Friars of the Atonement preserve Vatican II historry

Pictures always
tell a story, they’re also worth a thousand words. OK, how much money would you
give to preserve an archive of photography devoted to the Second Vatican
Council? What is preserving photographic memories to such a legendary event
like Vatican II worth to you? I hope much.

Paul VI & M Ramsey.jpg

In 2009, Sister Leideke Galema, who
managed Foyer Unitas for many years, gave Centro Pro Unione library a gift of 740
photographs taken at Vatican II. This precious collection not only records of
the sessions of the Council, but also include important ecumenical moments from
the pontificate of the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, including the historic
meeting when he gave his own episcopal ring to the archbishop of Canterbury,
Michael Ramsey.

Rome’s Centro Pro Unione is a long time work of the Franciscan
Friars of the Atonement dedicated to ecumenical action, research, and formation
at the Piazza Navona. The Centro’s mission is known through intensive programs,
conferences, courses, and dialogues that attract theologians and academics from
around the world. It’s staff works closely with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and with various ecumenical leaders as well as teaching in the
various theological faculties in Rome.

Foyer Unitas, a ministry of hospitality
operated by the Ladies of Bethany, had since 1950 collaborated with the Centro
in welcoming non-Catholic pilgrims arriving in Rome. During Vatican II, Pope
Paul VI asked Foyer Unitas to provide lodging for the ecumenical observers. The
Centro Pro Unione is working to make this collection available to the public
during the 50 th anniversary of Vatican II’s opening council in Rome later this
year.  To support the project and
for more information visit the Friars’ website.

Confronting the Devil– one of the Church’s greatest needs

With last the announcement last week about a study session of the new Rite of Exorcism seemingly many peoples’ interest in the devil and evil soared. But I wonder if we all know the implications of having an interest in the “devil and evil” means. What it means is that we are in a spiritual battle with evil, a fact that is being spoken of more and more.


The Servant of God Pope Paul VI addressed the issue in a General Audience on November 15, 1972. What he said in 1972 remains so very true today:

What are the Church’s greatest needs at the present time? Don’t be surprised at Our answer and don’t write it off as simplistic or even superstitious: one of the Church’s greatest needs is to be defended against the evil we call the Devil.

The papal address is not long and it covers topics of a Christian’s vision of the universe, the mystery of evil, seeking answers to our questions, the biblical witness to evil and the Devil, the Devil’s ability to tempt us, the peril of ignoring the Devil, the presence of diabolical actions and what our defense against the Devil means. Read what Pope Paul said.

Two Standards Loyola.jpg

In his meditation of the second week of the Spiritual Exercises Saint Ignatius of Loyola presents to us “On the Two Standards” telling us we are faced with making a choice: “The one of Christ, our Commander-in-chief and Lord; the other Lucifer, mortal enemy of our human nature.” Loyola places in front of us the choice of how we are going to live our lives, either for Christ or against Christ, either for good, or for evil. Why sell our soul for money, power and fame when the Lord offers us a life that’s attractive and beautiful through the virtues of spiritual –and possibly in actual poverty, contempt for worldly honor and humility against pride? Poverty, whether spiritual and/or actual, obedience and humility are virtues that lead to all other virtue and everlasting life in Jesus Christ.


Continue reading Confronting the Devil– one of the Church’s greatest needs

The 47th anniversary of election of Pope Paul VI

Pope Paul VI.jpg

Today’s the 47th anniversary of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini to the Throne of Peter taking the name Paul VI. He succeeded Pope John XXIII.

The Vatican’s e-file of Pope Paul’s works can be found here.

In Your wise providence, O God, You wished Your servant Paul to be counted as one of the Popes. Please number him also among the company of Your saintly Pontiffs, we beg You, since he ruled as Vicar on earth of Your only Son.
May his memory be eternal.

Saint Charles Lwanga & companions, Martyrs of Uganda

St Charles Lwanga.jpgToday’s the liturgical memorial of some of the most evocative witnesses to Jesus Christ who gave their lives for the Christian Faith of the 19th century. I pray that Saint Charles and companions intercede not only for Africa but for all who claim the Church as mother and family and who find it difficult to truly live their faith. More on Saint Charles here.

Saint Charles and his companions (22 of them) were killed in Namugongo, Uganda between 1885-1887. They ranged in age between 13 and 30. They were beatified in 1920 and canonized in 1964. At the revision of the Roman liturgical calendar Saint Charles’s feast day was added. The Church calls these saints the “Protomartyrs of Black Africa.”

In his 1964 homily at the canonization of Saint Charles and his companions, Pope Paul VI said:
“The African martyrs add another page to the Church’s roll of honor –an occasion both of mourning and joy. These African martyrs herald the dawn of a new age. If only the mind of man might be directed not toward persecutions and religious conflicts but toward a rebirth of Christianity and civilization! Africa has been washed by the blood of these latest martyrs, and the first of this new age (and, God willing, let them be the last, although such a holocaust is precious indeed). Africa is reborn free and independent.”

Luigi Giussani speaks about Pope Paul

When Paul VI Saved the Church from Disaster: An interview with Fr. Luigi Giussani

Q: Paul VI died in August of 1978, and then came pope Albino Luciani. Then there was the arrival of the “pope who came from far away.” Do you remember the hours during which the death of Paul VI was announced?

A: I remember those moments. […] The Church had been plunged into such a condition that the loss of that guide seemed extremely serious to me. It had been Paul VI who, in all good faith, had looked favorably upon a certain evolution of the Church. But his love for the Church was so genuine that, at a certain point, he had to realize the disaster posed by the dynamic of things – even though these things had been approved [by him]. It was then that he opened himself completely to the experience of Communion and Liberation. So the death of Pope Montini was like the disappearance of a possible guide. He had seen and made confirmation; he knew the inner workings of that process of destruction. Now, he intended to go against the tide: and he was the best choice and the one most able to do it.

Paulus VI PP.jpgQ: When did this new intention of Paul VI come about?

A: It dates from his famous ‘Credo’, June 30, 1968, which began the shift. Humanae Vitae and the outrageous attacks to which he was subjected confirmed him in his judgment. The culmination of his disillusionment came with the referendum on divorce in Italy, in 1974, when the very leaders of Catholic Action and FUCI [Italian Federation of Catholic University Students] whom he had loved and protected turned their backs on him. It is probably in this climate that Paul VI realized the capacity for Christian renewal and human responsiveness implicit in Communion and Liberation. Beginning in 1975, the signs of his new and strong sympathies increased. For Palm Sunday of that year he called to Rome all the young people of all the Catholic groups. […] He called everyone. He found himself with only the 17,000 of CL.

Q: And then how did it go?

A: […] After the mass, it was about noon, and I heard a prelate call me: ‘Fr. Giussani, the pope wants to see you.’ I was in the portico of Saint Peter’s Basilica, I had the ciborium with the consecrated hosts in my hands, and I heard that voice. In the emotion of the moment I tried to hand over the ciborium to a halberdier, who drew back. Finally I was able to hurry toward the pope. I appeared before him right at the door of the church. I knelt down, I was so confused… I remember precisely only these words: ‘Have courage, this is the right way: keep going forward.’

Q: Was this something unexpected?

A: Totally unexpected. But these were not improvised words of encouragement. [Years later] I received sure proof of this from Cardinal Benelli, the closest hierarchical collaborator of Paul VI. He told me in person that each time he visited Pope Montini during the last years of his pontificate, the pope asked him about Communion and Liberation. And he told him: ‘Your Eminence, that is the way.’ Benelli made this comment to me: ‘If Paul VI had lived another year, I assure you that all your ecclesiastical problems would already have been resolved.’ Paul VI would have had the courage to say so, and to do it. […] One noteworthy confirmation of the change in Paul VI was evident in his dismissal from the supervision of Catholic Action of his close friend Bishop Franco Costa, who had determined the course of Catholic associations over the previous decades.


Q: Did Paul VI’s old collaborator also mean by those words to express a specific judgment about the Church?

A:  [His words] signified affirmation of the soundness of CL’s inspiration, of its validity for the Church. And this was in view of the profile of all Catholic associations during those years, which in their leadership bodies voted and directed voting [in the referendum on divorce] not in accordance with the pope’s wishes. The approach of ‘religious choice’ had led Catholic associations to take refuge in all sorts of leftist politics: and there they pushed for divorce, among other things, without any qualms.

Q: On September 8, 1977, Paul VI spoke to his friend Jean Guitton about ‘a non-Catholic type of thought’ and the resistance of a ‘small flock.’ For years you have wanted to have these words repeated so that they could be known to everyone. Why?

A: Because that is what is happening. Please read me those words again.

Emmaus Duccio.jpgQ: Here they are: There is a great disturbance at this moment in the world and in the Church, and what is in question is the faith. It happens now that I find myself repeating the obscure saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Luke: ‘When the Son of man returns, will he find faith on the earth?’ It happens that books are published in which important points of the faith are undermined, that the bishops are silent, that these books are not found to be strange. […] What strikes me, when I consider the Catholic world, is that a non-Catholic type of thought seems to predominate sometimes within Catholicism, and this non-Catholic thought might become the stronger one within Catholicism in the future. But it will never represent the thought of the Church. A small flock must remain, however small it may be.

A: These words are the synthesis of the pope’s reflection on the situation and destiny of the Church. This is where his openness to CL comes in.

Q: Is there some strong doctrinal point that you feel to be central to the magisterium of Paul VI?

A: The affirmation, completely against the tide, of the Church as an ‘ethnic identity sui generis.’ On July 23, 1975, it was the heart of his preaching on the identity of the Church at the Wednesday general audiences. We were almost the only ones to take up this idea. Paul VI sensed the destruction of the Catholic presence in society. This presence was hiding itself. Or rather, instead of a Catholic presence, there was an increasingly tired and abstract closing in upon oneself in the offices of the associations, while the concrete lives of the young people themselves lined up to follow the current ideas. Or, instead of the Catholic presence, there was intellectual interpretation in the manner of the Democratic League, of the university students of the FUCI, of the Catholic Alumni. These theorized a conception of the faith that was absolutely elitist, and suicidal for mission. In the third place, the position of the Church came to be identified with political and diplomatic cunning. In any case, I believe that the news about the situation of the Catholic universities, institutes, and schools of theology was decisive in showing clearly to Paul VI the abyss toward which the Church’s leadership was dragging everybody else.

Q: Some observers judge the pontificate of Paul VI as a failure.

A: The papacy of Paul VI was one of the greatest papacies! He had demonstrated during the first part of his life an extreme sensitivity for all the problems of the anguished condition of modern man and society. And he found a response! He gave this response during his last ten years. The papacy of Paul VI is a failure only to someone who has not thoroughly examined it.

Q: He is the pope who concluded Vatican Council II.

A: Of course. A history should be compiled of all the courageous, and unpopular, contributions he made to stop false democracy, the dogmatic equivocation that many Council Fathers tried to pass off under a democratic pretext.

Q: What was the method of Paul VI in the face of the dissolution of the Catholic people, the disappearance of the multitudes?

A: It was that of the ‘Credo.’ This is as much as to say the authentic proclamation of dogma, sine glossa, with clarity, and of the presence of the Church in the world, as in his speech on the Christian people on Wednesday, July 23, 1975.

Q: Paul VI was targeted for his rediscovery of the devil as an actor in human affairs. He was even left alone by the bishops.

A: Pope Montini began to realize the disaster into which the Church was sliding when he noticed the formalism with which the supernatural was considered and represented. For this reason, his speech on the presence of the devil in the world was a challenge – and such a courageous one that it could not have been foreseen in light of his temperament – to the world and to all theology, including Catholic theology, that was coming to agreement with the world.

A: During that month of August, 1978, with one pope dead and another dying, what were you hoping for the Church?

A: A man who would continue an intuitive understanding of the tragedy in which the
Paul VI and Karol Wojtyla.jpgChurch was submerged. And of the only remedy, which is that of returning to faith in the supernatural as the determining factor in the Church’s life, to the authenticity of tradition. In short, I was hoping for a pope who would continue on the way that Paul VI, during his last years, had vigorously pointed out. […] In the end, John Paul II emerged: a pope who is the incarnation of what the last ten years of Paul VI had intuited and expressed.

 

A pope and a dirty magazine: Humanae Vitae & our true destiny

 

On the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae last week I observed the prophetic nature of Pope Paul VI’s work and the gift it is to the Church and the world. Below I am adding a recently published article on the same subject by a scholar and friend, Don DeMarco.

 

Paul VI versus Playboy

By Donald DeMarco

 

In 1986, Brother Don Fleischhacker of the University of Notre Dame wrote a letter to Playboy protesting that magazine’s fragmented view of human sexuality.

 

Citing “Humanae Vitae,” this intrepid Holy Cross religious reasoned that once “the contraceptive mentality is accepted, there can be no coherent objective ground for opposition to homosexual activity.” If the unitive aspect of sex becomes an end in itself, he went on to explain, “There is no essential reason why sex should be restricted to couples of different sexes.”

 



Paul VI PP.jpgRecent events have proven that Brother Don was as prophetic as was Pope Paul VI when he penned “Humane Vitae” back in 1968. For Playboy, however, the letter was treated as an object of ridicule and its content irreverently dismissed: “Brother, you sound like St. Thomas’ lawyer,” wrote the Playboy editor, who went on to bless “both kinds” of sexual relations.

 

This holier-than-thou posture of Playboy explains why its founder, Hugh Hefner, has declared that he is the most moral human being he has ever met. From the perspective of Playboy, it is far ahead of the church in the sheer number of wonderful things it deems good, including marriage for same-sex partners. Playboy has surpassed Genesis in its generosity, and outdistanced mother church in its magnanimity.

 

Continue reading A pope and a dirty magazine: Humanae Vitae & our true destiny

Collaborating with God the Father

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), the remarkable encyclical of the Servant of God Pope Paul VI. In the 1968 encyclical, the Pope reminds us that “Married love particularly reveals its true nature and nobility when we realize that it takes its origin from God, who “is love,” the Father “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” This timeless work is not merely about regulating birth, conception and abortion. It is about the Divine Plan for us, about the beauty of human love between a husband and wife, about loving children and about growing in holiness so that one day we will be united with God in heaven. To think otherwise is selfish and narcissistic. The greatness of the teaching found in Humanae Vitae is there is unequivocally a dignity in collaborating with the Divine Plan on the part of every person. What has become clear to me is that all of what is taught by Pope Paul remains true today: the contraceptive mentality has watered down, even destroyed an integral notion of love in married life, sex, holiness & sacrifice, spiritual fatherhood & motherhood, priesthood, etc.

 

The acceptance of the Pill as a “normal” way to deal with a pregancy (i.e., a real human life) has encouraged Catholics (and other Christians) to reduce their salvation to something they manage rather accept as a gift from God. Since when does one manage God’s gift of salvation? Isn’t salvation freely given? Isn’t faith a supernatural gift? Faith has consequences, just look at the saints and countless others who would not capitulate to society’s demands for insidious compromise. Pope Paul’s teaching stands against the constant degradation of marriage, family life and holiness. In so many ways Humanae Vitae  is “sign of contradiction” in the face of those who denigrate marriage by not seeing marriage as based on authentic love with its origins in the Blessed Trinity that is faithful, exclusive and eternal. If you want to know why our human existence is often “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” to quote Thomas Hobbes, then you have you examine the attitudes about love, sexuality, responsibility and holiness. Taking a Pill will not exempt you from reality, at least not true reality. 

 

The Pope writes:


 
Paul VI.jpg
 
…one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. “Human life is sacred–all men must recognize that fact,” Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. ‘From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.”

 

Through the intercession of Saint James, Mary, Mother of God, and Saint Joseph, may married couples and those considering the vocation of married life remain close to the Lord.

 

Mary Eberstadt’s article “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae” in the August/September 2008 issue of First Things  is worth reading and studying. Eberstadt does a terriffic job in relating the reality of the contraceptive culture and shows how Pope Paul was right all along. Also worth the time is Karol Wojytla’s 1960 book, Love and Responsibility. Later as Pope John Paul II he delivered to the Church what is known as the Theology of the Body.