.<br />How does material fire purify souls? Well, we know that it cannot consume souls because the soul is spiritual and immortal. How then does it torment a soul in purgatory? First of all one must realize that the torments of the fire in purgatory are of a different kind than the fiery torments of hell. The fire is material in both places, but in purgatory the suffering souls have holy joy, and they desire to suffer. They know that they will see God and they also know that, although their guilt has been erased by confession, they must be “refined” spiritually from all the dross that the effects of personal sin has stained their wills with. This is why we pray after Holy Communion at Mass that the Body and Blood of Jesus will “cleave” to our very entrails (literally, yes, that is what the Latin viscera means) and wash away “every stain of sin that remains” in us.<br />I do not claim to understand why God chose fire to purify holy and imperfect souls in the next life, but I do know this, and I’ve been repeating it all along: Fire changes things! It cannot change a soul substantially, like it could a mortal body, but it can change a soul accidentally, by refining it. Therefore, it is better to refer to the punishments in purgatory as a chastisement. Chastisement is medicinal for the soul; it is inflicted in order to bring about change for the better. This is what Saint Paul meant when he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: Every man's work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire” (3: 12-15).<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hell Fire</b></div>The fire in hell does not purify, but it torments in just punishment. It is not a chastisement. These torments are not the essential punishment of hell, but the accidental. The essential punishment of hell is the pain of separation from God, the pain of loss. To miss out, through one’s own fault, on the end for which one was created, the eternal vision of God, is the greatest of all pains that the damned suffer. Some of the more modern opinions proffer that the misery of the damned lies in that they have to live forever with the choice they made final at death to reject the love of God. This is, of course, true. But it is only one side of the coin of misery. The other side, the worse pain, is knowing that in opting for this final act of rebellion, the damned “feel” the turning away of the face of God from them. No, they do not see the face of God in His essence, but they do see the face of Christ the God-Man at their particular judgment. They do experience, and that forever, the horror of His just sentence: “Depart from Me.” And, this is yet another torment, their self-knowledge. They know their sentence is just. They see their own state of perpetual rebellion, which accuses them of a fixed will of preferring to continue in their sins even if they had the opportunity of a thousand more years of life, of two thousand, of a million.<br />But I am speaking here of fire. How does material fire torment an evil spirit or a human soul? For that matter, after the resurrection of the body, how does fire torment an immortal body in hell, since it does not consume the material substance and does not feed off any fuel. Tough questions, for sure. Nor are there any sufficient answers; for the fire in hell, although material, does not manifest the same nature as that with which we are familiar. The fire in hell, or so say the saints who have seen it, does not give off light. Our Lord referred to hell as “the exterior darkness,” “everlasting fire,” where “the worm dieth not,” and where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”<br />This does not mean that every one who is damned suffers in the same degree. Hell has its own “mansions,” some far more wretched than others. Even when it comes to the fire, not every person in hell is roasting over the flames. What the children of Fatima saw and what Saint Theresa of Avila describes below, is the place where the vast majority of the damned are tormented, each according to their particular vice or vices. But there could be other places in hell where the fire is not burning the unrepentant sinners from within but where it acts from without, tormenting the person by way of ligation. So, says Saint Thomas. The fire acts upon these less evil creatures as would the walls of a prison, afflicting them by way of confinement. But still, and justly, a most horrific end that will never end.<br />Saint Theresa describes her vision of hell:<br />"A long time after the Lord had already granted me many of the favors I've mentioned and other very lofty ones, while I was in prayer one day, I suddenly found that, without knowing how, I had seemingly been put in hell. I understood that the Lord wanted me to see the place the devils had prepared there for me and which I merited because of my sins. This experience took place within the shortest space of time, but even were I to live for many years I think it would be impossible for me to forget it. The entrance it seems to me was similar to a very long and narrow alleyway, like an oven, low and dark and confined; the floor seemed to me to consist of dirty, muddy water emitting foul stench and swarming with putrid vermin. At the end of the alleyway a hole that looked like a small cupboard was hollowed out in the wall; there I found I was placed in a cramped condition. All of this was delightful to see in comparison with what I felt there. What I have described can hardly be exaggerated. What I felt, it seems to me, cannot even begin to be exaggerated; nor can it be understood. I experienced a fire in the soul that I don't know how I could describe. The bodily pains were so unbearable that though I had suffered excruciating ones in this life and according to what doctors say, the worst that can be suffered on earth for all my nerves were shrunken when I was paralyzed, plus many other sufferings of many kinds that I endured and even some as I said, caused by the devil, these were all nothing in comparison with the ones I experienced there. I saw furthermore that they would go on without end and without ever ceasing. This, however, was nothing next to the soul's agonizing: a constriction, a suffocation, an affliction so keenly felt and with such a despairing and tormenting unhappiness that I don't know how to word it strongly enough. To say the experience is as though the soul were continually being wrested from the body would be insufficient, for it would make you think somebody else is taking away the life, whereas here it is the soul itself that tears itself in pieces. The fact is that I don't know how to give a sufficiently powerful description of that interior fire and that despair, coming in addition to such extreme torments and pains. I didn't see who inflicted them on me, but, as it seemed to me, I felt myself burning and crumbling; and, I repeat, the worst was that interior fire and despair. Being in such an unwholesome place, so unable to hope for any consolation, I found it impossible either to sit down or to lie down, nor was there any room, even though they put me in this kind of hole made in the wall. Those walls, which were terrifying to see, closed in on themselves and suffocated everything. There was no light, but all was enveloped in the blackest darkness. I don't understand how this could be, that everything painful to see was visible." [Source: The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume 1, Chapter 32: paragraphs: 1,2,3.]<br />This is the beginning of wisdom, to fear God. First, to have a servile fear of Him, then, after growing in love, to arrive at a filial fear, which is to fear offending God on account of His goodness, rather than His punishments. “But I will shew you whom you shall fear: fear ye him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear him.” (Luke 12:5).<br /><div mce_style="text-align: center;" style="text-align: center;"><b>Holy Fire</b></div>Surely, even a greater mystery than fire serving as an everlasting or temporary torment in the next life is fire serving unto glory. I do not know if the saints who spoke of such holy fire, as it burned within them, were speaking of the element analogously or in its reality, but I am inclined to think that it was both real and symbolic. Saint Francis Xavier used to have to splash cold water on his breast to relieve the intense heat that he felt inside when God would strike a chord in his heart in one wayward pulsation of divine love. There were numerous times where witnesses saw him do this in public, when the fire in his heart was so torrid that he could not wait until he had found some privacy. Another saint who had to deal with a similar “problem” was Saint Philip Neri. When he assisted at Holy Mass, the fire in his heart used to cause the beating pulsations to become so violent, that not only his body but the walls of the church would shake. During one particularly alarming episode, a fireball was seen to shoot through the church’s ceiling and down into the mouth of the saint then out his chest and back through the roof. Philip collapsed in agony. The ball of fire had burst through his ribs, opening them wide beneath the skin, thus providing his passionate heart more room to express its intense fervor. Then, there was Saint Catherine of Siena. While in ecstasy that seraph of love once cried out: “My nature is fire!”<br />The Holy Ghost, Author of Grace, used tongues of fire as a symbol of His transforming presence when He filled the hearts of the Twelve Apostles with the fire of the virtue and power of His seven Gifts. The seven Gifts are not habits in the soul, as are the three theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, but they are given, infused, to <i>prompt</i> the receiver to holy action. They are like a spark; hence they ignite, like a spark, like a flame, like tongues of fire. “I am come to cast fire on the earth.”<br />The highest choir of angels are called <i>seraphim</i>. It is a Hebrew word, derived from <i>sarap</i>, which means “to burn.” Each of the nine choirs performs some service to God that befits their class. The seraphim are the highest lovers of God among the angels; they reflect in the highest brilliance the Nature of God, which is Love. The seraphim ceaselessly praise God in unending chorus: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts (Armies). Heaven and Earth are full of Your glory.” It was a seraph who took a burning coal and purified the lips of Isaias, who had seen two of these angels each with six wings, chanting in a song of praise before the thrown of the King of Glory in heaven.<br />As we live our Faith during this season of Pentecost, let us renew at times the vows of our baptism as we did during the Easter vigil. Let us deeply desire, as we pray, that the Holy Ghost truly “come” and truly “fill” our hearts, and the hearts of our neighbors in Christ. Baptize us again, O Lord, not, of course, sacramentally, for we can only be born again once, but by Your purging fire. Through Your sanctifying power, may we be worthy flames in that holy conflagration which Jesus came to cast upon the earth.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-17850438064159779572010-09-16T12:05:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.372-08:00Third Order Formation and the Saint Augustine Institute<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { text-indent: 0.2in; margin-bottom: 0in; color: #000000; line-height: 120%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none } P.western { font-family: "TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT", cursive; font-size: 10pt; so-language: en-US; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal } P.cjk { font-family: "TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT", cursive; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal } P.ctl { font-family: "TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT", cursive; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal } --> <div lang="en-US"><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;">So much has happened since I last wrote you that I hardly know where to begin. Over the past few months I have spoken on the phone with many of you — tertiaries and non-tertiaries alike. I have explained the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies (SAI) and what it means to be a tertiary of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. <a name='more'></a>Your response has been inspiring. I have been getting several requests to help individuals start Circles of Study throughout the country. Our Membership Director, Brother Michael Maria, M.I.C.M., Tert. (Brad Grinstead), and I have also been talking with seven people who wish to join us as third order members; while several others have expressed sincere interest. Tertiaries are, generally speaking, lay people. </span></span></div><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">In these conversations I have had an opportunity to tell many people about Saint Benedict Center. This is a short summary of what I have told them and what their response has been.</span></span></span><br /><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">Firstly, I explained that SAI is an easy adult-oriented method of studying the Catholic Faith. It is a tried-and-true method devised by our late superior, <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/brfrancismaluf">Brother Francis Maluf</a>. There is no tuition. One does need, of course, to pay to obtain the books. Some required books, however, can be downloaded at no cost from our website. The <span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i>Syllabus</i></span>, which outlines the course of studies, is free at <a href="http://sai.catholicism.org/">sai.catholicism.org</a>. You can go through the <span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i>Syllabus</i></span> at your own pace. You may study on your own, if necessary. If you need any help, please let me know. The required book reports are easy to do and, don’t worry, I do not grade them. If your Catholic education has stopped since you left Catholic school, here is a chance to pick up where you left off. (I promised a friend one more thing. For those in the Chicago area, there is a circle forming right now. Contact me and I will put you in touch with the right people if you are interested in joining that group.)</span></span></span><br /><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">Secondly, I talked about the Center at large and how it came to be. You would be surprised at the number of people who are just hearing about us for the first time. I took as long as was necessary to explain our double-charism as a crusade: (1) to defend all the dogmas of the Faith, but especially <span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i><a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?match=all&target=products&mode=search&subcats=Y&type=extended&avail=Y&pshort=Y&pfull=Y&pname=Y&pkeywords=Y&cid=0&q=extra+ecclesiam+nulla+salus&x=5&y=9">extra ecclesiam nulla salus</a> </i></span>(outside the Church there is no salvation), and (2) our commitment to work for the conversion of America to the one, true, Catholic religion. How could we do otherwise? We wish to share our Faith with our fellow Americans, and help them to know Our Lord in the only Church He founded.</span></span></span><br /><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">Thirdly, I spelled out what the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are all about. I explained that Third Order members practice both the contemplative and the active life; i.e., they work in the world, but they are not of the world. </span></span></span><br /><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">Learning the Faith in the proper manner is essential for our crusade. Without this knowledge we cannot be effective instruments in the active work of converting our relatively pagan country to the one, true Faith. Brother Francis used to say that one couldn’t be an aqueduct until he was first a reservoir. In other words: <span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i>Nemo dat quod non habet</i></span> (No man can give what he does not have). I stressed the importance of the proven method we use in the proper formation for our Order’s tertiaries today. We have a special mentoring program that nurtures the tertiary-novice so that he is not left to fend for himself. I also talked about the great fruits to be found on our websites, as well as in our monthly mailings, our bookstore, our weekly lectures here at the Center, and our annual conference.</span></span></span><br /><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">Finally, but certainly not the last or least thing, I discussed our great love and devotion to our Holy Mother Mary. It is she who guides our apostolate. We love her so much that, in the spirit of <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?match=all&target=products&mode=search&subcats=Y&type=extended&avail=Y&pshort=Y&pfull=Y&pname=Y&pkeywords=Y&cid=0&q=Saint+Louis+de+Montfort&x=1&y=8">Saint Louis de Montfort</a>, we have consecrated ourselves in holy slavery to her. She is our mother and our mistress. It is in Mary that we find our way to Jesus. How could a Son deny anything to so good a mother?</span></span></span><br /><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><span mce_style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;">And do you know what many of you have said in response to my conversations? I have heard this phrase so many times that I can repeat it to you word-for-word: “That is exactly what I am looking for!” I can understand this because I know how difficult it is to locate a good solid way of finding the Truth today. We are so beset with distractions, so confused with contrary teachings, so overloaded with new ways of doing things, that we no longer wish to hear the tired refrain, “Have you heard the latest?” No, we’d rather not hear the latest thing. We are modern in the good sense of the word and traditional in all respects. What we offer is the Catholic and Marian way to God that you have been looking for. Remember how the Apostle Philip enjoined his friend Nathanael when the latter said, “Can any thing of good come from Nazareth?” Philip responded, “Come and see” (John 1:46).</span></span></span><br /><div lang="en-US"><span mce_style="font-size: small;" style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i>Email Brother John Marie Vianney at toprefect@catholicism.org.</i></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-73648321122789170702010-09-09T00:00:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.391-08:00The Virtue of Patriotism<span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1370251122">By </a><a href="http://catholicism.org/author/brfrancismaluf/"><i>Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M. </i></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;">Editor: The following edited extract is taken from one of Brother Francis’ Sunday talks. We are grateful again to Sister Anna Maria, from the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Vienna, Ohio, for transcribing the lecture. </span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;"></span> <br /><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><br /></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: 45pt;"><span style="font-size: small;">P</span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>atriotism </b></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">― We love this country. We are grateful for being in this country. Some of us were born here; some of us are glad to have been brought here. No matter how we got here, as far as being able to work for the Faith, I don’t know any country more favorable. As far as having people with good will that could at least be talked to about the Faith, I don’t know where in the world you could find better folk than you do in this country. </span></span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I used to say to Father Leonard and to Sister Catherine, and they always agreed with me, that I don’t know any other country in the world where we could have done what we did here. Of course, we had corrupt courts. Of course, occasionally, we had to deal with tyrannical men in power. Of course, we had lots of persecutions and injustices done to us, but substantially, tell me any other country where we could have gone on for forty years, affirming a most unpopular doctrine ― and still be able to go on. </span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Editor’s Note: Today, as the political climate descends further and further in its commitment to exalt secularism and moral degeneracy, and the freedom to preach the truth in America seems about to be legally extinguished, I fear Voltaire’s proscription for the ultimate utopian Masonic state, as outlined in his </span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Social Contract</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">, may soon come to pass: “Let him who says that there is no salvation outside the Church be cast out of the state.” The political situation in America (as in Europe) has gotten a lot worse since Brother Francis said these things.]</span></span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Now don’t take these liberties for granted. They are ours because there was some goodness, let it be just natural goodness, in some of the men who founded this country and gave it its ideals and its Constitution. We ought to thank God for that. That’s true patriotism, and patriotism is part of the virtue of religion. The virtue of patriotism includes an active participation in whatever good we can support in the large society in which we live. We should support those running for office who are committed to protecting the just ideals found in the Constitution and to defending the country against subversion and betrayal and treason. </span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">These are all social duties, and they are essential for the promotion of the principles of the natural law. They are not the complete picture, of course, but they are a very essential part of that complete picture. And they can never be ignored with impunity.</span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Americanism — </b></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">The fact that Pope Leo XIII, in the 1890s, called the prominent liberal heresies of separation of Church and State, religious individualism, and religious egalitarianism, </span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Americanism</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> (</span><span style="color: black;"><u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testem_Benevolentiae_Nostrae"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae</i></span></span></a></u></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">, 1898) ought to be a little challenge to us. We ought to face the fact — and learn a lesson from it as good Catholics — that the Church in America, in some very serious way, has been responsible for this liberal defection from the challenge of the unadulterated Faith, a defection that we see all around us. </span></span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Americanismus</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> is a very correct way to name it. You cannot call it French; you cannot call it English; you cannot call it Chinese. It is American ― this whole idea of one religion being as good as another. “The things on which we agree are vastly more important than the things on which we differ.” The principles that Archbishop Cushing and other Americanist clergy gave in the 1940s, and even more stridently in the 1950s and 60s, became the only dogma for ambitious Catholic politicians: “We cannot inflict our conscience on anybody else.” “My Faith will not affect my politics,” etc., etc. They tell me there are any number of Catholics now in the Congress who say, “Oh, I am personally opposed to abortion, but I have no right to inflict my conscience on anybody else.”</span></span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">So they are against abortion, but they vote for every measure that encourages it. And they’re betraying, through their votes, other moral values as well, through government programs that aid and abet the corruption of youth by way of sex education subsidies and socialist economic policies. This moral relativism, of divorcing right conscience from politics, started mainly here, at least as a powerful force, right here in America; it’s because of the tremendous, paramount influence of America that it has progressed elsewhere. Doctrinal liberalism, even if it seemed to come from radical theologians from Germany, France, or Holland who had a direct influence at Vatican II, was still the American heresy. And it is with us in a far more pervasive degree today. The reason is that, for generations, nothing was done by the American hierarchy to extirpate it; in fact they began to call it “the phantom heresy.” So let this be a challenge to us. </span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">American foreign aid programs fuel many tyrannical regimes with their proliferation of weapons of mass murder. Immodest fashions, at least on the scale of mass production, mostly originated here. Hollywood hedonistic movies and other media of pornography originated here and they are a huge affliction on other countries and whole continents. </span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">We know people who are going to extremes about that, to the point of being unpatriotic, cynical, negative, and ineffective. This was never the spirit of the Center and it will never be. Even though we know that many of our founding fathers were bigots and very wrong religiously, we also thank God that they did have certain natural virtues, and they did have some good ethical principles, and we do not need to be absolutely negative in our appreciation of American history. </span></span></span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I had the privilege this year to teach a whole course in American History, and I am very happy I did it. I can speak now with more confidence. There are some good American principles that should be defended, should be rediscovered, and should be re-affirmed. America can be converted on its own principles. A man who said this very strongly in the last century was Orestes Brownson. He was very critical of the false principles that were gradually creeping into the American Republic, the unconstitutional expansion of centralized government over States’ rights for one thing, but he also was very proud and patriotic. He was glad to employ in his own apostolic work the many positive elements that patriotic Catholics could utilize from our own Constitution as a basis for bringing the complete truth to the nation. In fact, one of his best books, </span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The American Republic and Its Constitution, </i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">was written for the instruction of Catholics concerning government in general, its human origins, and concerning the Constitution.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Editor: I highly recommend Brother Thomas Mary Sennott’s book, </span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>They Fought the Good Fight</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">, which juxtaposes the lives and teachings of Brownson and Father Feeney, two of the most valiant defenders of the defined dogma: </span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">. Brother Thomas Mary’s book can be purchased from our bookstore at store.catholicism.org. Brownson had a strong conviction, as well, that our republican form of government absolutely needed the Catholic Faith to sustain it for any long period of endurance. Without the Faith, he believed, the republic would eventually fail. He wrote a treatise on the subject, which was titled: “The Catholic Faith Is Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty.”]</span></span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;"><br /></div><div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Brother Francis loved his own native country of Lebanon. He lived part of his life there — before coming to America, in 1939, at the age of twenty-six — under the yoke of foreign occupiers, first the Turks, then the French. He was very active in working towards Lebanon’s cherished independence, or any other Arab nation’s, from those who would colonize them. He was the Vice-President of the Syrian National Party, which had as its main objective the establishment of a federated republic of Arab nations, compromising what the Arabs called the “fertile crescent.” I remember him explaining how even Lebanon, in the 1930s, was threatened by Communism and that protection from this menace was another reason behind the platform of a united Syrian Republic of nation states. Brother appreciated the freedom that all nationalities had in the United States, a freedom that Catholic Americans had fought hard to achieve. He believed that, despite its imperfections, without the Constitution, Catholics would have had a far more difficult time achieving their religious and civil rights in these United States. So, he was grateful. He was grateful for whatever good that he was the recipient of, natural as well as supernatural, natural justice as well as supernatural justice, which latter is the grace we call “holiness.”</span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-69169166548940024232010-09-02T00:00:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.410-08:00Divine Love — RequitedBy <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/srmariethrse">Sister Marie Thérèse</a><br /><br />After coming up with four different ideas for this Convent Corner article, I have decided to publish a personal letter I wrote to a young lady who had expressed interest in religious life several years ago. I have since sent it to a number of other young ladies. Even if you are not personally eligible to become a sister, you may be interested in this letter.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />You see, Our Lord may be thinking of some young lady whom you know. If you can in any way help Him to obtain a lovely bride, the desire of His Sacred Heart, He will be eternally indebted to you. (Unrequited love is not only a theme on earth!) May we know and do God’s Holy Will with all of our hearts, and become the saints that the Sacred Heart intends us to be!<br /><br />Dear Mary,<br />Laudetur Jesus Christus!<br />A vocation to be a sister is one of the most wonderful gifts God can give a girl. If you are interested in giving up all of your time and talents to serve God and man through the holy vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, you very well may be called by the Sacred Heart. You are doing well to look into it.<br />Our Order is very active, so good health (mental and physical) is essential. We accept candidates between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. A young lady must have a high school diploma, a driver’s license, and a clean bill of health. She must also have received the Sacrament of Confirmation.<br />We accept visits for a week or two from young ladies who are interested in the religious life. If she still wishes to pursue religious life after the visit, and the sisters are in agreement, she may come back as an aspirant for several months, or even up to a year. During this time, she will stay with the Sisters, working, praying, eating, and recreating with them. She will probably be given a duty as an assistant in a classroom or in the kitchen.<br />If, at the end of the aspirancy, both the young lady and the sisters are assured that this may indeed be God’s Will, the superior will set a date for the young lady to enter, who will then return home for a short while.<br />A very important part of our lives is the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary. Are you familiar with this great devotion? Have you made your consecration yet?<br />Another aspect of our work is that we are part of a doctrinal crusade. This means that we teach all of the doctrines of the Faith (even the unpopular ones) clearly and without compromise. Our Order and especially our founder, Father Leonard Feeney, are particularly known for their defense and propagation of the dogma that states, “outside the Catholic Church, no one is saved.” The weakening and denial of this dogma is behind every abuse, heresy, and other problem in the Church — and further, in the world — today. “Baptism of desire” (understood as a speculation about how a justified believer in Christ might get to Heaven without receiving the sacrament of baptism) is not our issue. The necessity of the Church for salvation — with her authority, Faith, and Sacraments — is.<br />Both our consecration and our defense of the Faith are linked inextricably to the message given by Our Lady at Fatima. You may summarize our work as striving to bring about the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. Is there anything better we could be doing?<br />In conclusion, I want to encourage you to do God’s Holy Will every day, in little things. Try to get closer to Him through your daily duty and devotion to His Mother. Your present vocation is to be an excellent student, friend, daughter, and communicant. Pray your Rosary, with meditation on the mysteries, daily. By so doing, you will draw down God’s favor upon you. He will see your true interest in His will, and His plan for your vowed state in life will become clearer and clearer. Specifically and fervently, ask His Mother to assist you. She will.<br />I look forward to your response and hope to get to know more about you. Interest in the religious life, though not conclusive, is one of the signs of a vocation to the religious state. We sisters will be praying for you. Please pray for us. I am sending along a picture of the sisters.<br />May Our Lady bless you with her Holy Child and help you to discover and do His will.<br />In Her Immaculate Heart,<br />Sister Marie Thérèse, M.I.C.M.<br />Prioress<br /><br />Dear Readers, I have one more thing to share with you.<br />Time is short, as you know. As you may not know, souls are more and more receptive to the Faith. Of course, you won’t learn that by listening to the news! We discover good will every time we meet people from across the country. What I want to share with you is a very simple and special way to pray for religious vocations that they may help bring the Faith to all of the millions of souls God wishes to save.<br />Whenever I attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, at the Consecration of the Host I ask Our Blessed Mother to say something for me to Our Lord as soon as He arrives on the Altar: “Behold! The harvest is great and the laborers are few.” That is all! She doesn’t even have to ask anything of Him. As soon as He hears His beloved Mother state a need, He will surely rise to the occasion and help Her, as He did at the wedding feast at Cana. Furthermore, that prayer is not only for an increase of laborers, but also for a strengthening and perfecting of the existing laborers: the brothers and sisters already here.<br />I thank you with all my heart for joining me in this prayer for vocations!<br /><br />Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-89694117582691225782010-08-26T10:19:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.424-08:00The Mission of the Holy GhostBy <i>Brother André Marie</i> <br />Pentecost is the anniversary of the Holy Ghost’s mission on earth. Because that mission is largely neglected, sorely misunderstood, and vitally important for the life of the Church and individuals, we should do our best to understand it so that we can profit by it.<br /><a name='more'></a><b>The Promise Fulfilled. </b>We get a description of the Pentecost event today in the lesson from the Book of Acts. We’ve been expecting it since the Ascension. It comes to us, much as it came to the Apostles, by way of a promise fulfilled. Remember that Our Lord called the Holy Ghost “the Promise of the Father,” as St. Luke relates in both his Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles.<br /><div lang="en-US"><b>The List. </b>By way of summarizing who and what the Holy Ghost is, I would like to speak on three important truths about the Holy Ghost. First, the Holy Ghost <i>proceeds</i> in eternity from the Father and the Son, who also together send Him on His temporal mission. Second, that mission of the Holy Ghost is to build up the Church. Third, the Holy Ghost sanctifies each of the faithful. There is an order to these three truths, going from general to specific, the abstract to the concrete, the eternal to the now, the universal to particular, or the big-grand-and-cosmic to the little-you-and-me.</div><div lang="en-US"><b>I. The Eternal Procession.</b> First, the Holy Ghost proceeds in eternity from the Father and the Son and He is sent in time by the Father and the Son. In the one substance of the Godhead, there are three Persons. The First Person is the Principle without principle, the Origin without origin. In knowing Himself perfectly, He utters a Word, which we can call His perfect and adequate self-knowledge. This Word is not a creature, but is of the very substance of the same Godhead: it is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. The utterance is also a generation or a begetting. For this reason, we call the Word, in strictest literal truth, God’s Son. This Word, this Son, is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Father beholds His Son and loves him. The Son, in turn, loves His Father. This Love of Father for Son and Son for Father is, like the Father’s self-knowledge, of the very substance of the Godhead. It is the Third Person, the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of a breath of love — a breath, an aspiration, a Spirit.</div><div lang="en-US"><b>Temporal Mission. </b>The missions in time follow the order of the processions in eternity. The Father is the Principle without principle. He is sent by no one, therefore he has no “mission.” The Son is generated by the Father. He is sent in time by the Father to do the work the Father has commanded Him to do. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son in eternity and is sent in time by both the Father and the Son, which is why His mission in time had to come after the Ascension. “It is expedient for you that I go,” Our Lord said, “for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7).</div><div lang="en-US">Our Lord told His Apostles that the Holy Ghost would “teach [them] all things and bring all things to [their] mind whatsoever I have said to you.” In another place, He said: “He shall glorify me: because he shall receive of mine and shall shew it to you.” And again: “he shall not speak of himself: but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak.” In other words, just as Our Lord said, “my doctrine is not mine but his who sent me,” so, too, can the Holy Ghost say the same thing, but with one difference: “My doctrine is not mine, but theirs who sent me — they, from whom I proceed.”</div><div lang="en-US"><b>II. The Soul of the Church.</b> The Holy Ghost’s mission is to build up the Church. Remember that we call the Holy Ghost, “the Soul of the Church.” On Pentecost day we see a pattern of the work of the Holy Ghost: The Apostles are given gifts to preach, their preaching is heard and understood by people in diverse languages, the truth of the Faith is upheld by the wonderful prodigies the Holy Ghost works (the sound “as of a great wind,” the hearing in different languages, the profound preaching by simple men, the tongues of fire, the prodigious courage shown by the Apostles, etc.).</div><div lang="en-US">What was the result? Three thousand were baptized that day.</div><div lang="en-US">Does it end then and there, that is, on Pentecost day? No. All throughout the Book of Acts — the book sometimes called the “Gospel of the Holy Ghost” — we read of His action, and it’s always the same: <b>building</b> on the work of Jesus, <b>confirming</b> the work of the Apostles, and <b>adding</b> to the Body of Christ.</div><div lang="en-US"><b>III. The Sanctifier.</b> The Holy Ghost sanctifies each of the faithful. What He does for the Church He also does for each of us singly: He sanctifies us. How? By bestowing on us those gifts we learn about in our catechisms: The seven gifts of the Holy Ghost: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. The virtues are like our rowing the boat, as those little illustrations in the Baltimore Catechisms showed. But the gifts are the wind of the Holy Ghost filling our sails. The virtues perfect our natural powers, whereas the gifts perfect the virtues. The gifts also, in turn, produce in us the fruits of the Holy Ghost, which are the sweet produce of the soul that has cooperated with the Sanctifier: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, fidelity, modesty, continency, chastity. We call these “fruits” for two reasons: first, they are the produce, or result of living the virtues and the gifts; second, like fruit, they are sweet. St. Thomas Aquinas said that “Every virtuous act which man performs with pleasure is a fruit.” So the list St. Paul gives in Galatians 5, which I’ve just cited, is not exhaustive.</div><div lang="en-US"><b>His Spouse. </b>I spoke above of two aspects of the mission of the Holy Ghost — building the Church and sanctifying souls. We see them both in seed in the Holy Ghost’s greatest work, the one appropriated to Him, but which actually precedes His temporal mission. It is His masterpiece: the Incarnation. The head of the Church was made incarnate in Mary’s womb and Mary’s own soul was filled with grace. The Incarnation is the pattern of the work of the Holy Ghost: As He formed Jesus in Mary’s womb; so He informs the Church by being the soul of the Church; so, too, He forms Jesus in the soul of each one of us.</div><div lang="en-US"><i>Email Brother André Marie at bam@catholicism.org.</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-81310815048181143692010-07-29T11:00:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.447-08:00The Tarbell StoryEditor’s note: Several months ago, I came upon an article someone had sent me about the amazing story of the Tarbells of Groton, Massachusettts. It was written by Rudy Bixby and was published in the November 14, 1979, issue of <i>The Times Free Press</i> newspaper from East Pepperell. Kate Walsh, Managing Editor for the owners at Nashoba Publishing, has graciously given permission for us to republish the Tarbell Story.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />I had once written a piece for the “Did You Know” section of <i>From the Housetops</i> about Lydia Longley, who has the distinction of being the “First American Nun.” The Tarbells and the Longleys were contemporaries; both were from Groton; both families had children kidnapped by Indians; and, strangely enough, they were cousins. Lydia Longley was taken captive in 1694 during an Abenaki raid on their homestead in the aftermath of King Philip’s War as it played out on this side of the ocean. Lydia’s family was all killed in the raid and she was taken, eventually, to Canada, ransomed by the French, and given over to the Ursuline nuns in Montreal. While there, she became a Catholic and later joined the order.<br />Before moving on to the story, here are some interesting Catholic trivia concerning “saints” and “firsts” in America:<br />1) Lydia Longley is the first woman, born in colonial America, to become a nun. The story of Lydia Longley was first popularized by Helen A. McCarthy Sawyer of Groton, Massachusetts. She wrote a children’s book called “The First American Nun.”<br />2) Frances Allen, daughter of Ethan Allen, was the first woman, born after 1776 in the United States, to become a nun. She was converted while studying with teaching sisters in Montreal. In 1811, she made a religious profession with the <u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Hospitaliers_of_St._Joseph" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Hospitaliers_of_St._Joseph">Religious Hospitaliers of St. Joseph</a></u>, and took care of the worst of the sick and indigent. She died of consumption in 1819.<br />3) Mother Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized, although she was not a native-born American. She died in 1917.<br />4) The first native-born United States citizen to be canonized was Mother Seton. She died in 1821.<br />5) The first United States male citizen to be canonized was John Nepomucene Neumann, although he was not a native-born American.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The Tarbell Story</b></div><div style="text-align: center;">By Rudy Bixby</div><div style="text-align: center;">Wednesday, November 14, 1979</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Times-Free Press </i>– East Pepperell, Mass. 01437</div>Did you ever see a man walking calmly across a steel girder, ten stories up, or doing the same thing on a bridge girder, four or five hundred feet above a river? If you ever have, you probably wondered what sort of a man that he was. Possibly, you may have seen such a man on the ground and have been surprised that he was an Indian. If you happened to hear him called by name, you might have been more surprised to hear the name Tarbell. Well, you might think that it had nothing to do with the Tarbells of Groton and you would be very wrong! The Indian, named Tarbell, would be able to trace his ancestors back to a man named Thomas Tarbell who lived in Groton, almost three hundred years ago.<br />Thomas Tarbell III, was the son and grandson of original proprietors of Groton and once served as Town Clerk. His wife was the daughter of Richard and Isabel Blood and was named Elizabeth. They had ten children, born between the years 1687 and 1707. The family homestead was on Farmers Row, the present site of the James Lawrence estate.<br />In the early Summer of 1707, the inhabitants of Groton were beginning to feel reasonably safe from Indian attacks. The local Indians had been killed off or pacified during King Philip’s War, and King William’s War, between the French and British, which had seen an invasion by Indians from Canada, was some five years past. There were rumors that some settlers had been attacked recently but the Tarbell family didn’t feel that they were in any immediate danger. How wrong they were!<br />It was early evening, June 20th, three of the Tarbell children, Sarah, John and Zachariah were playing in the branches of a cherry tree behind the house when a band of Caughnawaga Indians suddenly surrounded the tree. Cautioning the children to be quiet, Indians and prisoners vanished into the nearby forest. At that time, Sarah was thirteen, John was eleven, and Zachariah was six or seven. Sarah never saw her home or family again.<br />Traveling swiftly, the Indians returned with their prisoners to the Indian village of Caughnawaga near the city of Montreal. Sarah was soon bought by the French and placed in a convent. In all probability, Sarah met her cousin, Lydia Longley, who had been captured by the Indians, eleven years previously. Lydia had become a nun and, no doubt, influenced her cousin to do likewise. She joined the Congregation of Notre Dame at Lachine.<br />And what of the two boys? They soon became as Indian as their captors. Reaching manhood, they married daughters of Indian chiefs and, later, moved up the St. Lawrence to found the Indian town of St. Regis.<br />Some thirty years later, John and Zachariah returned to visit relatives in Groton. Dressed as Indian chiefs and speaking haltingly in English, they attracted much attention. No amount of pleading could induce them to return permanently. Governor Belcher, the Governor of Massachusetts, made an impassionate speech before the General Court, pleading with that body to give the two Tarbells some sort of an inducement to stay in their native town. The worthy gentleman was much distressed over the fact that the two had embraced Catholicism. The free life of the forest proved too much of a magnet to the Tarbells and they returned to their squaws and families.<br />In the year 1744, Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts was in Albany, New York, and his attention was called to a band of Indians who had come down from Canada to trade. Two of the “Indians” turned out to be the Tarbell brothers, one of whom was said to be the wealthiest of the Caughnawaga tribe.<br />Sometime during the next century, Dr. Samuel Green visited the village of St. Regis and talked to the parish priest. He was informed that some forty persons carried the name of Tarbell in the village and that they were among the most prominent. Strange to say, the given names of these Tarbell descendants corresponded to names of their distant cousins in Groton.<br />When Thomas Tarbell III, died, he left the three missing children an equal share in his property but with the condition that they return to Groton to live. The condition was never fulfilled.<br />One must wonder if the three Tarbells ever regretted their choices and what would have been their lot if they had returned to live in Groton.<br />And how did the Tarbells become involved in the dangerous trade of building high structural steel buildings and bridges? When the first suspension bridge was built across the St. Lawrence at Quebec, the engineers were astonished by the lack of fear of height displayed by a group of Indians, among whom were some of the Tarbells. The word soon spread and Indians soon became much in demand.<br />Of all the stories about captured children of New England, surely the story of the Tarbell children is the most interesting.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-60398438246784080512010-07-15T11:24:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.469-08:00On Cults and Man Worship, Some Fighting WordsBy <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/bam/">Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.</a><br /><br />In <a href="http://catholicism.org/christology-for-joe.html" mce_href="http://catholicism.org/christology-for-joe.html">"Christology for Joe,"</a> an article that answers questions from a thoughtful young man, I made some observations about the way the English language has been Protestantized. In this number of the <i>Ad Rem</i>, I excerpt from that article the part explaining the words used to distinguish the "cult" of the Blessed Virgin and the saints from the "cult" of the Blessed Trinity. This knowledge may prove useful in helping readers to think through, and deal with, certain objections that come to our religion from its critics.<img alt="" class="mceWPmore mceItemNoResize" mce_src="http://catholicism.org/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" src="http://catholicism.org/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" title="More..." /><br /><a name='more'></a><br />The Germanic language known as <i>English</i> — from the Angles, the Germanic tribe that invaded Celtic Britain — developed substantially under Catholic influence. St. Augustine’s missionary monks were in England in the early seventh century, introducing many Latinisms into the developing language of the British Isles. The Norman invasion in 1066 enriched its vocabulary by the introduction of many French words, and gave it another Catholic influence. Until the Anglican Schism of the sixteenth century, England was a major part of the Catholic world, and its humane letters had a place of dignity in the literature of Christendom. Chaucer was a Catholic; the Arthurian Legends were Catholic; Shakespeare was possibly Catholic himself, and if not, certainly did not “Protestantize” the language. In short, our vocabulary grew and our literature developed while Merry old England was still Mary’s Dowry. Words like <i>lord</i>, <i>lady</i>, <i>worship</i>, <i>adore</i>, and <i>pray</i> had meanings and connotations more deeply rooted in the Catholic culture of England.<br />But Protestants — not so much Anglicans as Calvinist Puritans — gradually altered the usage of these words, if not by direct effort, then by simple use.<br />In these United States (whose early colonists included many Puritans), there was a direct effort to divorce our language from the Mother Tongue. It was the continuation, you might say, of the War for Independence. (Noah Webster compiled his dictionary largely for this politico-ideological purpose.) American English, especially of Noah Webster’s New England variety, was more “democratic” and less “monarchical” a language; and even the aristocrats (lords and ladies) took a beating in the developing language of our Republic. Because of all this, concepts of hierarchy — Catholic concepts — were downplayed. Eventually, a bishop or magistrate was no longer “my Lord”; one did not “pray” to a judge (”prithee, milord!”); and nobody was “your worship” except God Himself. All this had the net effect of abstracting a purely religious use, sanitized of Catholic concepts, for certain words. True, some holdovers still exist in the language, as when we call a property owner who rents to us a “landlord,” or when we read older versions of Scripture, but there is a prevalent Calvinism in much of our language that serves to prejudice the American ear in religious matters. (Orestes Brownson’s provocatively entitled <a href="http://www.orestesbrownson.com/maryworship.html" mce_href="http://www.orestesbrownson.com/maryworship.html" target="_blank">“Mary Worship”</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22saint+worship%22+site%3Aorestesbrownson.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a" mce_href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22saint+worship%22+site%3Aorestesbrownson.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a" target="_blank">“Saint Worship”</a> may have been so named to challenge this prejudice.)<br />All the foregoing is background to establish that, to our Catholic (and even Anglican) English-speaking forebears, to “pray” to someone other than God, to “worship” a man, and to call upon those in the ecclesiastical and even the civic hierarchy as “lord” did not smell in the slightest of brimstone. Today, however, we have the burden of explaining to a people whose common tongue has been religiously deconstructed what these things mean.<br /><i>Catholic devotion to Our Lady and the Saints never put creatures on a par with the creator</i>. This is amply proven in numerous works of an apologetical nature (see, for instance, my own <a href="http://catholicism.org/praying-to-saints.html" mce_href="http://catholicism.org/praying-to-saints.html">“Praying to the Saints,”</a> under the heading “Confirmed by Tradition”). Those who claim that we Catholics give saints the same worship we give to God have the burden of proving it from Catholic sources. The total absence of a smoking gun belies the falsity of their assertions.<br />There exists in the Catholic theological lexicon the following fourfold distinction:<br /><b>Latria</b> (<i>cultus latriae</i>) — We usually call this, in English, “adoration.” This is the worship given exclusively to the Blessed Trinity. It comes from a Greek word that the Latins liked so much they imported it. When we say <i>cultus latriae</i>, we are saying that to God is due the “cult of <i>latria</i> [or "of adoration"].” The word <i>cultus</i> has at least three meanings: “to till or cultivate; to protect or nurture; and (in an applied sense) to worship or honor.” From it, we get the words “cultivate,” “agriculture,” “horticulture,” etc. From it also, we get the word “cult,” as in religious veneration. At <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cult" mce_href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cult" target="_blank">Dictionary.com</a>, one can see the different meanings of the word “cult.” This proper religious use of the word is the first listed meaning, while the popular meaning of the word is No. 6. (Knee-jerk reactions to the word “cult” — “Ah! So, you Catholics admit you’re a cult!” — would provide yet more examples of the linguistic bias I wrote of earlier.)<br /><b>Dulia</b> (<i>cultus duliae</i>) — Coming from the Greek word for “servant” or “slave,” this category denotes the veneration shown to the saints, God’s “servants.” In this distinction, one can see that there is a difference between the reverence shown to God and that shown to God’s <i>slave</i>. The honor shown to a master (in this case, the Master of all) is obviously greater than the honor shown to a slave. Clearly, the old social convention of servitude serves as the point of reference for this distinction, just as it was employed by St. Paul to illustrate other concepts in Scripture.<br /><b>Hyperdulia</b> (<i>cultus hyperduliae</i>) — Because the Blessed Virgin Mary is a saint, she receives the genus of veneration we call “<i>dulia</i>.” However, because she is over all the saints, she is given the highest species of that devotion. So, we unite <i>hyper</i>, the Greek word for “over,” (its Latin equivalent is <i>super</i>) to <i>dulia</i>. The Mother of God receives the highest degree of reverence of any mere creature (excepting, that is, Christ’s sacred Humanity, which is a creature; more on that in a bit).<br /><b>Protodulia</b> (<i>cultus protoduliae</i>) — A further distinction of some authors employs the Greek word for “first,” <i>prôtos</i>. This is the devotion given to St. Joseph, who is revered “first” among the saints. (But Mary is honored “over” him!)<br />(A more detailed explanation of the division of <i>latria</i> and <i>dulia</i> can be found in my <a href="http://catholicism.org/on-worshiping-mary-and-the-saints.html" mce_href="http://catholicism.org/on-worshiping-mary-and-the-saints.html">“On Worshiping Mary and the Saints.”</a>)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-4614469088461934852010-07-01T10:30:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.490-08:00The Twelve Apparitions Between the Resurrection and AscensionBy <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/briankelly">Brian Kelly</a> <br />Perusing through some old files of mine I came across a list of Catholic twelves, and there are many: Twelve Apostles; twelve articles of the Apostles Creed; twelve days of Christmas; twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost; twelve patriarchs from Adam to Noah; twelve tribes of Israel; twelve loaves of proposition in the temple sanctuary; twelve chiefs of Ismael; Jesus was twelve-years-old when He was first teaching in the temple; twelve baskets of fragments left over after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; the Woman of the Apocalypse had a crown of twelve stars; the tree of life in the vision of the Apocalypse bore twelve fruits; and, in the natural order, we have twelve months of the year.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />There was another twelve on the list that I had totally forgotten about. Our Lord appeared to His Apostles and disciples twelve times during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. Two of the dozen apparitions are known from tradition; the other ten are recorded in Holy Scripture.<br />The first apparition: Although it is not recorded in the New Testament we know from tradition (and common sense) that Jesus first appeared to His Blessed Mother alone, immediately after He rose from the dead. In fact, it was this first apparition that inspired Saint Ignatius of Loyola in writing his Spiritual Exercises. For one of his meditations in the fourth week of exercises he posits this composition of place:<br />“First Prelude. The first Prelude is the narrative, which is here, how, after Christ expired on the Cross, and the Body, always united with the Divinity, remained separated from the Soul, the blessed Soul, likewise united with the Divinity, went down to Hell, and taking from there the just souls, and coming to the Sepulchre, and being risen, He appeared to His Blessed Mother in Body and in Soul. <br />“Second Prelude. The second, a composition, seeing the place; which will be here to see the arrangement of the Holy Sepulchre and the place or house of Our Lady, looking at its parts in particular; likewise the room, the oratory, etc.” In his Spiritual Exercises Saint Ignatius also includes a list of these twelve apparitions of Christ from His resurrection to His ascension. <br />Regarding this, Paul Debuchy relates an interesting tradition in his article on the Spiritual Exercises for the <span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;">Catholic Encyclopedia:</span> “Another tradition concerns the part taken by the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm">Blessed Virgin</a> in the composing of the ‘Exercises’ at Manresa. It is not based on any written testimony of the contemporaries of St. Ignatius, though it became universal in the seventeenth century. Possibly it is founded upon earlier oral testimony, and upon a revelation made in 1600 to the Venerable Marina de Escobar and related in the ‘Life of Father Balthazar Alvarez.’ This tradition has often been symbolized by <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11395a.htm">painters</a>, who represent Ignatius writing from the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm">Blessed Virgin’s</a> dictation.”<br />That Our Lord first appeared to His mother after His resurrection is a long-established tradition and is also the subject of many great works of art. Saint Ambrose may have been the first western doctor to affirm the belief explicitly, but many others did so as well. “Mary therefore saw the Resurrection of the Lord” he writes, “She was the first who saw it and <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02408b.htm">believed</a>.” Saint Augustine taught that the only one who held firm the Faith in the resurrection of Christ during the three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday was Mary. She was the only believing member of the Church during that triduum. Other saints that explicitly taught the same were Saints Eadmer (disciple of Saint Anselm), Bernardine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, and Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. Actually, since no saint ever denied it (how could they?) it would be safe to say that they all took it for granted, even if they did not write about it expressly. Regarding this tradition, Saint Ignatius says: “First: He appeared to the Virgin Mary. This, although it is not said in Scripture, is included in saying that He appeared to so many others, because Scripture supposes that we have understanding, as it is written: ‘Are you also without understanding’?”<br />The second person to whom Our Lord appeared after His resurrection was Mary Magdalen. We have the story in the Gospel of Saint John, chapter 20, vss. 11-17. “Jesus saith to her: Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, thinking it was the gardener, saith to him: Sir, if thou hast taken him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith to her: Mary. She turning, saith to him: Rabboni (which is to say, Master). Jesus saith to her: Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren, and say to them: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.”<br />Then, the third apparition was to the “other women” who came either with Mary Magdalen, or separately in another group, to the sepulchre just before or just after sunrise Easter morning. Three of these, the Gospel accounts tell us, were Mary of Cleophas, Salome, and Joanna. These scripture accounts from the Gospels of Saint Matthew, Mark, and Luke need an explanation in order to reconcile them with what we have just read in Saint John. <br />Without getting into a protracted comparison and reconstruction of the sequence of seemingly contradictory accounts I will follow the <span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;">Catholic Encyclopedia</span> article’s simple chronology of the Paschal apparitions. On the morning of the Resurrection Mary Magdalen, “the other Mary” and “other women” come to the tomb first, just before sunrise, while it was still dark. Seeing the stone rolled back, Mary immediately left and ran back to tell the Apostles. The other women are stupefied with fear when they see an angel whose countenance was “as lightning” and the guards struck with terror stiffened like “dead men.” The angel tells them not to fear for, Jesus, whom they seek, is not there, He has risen. “Come,” the angel says, “and see the place where the Lord was laid” (Matt. 28:1-6). <br />These women, with great fear and joy, ran back to Jerusalem, intending to tell Christ’s disciples what they had seen and heard, but they were so afraid that they said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). Meanwhile a second group of holy women arrived at the tomb, including Joanna, who was at the Cross. They probably intended to meet Mary Magdalen and the other women there. These women looked into the empty vault and saw two angels sitting at either end of the tomb. These two angels did not shine like lightning, but looked like men in “shining apparel.” (These were the same two angels that Mary Magdalen was about to see.) The angels told them that Christ had arisen; “he is not here,” and to go quickly and tell His disciples (Luke 24:5-8). They, then, ran back to the home, where the Apostles were staying, and on their way back, Jesus appeared to them on the road (Matt. 28:8-10). Meanwhile, Mary Magdalen had returned to the tomb alone. This is when she encountered the angel and the Risen Christ whom she thought might be the gardener. After Our Lady, she was the first to whom Christ appeared after His Resurrection: “But he rising early the first day of the week, appeared first to Mary Magdalen, out of whom he had cast seven devils” (Mark 16:9). After hearing the report of the other women, Saints Peter and John ran to the tomb and entering in found the linens folded in one place. Seeing this, John believed. Peter, however, seems to have doubted. “Then that other disciple [John] also went in, who came first to the sepulchre: and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead” (John 20:8&9).<br />That doubt was removed when Jesus appeared privately to him in His fourth apparition (Luke 24:34).<br />The fifth apparition was to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus as related in detail in Luke, chapter 24. Scripture gives us the name of only one of the two, Cleophas. <br />The sixth apparition was to ten of the Apostles, Thomas being absent, in the Upper Room of the Cenacle (John 20:19).<br />The seventh was to the Apostles again, in the same place, Thomas being present this time. “Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed” (John 20:29). <br />The eighth was to seven disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. The seven were: Saints Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James the Greater, John, and two others not mentioned (John 21).<br />The ninth was related only by Saint Paul in First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. This was to a large multitude of five hundred on a mountain in Galilee (vs. 6).<br />The tenth was to Saint James the Less, whom Jesus would leave to pastor the Church in Jerusalem. This apparition is also related only by Saint Paul in the same epistle and chapter as above (vs. 7).<br />The eleventh apparition of Our Lord is believed by tradition and is found, according to the testimony of Saint Ignatius, in the ancient <span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;">Lives of the Saints.</span> It was to Saint Joseph of Arimathea, His pallbearer and benefactor. <br />Lastly, the twelfth apparition was to one hundred and twenty, the infant Church, on the Mount of Olives at His Ascension. “And he led them out as far as Bethania: and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And it came to pass, whilst he blessed them, he departed from them, and was carried up to heaven” (Luke 24:50-51).<br /><div align="RIGHT" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;">Email Brian Kelly at bdk@catholicism.org.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-50594288995365871722010-06-17T00:40:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.510-08:00How to Join the Catholic Battle<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Brother John Marie Vianney, M.I.C.M., (Tert.)</i></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">In any war there must be a battle plan to win. I reveal no secret to you when I say we are in a war. The war, in our case, harkens back to the word “crusade.” The Crusades were holy wars that were undertaken by Catholic powers to free the Christian Holy Land from its Mohammedan conquerors. The crusade of Saint Benedict Center is a spiritual one. As you know it has two ends: 1) to defend all the dogmas of the Catholic Faith, especially extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) and 2) to convert America to the one true Faith. Ours is a holy war in that we are “fighting” to free our non-Catholic brothers and sisters and bring them to the liberating light of the Catholic religion. This is a work to which the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary have been particularly devoted for sixty years. The goal is good and true, but the laborers are few.</span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">St. Paul encourages us to use spiritual weapons in order to fight the enemies of our souls (Eph. 6:11-17). “Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day… having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace”. One of these spiritual weapons is Catholic knowledge; we must have plenty of it if we are to teach our countrymen. “That in all things you are made rich in him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge” (1 Cor. 1:5). And what will we teach? The Faith, without compromise.The crusade was launched by Father Leonard Feeney who sought to save the salvation dogma of the Church from obscurity and, in so doing, rescue all Catholic dogmas from the “dictatorship of relativism” — to borrow a term of Pope Benedict’s. That effort began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with, as Sister Catherine writes in <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/the-loyolas-and-the-cabots.html"><i>The Loyolas and Cabots</i></a>, the consideration of the “authentic doctrines of the Church through the study of Holy Scripture, and the writings of the Fathers, doctors, and saints of the Church. This program of studies achieved immediate success, filling the spiritual vacuum created by an obvious deficiency in the neighboring academic institutions. The Center was attended in large and growing numbers.”Father Feeney chose Brother Francis Maluf, our recently deceased superior, to help him establish a strategy for the doctrinal crusade. When Brother Francis received his assignment in the 1940s he knew he had to prepare by prayer and study. And that is just what he did. He did not activate his dream to initiate a school of studies nationwide until the 1970s when he saw the time was right. It was only then that he launched the <a href="http://sai.catholicism.org/">Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies</a> (SAI), announcing the program to friends of the Center across America. Brother’s assignment is now our assignment. One of the best ways to re-ignite our enthusiasm for the conversion of America is to listen to the words of the man who so deeply desired the personal sanctification of his students and religious disciples and their education in the Faith. Brother Francis had a charism when he spoke. Anyone who heard him was instantly cognizant of it. And, thanks be to God and Brother’s loyal students, we still have his words recorded on <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/browse-by-speaker/br-francis-maluf-m-i-c-m-.html">tapes and CDs</a>. Although his knowledge was immense in the breadth of its extension, wisdom was his greatest gift. As a true philosopher, he always sought for the causes of things, going from the immediate to the first causes. Yes, he was deep, but he also had the gift of communicating his wisdom in a clear, simple, and, at times, even in a child-like manner. Brother loved to quote an often-repeated exhortation of Saint Paul: idem sapite, “be of one mind.” To effect this end, a much greater emphasis will be placed on the link, the connection, the training ground, the school we refer to as the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies. Brother Francis often called the Institute and its circles of study, the “engines of the crusade.” Engines require fuel to operate. If we do not work at being reservoirs filled with the fuel of holiness and erudition, we will have ignored one of our founder’s prescriptions for the conversion of our own homes and of our fellow citizens, our neighbors. In order to be good aqueducts we must first be reservoirs. SAI is under the Third Order and the Third Order will support SAI. In fact, we wish all tertiaries to be active in study circles, or, at least, progressing in the program individually. Why? Brother Francis, in his very first recorded talk about SAI, said he believed that if you gave him a couple of hundred souls working to study the Faith in the friendly atmosphere of the circles of study, that number could eventually turn into many thousands — to the point where America could be converted as the Faith spreads from one soul to another.Today, sixty years after the founding of our crusade, our purposes are the same. Third Order brothers and sisters, what are we waiting for? Please make it your goal to start or join a circle of study, to obtain the <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/browse-by-speaker/br-francis-maluf-m-i-c-m-.html">tapes or CDs of Brother Francis</a>, and to share your knowledge and joy with others.Finally, let me suggest that you purchase two sets of recordings: the “<a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?match=all&target=products&mode=search&subcats=Y&type=extended&avail=Y&pshort=Y&pfull=Y&pname=Y&pkeywords=Y&cid=0&q=Introduction+to+the+Circles+of+Study&x=0&y=0">Introduction to the Circles of Study</a>” (by Brother Francis) and “<a href="http://store.catholicism.org/index.php?match=all&target=products&mode=search&subcats=Y&type=extended&avail=Y&pshort=Y&pfull=Y&pname=Y&pkeywords=Y&cid=0&q=Why+Be+a+Tertiary&x=0&y=0">Why Be a Tertiary?</a>” (by Brother André Marie).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Email Brother John Marie Vianney at toprefect@catholicism.org.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-26166492343441169282010-06-03T11:11:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.529-08:00Converted by the Resurrection<span style="font-size: small;"></span><!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0in } --> <br /><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">By Brother Francis, M.I.C.M.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">We are indebted to Sister Anna Maria, M.I.C.M., of the Vienna, Ohio community, for transcribing the following from one of Brother Francis’ recorded lectures.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid;" style="line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: xx-large;"><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i>D</i></span><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><i>ifficilius est id quod non sit incipere quam id quod fuerit iterare. </i></span></span><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">And it’s translated, “It’s more difficult for that which had never been to start to begin, than that which had been, to be brought back.”</span><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT,cursive;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><i><b> </b></i></span></span><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">In other words, the fact that we were created is more surprising than the fact that we are going to be resurrected from the dead. That’s the point Minucius Felix, a pagan Roman, was making when he used this quote from Octavius, a Christian of the age of the catacombs, the first Latin apologist. In his work, Felix was recounting a dialogue between the Christian, Octavius Januarius, and the pagan, Caecilius Natalis, at the seashore in Ostia on a Roman holiday in the time of vintage. <a name='more'></a></span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">The argument proceeded. The first one to speak was Caecilius (a pagan of the second century) and in a very suave, clever way, he presented the argument against the Christian religion from the point of view of a Roman. He insisted that man has a duty to uphold the religion of his ancestors. A false principle, but an attractive one. There are an awful lot of people today who go on living in the wrong religion, just because they think they have the duty to be loyal to “the religion of my grandparents, of my father, or my mother, or my good aunt, or good uncle.” </span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Now, is loyalty to father and mother and aunt, and relatives, and country a bad thing? No, it isn’t. As a matter of fact, this kind of loyalty is the greatest thing in the natural order, and the only thing it has to yield to, is God.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">That same issue that arose among these early Romans of the second century, would arise in the eighteenth century, the century in which the anti-Catholic Masonic conspiracy arose, the century of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, the century of Adam Weishaupt, and Jacob Frank. It was also the century of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">In that century a very respectable theologian established a false principle in a catechism that was going to be taught in Italian schools. He was trying to placate the Masons, the Carbonari, who had their hand in public education throughout Italy at that time. Italian Masons didn’t become atheists and they certainly didn’t become Protestants. They claimed to be Catholic, even though they were bad Catholics.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">So, according to this theologian and his catechism, the principle was that “one has to be true to the religion of his fathers.” Therefore, “one has to be true to the Catholic Faith.” Saint Alphonsus Maria, when he saw that sentence, was absolutely furious! He said, “That is a false principle; Catholics do not talk like that. If this statement could be true in Italy, it must be true in Turkey! So, are you saying that the Turks have the duty to go on being Moslems? Are you saying that the Chinese have a duty to go on being Buddhists?”</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">So, Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, God bless him, blasted this theologian and raised quite a crusade against him. He said, “That’s wrong! You can’t say that!”</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Now here, in the Dialogue, we find Caecilius saying that it’s patriotic to worship the gods approved by the Roman senate. As a matter of fact, Rome was so generous and so broad-minded in apostolic times that the biggest problem that Saint Peter and Saint Paul and the Christians had when they came to Rome, most of them to shed their blood, was not the bigotry of the Romans, but the broadmindedness of the Romans. They invited the Christians to have a statue of Jesus placed in the Pantheon, the temple of all the gods. “No, thank you!” said the Christians. If Jesus Christ entered the Pantheon, all the other “gods” must go. He is not “a god,” He is the only God, one in three Persons, with the Father and the Holy Ghost.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WuMIS2D0LeI/TAfwMEPqJJI/AAAAAAAAABw/pPuULSrkMV8/s1600/Untitled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WuMIS2D0LeI/TAfwMEPqJJI/AAAAAAAAABw/pPuULSrkMV8/s320/Untitled.jpg" /></a></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><b>Resurrection: </b></span>The argument of the Dialogue was finally mooted on one issue. Who in the world could believe that, after this body is disintegrated, it’s going to be gathered and brought back to life? So, it came down to the Resurrection of the body.<span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><b> </b></span>That was the big scandal to the pagans. So, it is today with the rationalists, materialistic scientists, and false philosophers. How many physicists, chemists, geologists, astronomers, in our universities believe in the resurrection of the body? I met a Teilhardian once who said to me, “Do you mean to say that the <span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><i>cadaver</i></span> of Jesus was brought back to life?” </span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">To the rationalist the subject of this incredulity isn’t just the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God, the first fruit of His own victory over death. It is all those who would be united to Him by the Eucharist, by the Faith, by Baptism, all of those who will be resurrected in glory through His glorious Resurrection. It is the challenge for our mind, but it is the only hope that we have! If we lose faith in the Resurrection, then there is nothing left but pagan despair. And pagan despair leads to degeneracy, the very degeneracy that is taking over our country, taking over the whole world today.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Is the world pagan today? I think we owe an apology to the pagans! Minucius was a pagan, but there was some decency about him. At least some of the pagans of Rome and its empire had natural virtue, natural ideals. They would be converted, and from among them there were millions of martyrs in the first centuries of the Church. When a Christian society falls, they don’t fall back to nature; they fall to un-nature, to abnormality, to degeneracy! </span><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Corruptio optime pessima est</i></span></span><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"> (the corruption of the best is the worst). And the only way to save nature today is to be supernatural, because grace builds on nature and shows the beauty of nature.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;">“<span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Can you, Octavius, really convince me, Caecilius, a well-educated, reasonable man, a philosopher, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and therefore, that all of us can rise from the dead, that there is such a thing to look forward to — that we will exist forever”? Just imagine discussing a point on which there is so much at stake!</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Just imagine the difference between dying like the rabbits, and going on like gods, forever, children, sons of God, forever! You’d think we are talking about some point that you could settle in one way or the other. What difference does it make? It makes all the difference in the whole world!</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">So it was at that point that this sentence was uttered: </span><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><i>It’s more difficult for that which had never been to start to begin, than that which had been, to be brought back.</i></span></span><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"> And — </span><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Deo gratias!</i></span></span><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"> It converted Caecilius. He became a Christian.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;">“<span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Supposing,” said Octavius, “you were a sheer angelic intelligence and were allowed to look over and see this earth, and you saw the wind blowing and the trees, the rabbits running around and the dogs and the pigs and everything. And then somebody told you that out of that same mud we are going to make the kind of being that you are, a rational, spiritual, intelligent person. Would you think it were possible?” He said, “No, I wouldn’t.”</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" mce_style="text-indent: 0.2in; line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">Octavius replied, “But you know this is a fact. Not only could no man have done it, no man could have even conceived it possible!” So, he said, </span><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT,cursive;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Difficilius est id quod non sit incipere quam id quod fuerit iterare</i></span></span><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">. What a beautiful classical sentence! Is it not more difficult to have put that amazing being, which is in fact what you are, in existence in the first place, than having existed, to restore it? And at that point, Caecilius was converted to the Catholic Faith, on the issue of the resurrection! </span></span></div><div mce_style="line-height: 100%;" style="line-height: 100%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span mce_style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT,serif;"><span mce_style="font-size: x-small;">I hit that story just on the week of the Resurrection, and I thought it was a little grace that I should be telling you.</span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-83635358716309731932010-05-27T09:51:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.555-08:00A Letter of InspirationI would like to share with you a letter from a Jesuit missionary in the New World to the first apostle of devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, Saint John Eudes. This is actually an excerpt from an old book by Daniel Sargent (an early Center friend) on Saint John Eudes, entitled <i>Their Hearts Be Praised</i>. How did I come upon this passage? One of our sisters was ill for over a month (we call this a “Slave vacation”) and so she was able to do a bit more reading. When she shared this passage with me, I knew that I had to share it with you! May it make you love Our Lady more and live your total consecration more fully. The passage begins with a brief biography of the writer of our letter:<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><br /></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Our Lady did not make the year 1662 anything but a series of failures for Saint John Eudes, but She did console him. She arranged to have letters come to him from afar, from hands of men from whom he did not expect to hear. One was a Jesuit in Canada, Father Pierre Joseph Chaumonot. Since Our Lady chose this Jesuit to write to him, we will do well to examine Her choice. </span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Father Chaumonot, when asked by his Superior to write an account of his life, began as follows: “Since your Reverence has ordered me for the greater glory of God to write you at least in summary all my life, I begin by declaring the baseness and the miseries from which Our Lord has had the goodness to draw me, and set me in the Holy Society of Jesus.”</span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This beginning was an exaggeration. The Society of Jesus was holy, and Our Lord had drawn him into it, but Pierre had not been base. As a lad he had merely been irregular. He had borrowed some money without due permission from an uncle, but it had been in order to study Latin under the Oratorians at Beaune. He simply did not always think. And then, when the money, which was only a hundred <i>sous</i>, was expended before he reached Beaune, what was there for him to do but to wander and beg his way? He begged his way to Rome. </span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then, later, he had prayed at the Holy House at Loreto, and had asked to become a priest. To his astonishment the Jesuits had accepted him. He was always being astonished, for everything that happened seemed to him a favor, and he could not see why he of all people should receive any favors.</span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One of those favors brought him to Québec, where he arrived in 1639, when Eudes was still an Oratorian. He went immediately among the Hurons with Father de Brébeuf, and found that he could learn the Indian tongues better than any other Jesuit. He did not become a martyr as Brébeuf did, and that did not surprise him; he did not think he merited it. One day, it is true, an Indian struck him over the head with a hatchet, and he did not have his hat on, yet he survived. In telling the story he so related it that it seems as if he were congratulating himself that his hat was not hurt, and that only his head had been marred. He has not been canonized as was Brébeuf. He was never during his life given any great position of leadership. Yet he is one of the most fascinating Jesuits that ever came to the New World. He could not grow old. He built a chapel near Québec, modeled on the Holy House of Loreto, which still exists, <i>Indian Lorette</i>. He had his Hurons compose a letter, which he wrote down in Huron, to Our Lady in the Crypt at Chartres, vowing their fealty to Her. He organized in Canada, among the French and the Indians, the Confraternity of the Holy Family, to which Catherine Tekakwitha came to belong. He was in his devotions a child, most childlike, of the Mother of God, and She in a vision hailed him, to his astonishment, as more than Her child, even as her spouse, for, She said, “You are the father of so many of my children.” </span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This extraordinary Jesuit, who had never seen Father Eudes, was chosen by Our Lady to write a letter to him in 1660, which would arrive in his hands when he was being persecuted. The letter was no usual one:</span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><i>Pax Christi! </i></span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reverend Father,</span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I have been consoled to hear through Father Torcapel the holy ambition that you have to surpass no matter who in loving Our Lady. May it please God, that you communicate this spirit to all the ambitious people of the earth! Might I dare to ask of you for the love of Mary, Virgin and Mother, whom you so much love, to procure for me the advantage of being admitted, as the last of your servitors to the service of this Sovereign Mistress, or, if you like it better, as the littlest of all your cadets, into the adoption of this Mother of Mercy. If you die before me, would you have the bounty to resign to me, or to leave to me in heritage, as much as it is in your power, a part of the devotion which you have for Her, in order that you may continue even after your death, to honor Her on earth through me? Father Torcapel will tell you face to face of the displeasure that I have that so many persons receive, in the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord, with the immense gifts which It carries with It, without showing therein to Her who has given Him to us the least sentiment of gratitude. Now, in order to remedy this, or in some fashion, to make up for their ingratitude, I should be glad to learn that there is an association of Chaplains of Our Lady, I mean that there is a quantity of good priests, who make an agreement not to celebrate ever a Mass without having among other intentions, that of honoring the Blessed Virgin, and of offering to God, by Her hands, Her adorable Son, in order that in quality of sacrifice, He mount to His Father, by the intermediary of the same person by whom He descended to us, in making Himself man. I should not want merely that this devotion limit itself to the forming of this intention; but should like it that, in addition, both before and after the Mass or Communion, we make the most honorable mention of the Blessed Virgin possible: for example that the evening before the Communion, we conjure Her to take possession of one’s heart, in order to prepare one to receive Her Son, and that after the Mass or Communion, one thank Her for having given one a so loving Pastor for our souls. I beg of you, my Reverend Father, to consult Our Good Mistress concerning this, and if it be a thing agreeable to Her, set your hand to the task, begin this association, and do me the favor to admit me to it. But, since few persons give themselves to such devotion, if there proves to be little interest in this, I leave it to your prudence and to the fervent desire that you have to increase the cult of the Blessed Virgin, to write something to draw souls to this devotion, and to have a copy of it sent to me. The love which you have for the Blessed Virgin serves me as an excuse for having taken the liberty to write to you so familiarly, I, who am only a poor man whom nobody knows.</span></span></span></div><div align="RIGHT" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Pierre Joseph Chaumonot</span></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><br /></div><div align="JUSTIFY" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I hope that Father Chaumonot’s letter, as well as the brief sketch of his life, gives you ideas and inspiration for how to live your total consecration more fully and joyfully, toward true sanctity. <i>Nos cum Prole Pia, benedicat Virgo Maria!</i></span></span></span></div><div align="RIGHT" lang="en-US" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.2in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.</i></span></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-55253183125167423492010-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.578-08:00Philosophy in Our School of Thought<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">I would like to share with our readers a brief gem that we hope to publish soon as part of a larger work. But before doing that, I will recall something more fundamental. In so doing, I will reveal the “setting” of this gem.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"> </span> <br /><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Speaking of the work of Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brother Francis often said, “We are three things at once: a crusade, a religious order, and a school of </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">thought.” </span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"> </span> <br /><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Usually, he would embellish this utterance with little summaries of each of the three. By crusade, he meant our two-fold apostolate for the conversion of America and the restoration of doctrinal sanity, beginning with that very fundamental dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. (We put the definite article and a capital “C” here: The Crusade.) By religious order, he meant our Congregation’s First and Second Orders — brothers and sisters vowed to the life of the evangelical counsels. Our religious live under the same Rule, with duly appointed superiors, embracing the mixed life of contemplation and action, having hours dedicated to prayer, work, and study. By school of thought, Brother Francis meant the common wisdom of the Center, its approach to learning, its shared convictions and opinions in theology, philosophy, and mission, as well as the arts and sciences in general, inasmuch as they touch upon man’s ultimate quest for wisdom — salvation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"> </span> <br /><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Brother believed strongly that without a school of thought, the Congregation would falter and the crusade wither. Contrariwise, he had the conviction that a flourishing school of thought will make the crusade and the Order to thrive. With God’s grace leading, accompanying, and following, may we prove Brother Francis to be visionary in this second sense — by making our apostolate “bring forth very much fruit” (John 15:8).</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Those familiar with Brother Francis’ lectures may remember the six reasons he gave to answer the question, “Why philosophy?” I am presenting these reasons below, from an edited transcript of Brother Francis’ first lecture on <a href="http://catholicism.org/downloads/store%20preview/logic%201.mp3">Logic</a>. These thoughts form part of the bedrock of our school of thought.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Philosophy is hardly a popular subject in our universities today. In fact, true philosophy, perennial philosophy, is non-existent as a particular curriculum of study. Whatever substitutes colleges give for philosophy today ought rather to be called “sophistry.” They are distractions for the mind, having nothing to do with wisdom. Instead of elevating the mind and making it more habituated to deeper realizations of the spiritual realm, modern sophistries are doing the exact opposite.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Why is the study of true philosophy so important?</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"><b>First:</b> It is natural to man to raise ultimate questions and to try to answer them. The questions raised throughout all the courses of philosophy are the most natural questions every man must raise. We raise them even as children, because they proceed from man’s essence as a rational being.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"><b>Second:</b> All of man’s activities and achievements — in the arts, in the sciences, in government, or in any field of civilized work — proceed from thought as from their proper principle. Therefore, these activities can be ennobled by good thinking about fundamental matters; conversely, they can be subverted by bad thinking. The art of thinking well is precisely the province of philosophy.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"><b>Third:</b> There is a historical tradition of true philosophy. (In Latin, that tradition is called philosophia perennis.) By uniting our minds to this tradition, we achieve a unity with so many brilliant thinkers of other ages and other countries. These thinkers not only include the great doctors of the Church (saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Anselm, and Augustine), but also other teachers like Duns Scotus and the great educator Alcuin. Every Christian century — including the present one — has had its champions of perennial philosophy, each of whom built upon the wisdom of the past.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"><b>Fourth:</b> True philosophy is the handmaid of theology, ancilla theologiae. Without solid philosophic foundations, both piety and morality become superficial, unstable, and ineffective.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"><b>Fifth:</b> The spirit and method of philosophy save the mind from the narrowing effects of the scientific method so excessively dominant today in education. Philosophy upholds the reality of the spiritual, the primacy of the contemplative vision over the pragmatic. It restrains the scientific tendency towards materialism and other forms of monisms.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;"><b>Sixth:</b> Sound philosophy is one of the tools used in the evangelization of the nations, involving, as it does, a common human value. Wherever one goes in the world, he will find a positive response when wisdom is discussed. In fact, the universal value of wisdom has somehow survived (even through distortions and corruptions) the thousands of years that have passed since the creation of Adam and Eve.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">There are many who have come to the Center like dynamos, only to leave it with the same sensational dynamism. In some particularly sad cases, they even left the Church altogether through the back door of deranged thinking. I need not name them, but some have gone on to become leaders of their very own bizarre sedevacantist movements. I have seen them come and go, armed only with their Denzinger’s and their arrogance. And in every case, their problem was a lack of docility, and a refusal to sit at the feet of a master like Brother Francis.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">In short, they didn’t want to learn how to think, and now they think very badly.</span></div><div align="RIGHT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: small;">Email Brother André Marie at bam@catholicism.org.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-60646823201962609302010-04-22T10:26:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.596-08:00Our Catholic Duty of Feasting WellBy <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/christinebryan">Christine Bryan</a><br /><br />As I write this, it is still Christmas season, which I find a perfect time to pause, between bites of chocolate torte and sips of sparkling wine, to consider if we have learned to feast appropriately. Mind you, the observations that follow relate to the entirety of the Church’s year, so it’s OK if you happen to pick this up during Lent. <br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />The whole matter is less of a financial issue than one of leisure and union with the liturgical year. And it also involves a serious look at how we <i>receive</i> us this day our daily bread and embrace the times of fasting. It is only by the contrasts of these three that we can know if we are connected with hundreds of years of Catholic practice. Our society is rapidly blurring lines of distinction. We see this not only in perpetual gastronomic celebrations but also in attire: as a nation we seem to have forgotten about Sunday clothes and evening dress. I remember (way back in my youth) changing out of play clothes to "go to town." There's a crisis in other areas as well: manners (why wouldn't I text my friends while sitting at your dinner table?) and correspondence (what's a thank-you letter or a pen pal?). But this is not to be a lamentation: rather an encouragement to take a look around the kitchen and decide to feast well, by understanding what it means to eat simply on a regular basis.<br /><br />Our meals should nourish us body and soul by being wholesome and satisfying. Our bodies are made of what we eat. As one brief example (given while wiping away a chocolate smear), every cell in our bodies regularly recycles — drawing from available nutrients to rebuild. If each cell membrane isn't healthy, the cell itself is limited in its ability to function. Therefore, it seems reasonable that our normal fare should be composed of simple, wholesome foods that promote health, produce satiety and comfort, and are affordable. Research into options needn't be tedious. There's an abundance of good reading about dietary traditions, such as the wealth of information in the second volume of <a href="http://store.catholicism.org/fatima-in-lucias-own-words-ii.html"><i>Fatima in Lucia's Own Words</i></a>. With wise and faithful management, the Portuguese family ate quite well, albeit simply, in the days before the apparitions changed their lives forever. The Weston A. Price Foundation (<a href="http://www.westonaprice.org/">www.westonaprice.org</a><span id="goog_1955734035"></span><span id="goog_1955734036"></span>) is a reliable source regarding traditional diets. And countless times, in reading Catholic biographies, I have come across references to the Sunday dinner being a miniature feast in contrast to the weekly fare. <br /><br />I feel a warning here is necessary. In our time, there is a mistaken perception that choosing to purchase cheap food is virtuous. Modern, inexpensive, processed products, available in abundance, create a situation where, for the last one hundred years, many people aren't eating quality, or even real, foods. A look at the American populace indicates that we are paying a heavy (ha!) price because of it. We are not a nation of healthy people. It takes concentrated focus to find or make quality food on a tight budget — but I believe it's a vital aspect of the vocation to parenthood.<br /><br />To fast well means to pare down the regular diet to one that is less comforting but still nutritious. It is the keenest way to wake up a sluggish spirituality. The liturgical year is full of opportunities to experiment in this area. It may take consulting an older missal or calendar and looking at something a bit stricter than the current regulations of only two fast days during the entire liturgical year. A season of fasting can take great courage, but is essential to appreciate a period of feasting.<br /><br />And feasting (pardon me, while I pour another glassful) is really a simple concept because it is merely an expansion of how we eat regularly. This may include desserts or seasonal treats, dinners with multiple courses, special beverages, and even eating between meals. The art of it all, however, involves not only slowing down our fast-paced lives to enjoy the celebration, but ending the feasting appropriately and not prolonging it perpetually. Again, the Church's year is an excellent guide. Some feasts are celebrated for a season (<i>fifty</i> days of Easter!), some for an octave, and some for only one day. A family might have its own feast day and children (well, most adults, too) enjoy a dinner in their honor — with candlelight and a special dessert. <br /><br />Because food affects us so deeply, feasting well becomes a duty in a vital Catholic life. It involves thought and discipline (and some attention to personal digestion). The shift into celebration expands our hearts (potentially our waistlines) and helps us live the Church year with a more festive connection. <i>À votre santé!</i><br /><br /><b>Related Book:</b><i> </i><a href="http://store.catholicism.org/nourishing-traditions-the-cookbook-that-challenges-.html">Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats</a><i> </i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-216131673287792432010-04-11T09:43:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.618-08:00Just Over a Year Ago: Brother Francis and the Richmond 250 CaneOnly last March, the Richmond town cane was presented to Brother Francis. This cane was given to the town on the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the town’s founding, thus the name: “The Richmond 250 Cane.” It is passed on from year to year at the town meeting and is presented to the oldest citizen. Brother Francis, at 95 years of age, received it last year. (<a href="http://catholicism.org/r-i-p-brother-francis-maluf-m-i-c-m.html">Brother died at 96.</a>) The certificate bears his Lebanese name, Fakhri Maluf. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://catholicism.org/files/2009/03/br-francis-town-cane-20-300x199.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://catholicism.org/files/2009/03/br-francis-town-cane-20-300x199.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="first-child " style="text-align: center;"><span class="cap" title="B">B</span>rother Francis, the town cane, and the letter that Brother received at the town meeting.</div><div class="first-child "><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://catholicism.org/files/2009/03/br-francis-town-cane-25-300x199.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://catholicism.org/files/2009/03/br-francis-town-cane-25-300x199.jpg" /></a></div><div class="first-child " style="text-align: center;"> <span class="cap" title="T"></span>The cane and letter, when they were on display in our Priory, <br />between Saint Veronica and Saint Benedict.</div><div class="first-child " style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-542882502330590382.post-45716337415214860882010-04-08T11:07:00.000-07:002010-12-24T19:04:22.638-08:00Promising Signs in Rome<i>By <a href="http://catholicism.org/author/bam">Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.</a></i> <br /><br />Thanks to the largesse of some benefactors who funded our plane fare, Brother Maximilian Maria and I recently spent two weeks in Rome. The trip, like my last year’s solo pilgrimage, was part “business,” and part “pleasure.” For that reason, I referred to it as a “working pilgrimage.”<br /><br />I regret to say that I was unable to make regular reports to our web site from Rome. This was partly do to our activity-rich schedule, and partly due to logistical problems that precluded it; it’s simply too hard to get an Internet connection in Rome, at least we found it so.<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />I’ve decided that, <i>poco a poco</i>, I will post some columns on the site showcasing some of the wonderful Roman churches we saw. First though, I would like to give one little snapshot among hundreds of mental photographs from our fortnight in the Eternal City. It is a picture of the encouragement we felt in the presence of young clerics and a few seminarians.<br /><br />But it would be precipitous to portray this image without first supplying a background.<br /><br />Part of our routine was daily Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica, at 7:00 AM, just after the Basilica opens to the relatively small groups of people waiting outside (among whom are many religious sisters). Just before that hour, when the security guards and other Basilica staff allow pilgrims to enter the Church, there is another line forming — a much more competitive one — in <a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Info/VaticanMap/Sacristy.jpg" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Info/VaticanMap/Sacristy.jpg" target="_blank">a certain wing of St. Peter’s</a>. Here, clerical Vatican employees — who, with their Vatican credentials, can pass the Swiss Guards and other security beyond them — are lining up for the mad dash into <a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Interior/Sacristy-Treasury/Sacristy-Treasury.htm" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Interior/Sacristy-Treasury/Sacristy-Treasury.htm" target="_blank">the sacristy</a> (<a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Interior/Sacristy-Treasury/Sacr-Treasury-scrint.jpg" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Interior/Sacristy-Treasury/Sacr-Treasury-scrint.jpg" target="_blank">specifically, here</a>). The little crowd is composed of priests, bishops, and a few others, who enter with them under the rubric of servers. There must be some thirty of them awaiting the 6:55 or so opening of the sacristy doors. Everyone rushes in to vest, grab an acolyte and Mass provisions, and race for <a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/altars.htm" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/altars.htm" target="_blank">an altar</a> while altars are still available. One Monsignor described it to me as a “rat race.” More than once, Brother Maximilian and I were part of that “rat race,” as we entered the sacristy entrance to serve the Mass of a priest friend of ours, who works for the Holy See. Nearly daily for two weeks, we assisted at his Mass at the <a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/Transfiguration/Transfiguration.htm" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/Transfiguration/Transfiguration.htm" target="_blank">altar of the Transfiguration</a>. One day, when that altar wasn’t available (it’s first-come-first-serve), Father offered Mass at the <a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/OurLadyofSuccour/OurLadyofSuccour.htm" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/OurLadyofSuccour/OurLadyofSuccour.htm" target="_blank">Altar of Our Lady of Succor</a>, which is underneath a twelfth-century icon of the Mother of God, and atop the relics of Saint Gregory of Nazianzen. This particular Mass was a Requiem, offered for a <a href="http://ihm.catholicism.org/2009/12/please-pray-for-mr-buzzell-r-i-p/" mce_href="http://ihm.catholicism.org/2009/12/please-pray-for-mr-buzzell-r-i-p/" target="_blank">deceased friend</a> of ours, under his Tertiary name, Brother Malachi Mary.<br /><br />Of course, the Masses were in the traditional rite. And here’s the thing: Now, post <i>Summorum Pontificum</i>, a full half or more of the morning Masses in St. Peter’s are in the classical Roman rite! When our curial priest-friend was out of town for a couple of days, we “tried our luck” one morning and went from one altar to another in search of the traditional rite. Soon, we were at the Mass of a young Czech priest who works for the Secretariat of State’s Office. He had no server, so, not being shy, I jumped in and served. And it was an honor to serve Mass being offered over the body of Pope Saint Leo the Great at <a href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/LeotheGreat/LeotheGreat.htm" mce_href="http://saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/LeotheGreat/LeotheGreat.htm" target="_blank">this magnificent altar</a>, where one may observe in the altarpiece Pope Leo giving the business to Attila the Hun, with the help of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. (Read the story <a href="http://catholicism.org/pontificate-leo-great.html" mce_href="http://catholicism.org/pontificate-leo-great.html">here</a> if you're not familiar.)<br /><br />Every day, in close proximity to “our” altar, we could see a few other traditional-rite Masses.<br /><br />After Mass every morning, we went for a light breakfast in a nearby coffee bar, which is filled with a few small crowds of clerics who, like us, have just come from Mass at St. Peter’s, and are about to begin their day in the office or in the classroom. On a couple of these days, we found ourselves with some seminarians, who talked of their desire to offer the traditional rite Mass, and how their convictions in this area were shared overtly or covertly by many fellow seminarians. In these conversations, the spirit of false ecumenism was seriously scorned, and adherence to all things traditional was made evident. These future priests speak the language of Jerusalem, and not of Egypt.<br /><br />To quote a song I truly hate, but that aptly captures the thing I want to say: <i>the times they are a-changin'!</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0