“Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline…” - Chesterton
By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell — and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed. — Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
Memorial Day began as a way to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. Woman organized and attended the graves of the war dead. After WWI, the commemoration was extended to all those who died in war, in the defense of our Country.
Since we are now in the Iraq war, the meaning of Memorial Day has regained recognition amongst the average person, especially since many families have a husband, father, brother, mother, wife, what have you, serving in the military. It is no longer just a day off of work, a day at the beach - the authentic meaning has painfully re-emerged.
Litany of the Lamb of God During Time of War.
V. The Lord give you peace;
R. Peace and good will.
O Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst say to Thy Apostles, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you,” look not upon my sins, but upon the faith of Thy Church, and vouchsafe to her that peace and unity which is agreeable to Thy will, Who livest and reignest, God forever and ever. R. Amen.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy. Jesus hear us.
Jesus, graciously hear us.
By the hymn of the Angels at Thy birth,
Grant us peace.
By Thy salutation to the Apostles,
Grant us peace.
By Thy voice to the waves of Galilee, etc.
By Thy blessing to the sinner,
By Thy prayers for unity among Thy disciples,
By the love that was to mark Thy followers,
By the great peace offering of the Cross,
By Thy parting promise, “My peace I leave you,”
From the ambition of empire,
Deliver us, O Lord.
From the greed for territory,
Deliver us, O Lord.
From the blindness that is injustice, etc.
From the selfishness that is theft,
From the liberty which is license,
From the love of money which is idolatry,
From the hate that is murder,
From the hardness that will not pardon,
From the pride that will not ask pardon,
By the helpless cry of orphans,
We beseech Thee, hear us.
By the anguished tears of widows,
We beseech Thee, hear us.
By the groans of the dying, etc.
By the dead in unblessed graves,
That Thou wouldst make all nations to dwell as one,
That the hearts of rulers may be as wax in Thy hands,
That having learned in affliction, we may turn to Thee,
That wars may cease from the earth,
By Thy title, “Prince of Peace,” Lord God of Armies,
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Grant us peace.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Grant us peace.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, Grant us peace.
V. I am the Salvation of the people, saith the Lord;
R. In whatever tribulation they shall cry to Me, I will hear them.
Let Us Pray.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, teach us, who have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, the saving grace of a true humility, that we and all the peoples of this world may acknowledge and bewail that spirit of materialism and self-seeking and lust for power and vengeance which has plunged the family of nations into war, until in Thy just wrath the world suffers that punishment which, by turning from Thee, it has brought upon itself. In humility and penance, may we lessen the guilt and hasten true peace, without victory, save the victory of union with Thee. R. Amen.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Have mercy on us.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Have mercy on us.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Have mercy on us.
Give peace, O Lord, in our days,
For there is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, Our God.
V. Let there be peace in Thy strength, O Lord,
R. And plenty in Thy strong places.
Let Us Pray.
O God, from Whom proceed all holy desires, all right counsels and all just works, grant unto us Thy servants that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be devoted to Thy service, and that being delivered from the fear of our enemies, we may pass our time in peace under Thy protection, through Christ Our Lord. R. Amen.
Immaculate Queen of Peace, Pray for us.
The body of this litany to the Lamb of God was written about 1915 by or under the auspices of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922) during World War I.
Photo: A real aborted child, - not a still from the film.
Strange as it may sound, the Palme d’Or went to a Romanian film graphically illustrating the horrors of a mid-term abortion in that Communist block country, shortly before the fall of Communism. Cannes audiences were shocked at the realism of viewing the remains of an aborted child, while the film maker, Cristian Mungin explained that he put the aborted foetus on screen to serve as a reminder to audiences. “It makes a point — people should be aware of the consequences of their decisions,” he said. The film is entitled, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” which was the age of the child when aborted.
Wow! The entertainment elite sat through something so gruesome, and awarded the film with Cannes’ highest honor. Could it be that the world will finally come to its senses and realize abortion for the crime of murder that it is? All because of a film maker who had the courage to show what an aborted child looks like?
We can only hope. Go here for the entire story - things like this just don’t “happen” in the movie industry.
As I’ve always said, people have to see what an abortion actually is, in order to understand and believe that it is a human being destroyed, not simply tissue. (Do you suppose the film will be banned in the United States?)
Photo: St. John’s Abbey Church, Marcel Breuer, completed 1961. (I happen to admire the architecture and consider it conducive to monastic liturgy.)
It is not new.
Many of us have lamented the banality and sterility in the architecture style of contemporary churches. On various blogs and websites, there seems to be a blanket condemnation of modernist church design as a product of the so-called “spirit of Vatican II”. It is an easy assumption to make, especially for younger Catholics and those unfamiliar with the history of architecture in general.
However, as I noted in my comments on the post at Salve Regina, this architectural trend predates Vatican Council II by several decades. It emanates from post WWI 1920’s German Bauhaus School of architecture, re-named in post WWII United States as the Intenational Style, by the American architect, the late Philip Johnson due to an exhibition on the subject at the Museum of Modern Art with the same title.
Not a few ‘modern’ churches in Minnesota reflect this style of architecture, in fact the abbey Church of St. John’s in St. Cloud, Minnesota is a good example of the architectural style of Marcel Breuer. (The Abbey Church also has Stations of the Cross which are set into the floor.) This Church certainly predates Vatican II, albeit the monks may have anticipated the changes on the horizon. In addition, the local parish church I now attend was built in 1961, and is mostly devoid of all ornament, as are many churches dating from the 1950’s to the 1960’s. All of these structures are derivative of the International Style.
Photo credit: Salve Regina Blog.
Purity of form and function remain the hallmarks of this particular school of modern architecture; devoid of ornament, in reaction to the “elitist” styles of architecture of the past. The intent of the architect was to make good design available to the masses, demonstrating it could be manufactured from simple materials, and appropriated anywhere. In this environment, on some level, the people became the focus, as opposed to the grandiose ornamental architecture of the elite.
The style gained sway in Germany, Holland and France, and may be understood as a revolt against the elitist monarchial systems that had been in place throughout Europe, which of course was evident in the prevailing triumphalist architecture. Thus it is easy to see, how the style accorded with modernist trends emergent within the Catholic Church, with its emphasis upon the laity and active participation, not excluding the growing disrespect for hierarchal authority.
Though Nazi Germany, and later the Soviet Union expelled the International Style architects, I still believe within this school of thought are elements of Marxist socialism and the utopian dream. Thus, some critics may be correct in referring to the style, especially in Churches, as “communist”. Of course, I’m neither a historian nor is my scholarship of architecture well informed enough to back up this assertion, it is simply my impression.
People must remember that the desire for inovation and change, both liturgically and architecturally, indeed predates Vatican II. Already when I was in grade school, forms of the dialogue Mass were being experimented with. Churches were being constructed, greatly influenced by the International Stle, and religious art was becoming increasingly more modern, if not abstract. Hence, the iconolclasm that occurred after the Council had been well underway, preceding the call by John XXIII to throw open the windows of the Church.
Indeed, the windows were opened, causing many things to ”come out” or at least surface, as well as occasioning many things to get in. The seeds of rebellion and revolution were well embedded in the Church before the 1960’s; consider that previous Popes, including Pius XII, repeatedly warned about those who would dismantle the churches and the liturgy as well. In my uneducated opinion, it is not that the Council either willed or permitted these things to happen, rather it seems to me the Council Fathers did little to condemn, much less stop the progression of the modernist movement within the Church.
Paul VI once lamented, “Through some crack the smoke of Satan has infiltrated the Church.” With all due respect to His Holiness, I don’t think it was a crack, someone opened a window, while neglecting to put a screen on it.
A Saint for Pentecost
Little Mariam Baouardy, now known as Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, was professed on 21 November 1871 as a Carmelite Religious. Prior to that action she was subjected to severe supernatural adversities. One of the most terrible was diabolic possession for a period of 40 days. She persevered in her simple child-like faith in God the Son and His Holy Mother Mary. Her rewards were those reserved for the most privileged of humans. She was fixed with the stigmata of her crucified Savior, experienced levitations, transverberations of the heart, knowledge of hearts, prophecies, possession by the Good Angel, and facial radiance. Again and again she would say, “Everything passes here on earth. What are we? Nothing but dust, nothingness, and God is so great, so beautiful, so lovable and He is not loved.”
Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified had an intense devotion to the Holy Spirit, Possessor of the Truth without error or division. Through the Melkite Patriarch Gregory II Sayour, she sent a message to Pope Pius IX that the Church, even in seminaries, is neglecting true devotion to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. - Melkite website
Her prayer to that great Unknown was:
“Holy Spirit, inspire me.
Love of God consume me.
Along the true road, lead me.
Mary, my good mother, look down upon me.
With Jesus, bless me.
From all evil, all illusion, all danger, preserve me.”
From John Paul II, his encyclical on the Holy Spirit:
Conscience
43. The Second Vatican Council mentioned the Catholic teaching on conscience when it spoke about man’s vocation and in particular about the dignity of the human person. It is precisely the conscience in particular which determines this dignity. For the conscience is “the most secret core and sanctuary of a man, where he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.” It “can …speak to his heart more specifically: do this, shun that.” This capacity to command what is good and to forbid evil, placed in man by the Creator, is the main characteristic of the personal subject. But at the same time, “in the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience.”
Obedience
The conscience therefore is not an independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil. Rather there is profoundly imprinted upon it a principle of obedience vis-a-vis the objective norm which establishes and conditions the correspondence of its decisions with the commands and prohibitions which are at the basis of human behavior, as from the passage of the Book of Genesis which we have already considered. Precisely in this sense the conscience is the “secret sanctuary” in which “God’s voice echoes.” The conscience is “the voice of God,” even when man recognizes in it nothing more than the principle of the moral order which it is not humanly possible to doubt, even without any direct reference to the Creator. It is precisely in reference to this that the conscience always finds its foundation and justification.
Convincing power
The Gospel’s “convincing concerning sin” under the influence of the Spirit of truth can be accomplished in man in no other way except through the conscience. If the conscience is upright, it serves “to resolve according to truth the moral problems which arise both in the life of individuals and from social relationships”; then “persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct.”
A result of an upright conscience is, first of all, to call good and evil by their proper name, as we read in the same Pastoral Constitution (Gaudium et Spes): “whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons”; and having called by name the many different sins that are so frequent and widespread in our time, the Constitution adds: “All these things and others of their kind are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator”
By calling by their proper name the sins that most dishonor man, and by showing that they are a moral evil that weighs negatively on any balance- sheet of human progress, the Council also describes all this as a stage in “a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness,” which characterizes “all of human life, whether individual or collective.” The 1983 Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on reconciliation and penance specified even more clearly the personal and social significance of human sin. - Dominum et Vivificantem
It seems to me the Church and the world desperately needs this convincing power of the Holy Spirit, His illumination of conscience, in order to attain the healing of sin and division through obedience to His promptings and urgings in the deepest recesses of our hearts, guided by the teachings He transmits through the Church.
Today is the feast of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595). Growing up, the nuns and priests always referred to him as the saint with a sense of humor, so I had this image of him as sort of a stand-up comic. Exhibiting this joy in the spiritual life was a big deal in the late 1950’s and ’60’s. Catholics didn’t want to appear too strict - no one wanted any “plaster saints” as they used to say.
I have memories of many parish priest’s homilies usually opening with a joke, to warm up the crowd. Photos of nuns filling baseball stadiums were big ice breakers, as were photos of sisters playing baseball. I seem to remember a June Alyson movie about a baseball playing nun. It was probably an American thing to do. After the Council, we came to realize even more how human and fun priests and religious could be.
It was the joy of the Holy Spirit that St. Philip should be noted for, rather than for his humor or cheerfulness. Maybe some stuff in his life was ‘funny’, such as his mangled chalice, preserved today, gnawed and bent up. He used to bite down on the chalice to keep himself from going into ecstasy at Mass. Now that’s kind of amusing. But he wasn’t a comedian. (He was permitted to celebrate Mass privately, which took hours, because he would be rapt in ecstasy.)
He lived for a long time as a layman, a familiar amongst the common people of Rome, a habit he continued after his ordination. (He is known as the “Apostle of Rome”.) He attracted to himself men and boys, whom he instructed in the faith and piety, often presenting to them the ascetical practices of the Church in a humorous manner, thereby causing them (penance) to be more appealing to undertake. He was, nevertheless, a remarkable mystic, intensely devoted to the Holy Spirit, or the Love of God, from Whom he received many signal graces.
Holy Father, John Paul II had this to say about St. Philip Neri:
“Leafing through the biography of St Philip, in fact, one is surprised and fascinated by the cheerful and relaxed method he used to educate, supporting each person with fraternal generosity and patience. As is well known, the saint used to put his teaching into short and wise maxims: “Be good, if you can”; “Scruples and melancholy, stay away from my house”; “Be simple and humble”; “He who does not pray is a speechless animal”; and, bringing his hand to his forehead, “Holiness is three fingers deep”. Behind the cleverness of these and many other “sayings”, we are aware of the acute and realistic knowledge he had acquired of human nature and the dynamics of grace. He translated the experience of his long life and the wisdom of a heart inhabited by the Holy Spirit into these immediate, terse teachings. These aphorisms have now become a patrimony of wisdom as it were for Christian spirituality.
2. St Philip appears against the background of the Roman Renaissance as the “prophet of joy”, who had decided to follow Jesus, even while being actively involved in the culture of his time, which in many respects is particularly close to that of today.” - Letter on the IV Centenary of the Death of St. Philip Neri
New Advent has an edifying, but brief biography of him. The jokester image of him is a modern distortion.
Photo: Dancing Jesuit priest from India.
For those of you who may not care for the way the Jesuit Order has evolved since the Council, the Order’s Father General has an interesting interview concerning the demise of certain orders in the Church through the centuries. Here is a snippet from Catholic News Agency:
“The Father General of the Society of Jesus, Father Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, said this week no religious congregation or institution has a guaranteed future and that each one “could disappear” if the work entrusted to it by the Lord has been fulfilled, as the history of the Church has shown.
“I am convinced that religious life should always be in crisis, if we really want to be constantly attentive to the Spirit, who never rests. It’s not enough to follow the constitutions, the rules, in order to have a certain future,” the Jesuit superior said in an interview with the magazine “Jesus” and quoted by the Spanish daily “La Razon.”
In this sense, he said, there must be discernment of what the Lord is asking of each congregation in the different circumstances of life and history, since for example, “He may ask of a certain group of consecrated a specific task during a determined period of time,” and when that is finished, “that institute may disappear. This is not something new in the history of the Church.”” - CNA
Of course the Jesuits have been suppressed in previous times and places, and they came back again. I’ve met excellent Jesuits however, and I respect the Order. Of course, some people are not in agreement with me on this. It is for them to have good hope.
Religious Orders can indeed come and go. Look at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Corondolet for instance - oh, that’s right, they are still around. I’m certain some of the newer diocesan congregations will probably not stand the test of time, neither will the increasing numbers of idiosyncratic, free-agent hermits - but these types have sprung up at various points in the history of the Church, and were often incorporated into existing Religious Orders of the time after awhile.
(One local group, The Hermits of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel, was recently incorporated into the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance. Although the group was pretty much started because they felt the Discalced Carmelites were not observant enough. and now they are O. Carm.. Ironic.)
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