From www.irishtimes.com
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
PATSY McGARRY ANALYSIS:
In the second of our series looking at what things might be like five years hence, we consider the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, where ordinations have collapsed along with its moral authority
THERE WAS a poignancy in the air at the ordination of three men as Redemptorist priests in St Joseph’s Church, Dundalk, on Sunday December 6th. In the front pew a female relative of one of the men wept copiously as the ceremony progressed.
It was conducted by the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, who was clearly still reeling from the findings of the Murphy report, published on November 26th, while also attending to his duties. He seemed exhausted. In a momentary lapse he forgot the name of one of the young men. Then, remembering, he commented it was “Seán, the same name as my own”. There was a laugh from the congregation.
The three men made up the largest number to be ordained at once for the Redemptorist congregation in more than 10 years. They were Brian Nolan (31) from Limerick, Tony Rice (31) from Belfast, and Seán Duggan (30) from Galway.
They are no starry-eyed neophytes. Brian Nolan, a former electronics student at Limerick Institute of Technology, admitted that when he told people that he was in the religious life, “it can be a conversation stopper”. But still, he didn’t “feel the need to hold back from telling people what I’m doing”.
Tony Rice worked in a bank for four years. He said the difficulties in the church were symptomatic of a general lack of leadership in a number of areas in our society. “People have reason to be disappointed with several institutions right now – banks, politicians, the church and so many others . . . We need strong, just and accountable leadership to renew our vision and our hope in humanity,” he said.
Seán Duggan gave up corporate law to become a priest. “The choices I have made are not knee-jerk reactions. They have been thought about and talked about over a period of eight years’ training,” he said. “The questions that people throw to me such as celibacy, inept church leadership, married priests and more, are all questions that I’ve thought about myself. It’s not as if I live in a bubble cut off from reality,” he said.
On Sunday November 15th Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said his archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes. “We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes,” he said.
Last April he said there were now 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40 in Dublin. It also emerged at the time that the number of priests in Tuam’s Catholic archdiocese will fall by 30 per cent over the next four years, leaving most parishes there with just one resident priest.
Meanwhile, writing in the Furrow magazine last June, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest at St Muredach’s Cathedral, in Ballina, Co Mayo, said of his own Killala diocese that “in 20 years’ time there will be around eight priests instead of the present 34, with probably two or three under 60 years of age”.
He continued “the difficult truth is that priests will have effectively disappeared in Ireland in two to three decades”.
For people of a certain age the very idea of an Ireland without Catholic priests is, truly, beyond imagination. This is not hard to understand. Speaking to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin on November 13th the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, recalled that of the 50 students in his Leaving Cert class of 1952, 20 went on for the priesthood. Vocations were so high then that between a third and a half of Irish priests went on the missions.
But, almost 50 years later, all has changed. The number of priests in Ireland is in serious decline. The average age of the Irish Catholic priest today is put at 63. For those who are members of religious congregations the average age is in the early 70s.
Each priest must retire at 75. As the Americans say, you do the math!
At the end of September last there were 77 men training for the priesthood at Maynooth. Of that number, 36 entered this year, an increase of 12 on the 24 who entered in 2008.
It is believed to be a blip which won’t alter the downward trend. Meanwhile, for every 10 men who begin training for the priesthood, at Maynooth five or six become priests.
All of which means that the coming decade will see profound change in Catholic Church structures and practices on this island. It will also see the end of the clerical caste which has dominated Irish Catholicism since Victorian times. They will give way, of necessity, to a more lay-directed institution with fewer-but-bigger parishes in fewer-but-bigger dioceses.
An indication of what is to come was illustrated in the Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore last June. That month saw the first ordination to the Catholic priesthood there in eight years when Fr Michael Toomey (39) became a priest.
That same month in that same diocese sacristan Ken Hackett conducted a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion instead of daily Mass at Ardfinnan parish in Co Tipperary. The priest, Fr Robert Power, was away. Mr Hackett is a minister of the Eucharist and a minister of the word and may do as he did according to Vatican norms published in the early 1970s. Women may also conduct such liturgies. The response to him from parishioners was “very, very good”, he told The Irish Times.
Catholic Ireland is embarking on a path others have already taken.
In one diocese in northern France there is only one priest to serve 27 parishes. It means the priest drops by on occasion in each parish to offer Mass and consecrate hosts. The rest of the time parishioners run their own church.
In 2001 the diocese of Nice had to reduce its 265 parishes to 47. The recently created parish there of Nôtre Dame de l’Espérance has five churches.
It had five priests; now there is one. Each church has an appointed lay person, the relais locale, whose duty is to run both church and parish, and perform almost all functions of a priest except celebrating the Eucharist and administering sacraments only a priest can.
A principal function of the relais is to conduct a Sunday Communion service in the absence of the priest, a “Mass” without the consecration. There is frequently no priest at funerals there any more.
Writing about this in The Irish Times on July 8th, former Dominican priest and author David Rice recalled how, at the Église Sacré Coeur in Beaulieu “I attended one such funeral, conducted by the relais locale for the church. She received the coffin. There were words of welcome, the singing of hymns, a short eulogy of the deceased, readings from scripture, a brief reflection by the relais, the lighting of candles beside the coffin, a blessing of the coffin with holy water, and prayers for the deceased. It lasted about half an hour. There was no Mass, as there was no priest.”
He spoke to a woman appointed there as general manager of the parish with its five churches. While her official title was économe, her job was more about administration than money. Unpaid herself, she managed a payroll for nine people, including cleaners, organists and two parish secretaries.
Other lay people – men and women – were active in priestly roles: parish visitation; counselling; pre-marriage instruction; attending the sick; chaplaincies to hospitals and retirement homes; to scout and youth groups. And it is lay people who, almost exclusively, impart the faith to children. In 10 years, this way of things is likely to be very familiar to Ireland’s Catholic faithful. And that is believed to be likely even if both the mandatory celibacy rule is dropped and women are allowed become Catholic priests.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Some History on the Rosary
From http://www.spiritdaily.com/lastsecretmillennia.htm
Against the idols of the Middles Ages came the Virgin -- who around the turn of the first millennium was about to appear as never before in more places than ever, an eruption provoked in large part, perhaps, by a dramatic development, a prayer traced to Irish monks who had long recited the 150 Psalms of David. When laymen wanted to do the same but couldn't read or memorize the long Psalms, the monks had devised a new system whereby the people carried a pouch with 150 pebbles and instead of a psalm recited an Our Father with each pebble. The Scriptural Rosary of our own time harkens back to it. The commoners next developed a rope with 150 knots, then strings with fifty wood pieces. Soon the technique spread to other parts of Europe where the faithful began to recite the Angelic Salutation with each piece of wood and where it became famous as the Rosary.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The words ring with power. The Lord is with thee. That was how the Rosary was first said. Blessed art thou among women. That was how they said it a thousand years ago, around the time it was first devised -- a time like today of miracles and apparitions. They were quoting the angel, an archangel, in the salutation (Luke 1:28) and every time it was repeated it allowed Mary's intercession. It was recited in the same way that a hymn or song was repeated, not a vain repetition but an invocation, and although it wasn't the whole Hail Mary, each recitation magnified her. It brought power because it was an invitation. The Lord was and is with those who invoke Mary. She was the one to go to when a person wanted His extra ear and the best way of doing it was by simply quoting the salutation because that was quoting the Bible and any quotation of Scripture shooed away the devil and brought the Holy Spirit. Each salutation parts the veil just as Gabriel had parted the veil and the more it was recited -the more it was recited in conjunction with a meditation on the mysteries of Christ -- the more of a heavenly atmosphere enveloped the person and the greater was the call for Mary to come to earth. It prepared her way. No vain repetition! It brought Mary. It brought the angels. It drowned out the pagan incantations. And the result was an explosion of manifestations linked to the Blessed Mother throughout the centuries including at the turn of the first millennium.
Mary was allowed to intercede the more folks acknowledged her and so the first century of the new millennium rang forth with apparitions that were not only significant enough to enter the records but would increase every century thereafter. In Turin, Italy, an old neglected church was replaced by a chapel after Mary appeared to a nobleman called Marquis Arduino of Ivrea and promised him his health if he would build the chapel in honor of Our Lady of Consolation, which he indeed started on November 23, 1014. (He was cured of his affliction.)
In Rome at St. Mary Major Basilica Emperor Henry of Italy, who had recently driven an anti- pope from Rome, was praying when he saw "the Sovereign and Eternal Priest Christ Jesus" enter to celebrate Mass, along with saints, angels, and the Blessed Virgin, who sent an angel to touch Henry on his thigh and say, "Accept this sign of God's love for your chastity and justice." (From that time on the emperor was presented with the gift of suffering, afterward lame.) It was like a miraculous Mass at Einsiedeln (where heavenly figures were actually seen in apparition) and as with many places the reality of seeing something not of earth, of touching up against eternity, however briefly, changed the emperor's entire perspective and shortly he used his treasury -- state money -- to build cathedrals. That was another of Mary's motifs: establishing great structures that instead of glorifying emperors -- instead of standing as tribute to men and their riches, instead of glorifying the world -- stood as flagships of Jesus. In England Westminster Abbey was built while in Chartres, France, where Mary had replaced a Druid stronghold, men were seen "humbly dragging carts and other conveyances" to help in the construction of an august cathedral that would rank in the world's top ten, their humility rewarded with miracles and healings.
Wonders were also reported at the heights of Montserrat, Spain, where a hidden statue from Barcelona, reputedly dating to the first century, was discovered when two shepherds from Olesa heard singing and saw lights as they were tending their flocks on the banks of the Llobregat River. It was a Saturday evening. There was the sweet mellow music and a peculiar light shining in the eastern part of the mountain. It was as if a thousand candles were descending. Nearby was a cave. "The astonished boys explained their vision to the priest of Monistrol, who did not believe them and wished to see the sight with his own eyes," wrote José María De Sagarra. "It appeared again the next Saturday. When the whole town had seen the marvel and the priest of Monistrol had told the bishop of Manresa, a long procession went to the luminous cave behind the bishop. The canticles, the lights, and the fragrant aroma that arose from this mysterious place affected the people so much that the bishop, filled with the deepest devotion, ordered that the cave be entered, and there they found the image which since then has been a fount of miracles and an object of universal veneration. The bishop wanted to take such a wonderful treasure to his cathedral at Manresa, but when those who were carrying the Virgin reached the place where today the monastery rises, they found that they could not move a single step backwards or forwards, and this new miracle was interpreted as a sign that the Virgin desired her sanctuary to be erected on that very spot, as was done."
I have visited this spot and have felt the power of Montserrat in a remarkable and nearly tangible fashion. The phenomena had been witnessed on four consecutive Saturdays as crowds sang hymns and prayed near the river and as phenomena rose shortly after sunset one of the evenings when a bright light suddenly split the gloom, "illuminating the sharply cut rocks, and rising and falling over the one spot," according to a later narrative. Then a most exquisite music filled the air and the crowd became silent, speechless with both fear and astonishment. The phenomenon had lasted for about ten minutes, after which the light sank among the crags and the music faded away. "The following day an expedition was organized to visit the place where these strange things had occurred, and it was with the greatest difficulty that those chosen for the task succeeded in their undertaking," wrote another chronicler, Isabel Allardyce. "They had to cling to one another to avoid falling over the narrow ledges, making large detours when the obstacles were insurmountable, and often being obliged to hew a foothold in a perpendicular rock that barred their passage. Near the summit of the mountain they came across a cave whose entrance was partly covered by stones, and after removing these they found inside a beautiful image of the Virgin and Child, carved in wood with great skill." Soon the image was placed in a small church erected on the towering rock, destined to turn into a huge complex of chapels and churches and the splendid monastery, one of the world's great pilgrimage spots.
Time and again from Iberia to Austria and all around the Mediterranean various appearances and miracles would repeat themselves, there would be luminosities that indicated the location of an ancient and lost relic or Mary would appear at the spot of burial (resurrecting what had been hidden from the Moslems) or a farm animal, a mule or ox, at times sheep, would hover at a location and refuse to budge, leading to the discovery of another lost icon, many of which were found in trees as Mary now took over the Druid and Viking spots, or there would be a case where an image was found and moved to a better location but the next day would be found back at the original place, repeating this mysterious relocation until the local people realized that Mary wanted a chapel built at the original spot of discovery for reasons that were equally mysterious. In still other cases workmen building a chapel would awaken the next morning to find their materials in a different place or would see birds lifting chips of wood to indicate the actual spot where the Virgin wanted a place of prayer as she set about constructing many sites of worship throughout Christendom, knowing one millennium had already passed and that the new one would build to a feverish pitch. These were the fortresses. This was the rock. They stood in the time of knights and feudal lords and they would continue to stand as months turned into years and years into decades, then centuries, defying all skepticism.
[adapted from Michael H. Brown's The Last Secret]
Against the idols of the Middles Ages came the Virgin -- who around the turn of the first millennium was about to appear as never before in more places than ever, an eruption provoked in large part, perhaps, by a dramatic development, a prayer traced to Irish monks who had long recited the 150 Psalms of David. When laymen wanted to do the same but couldn't read or memorize the long Psalms, the monks had devised a new system whereby the people carried a pouch with 150 pebbles and instead of a psalm recited an Our Father with each pebble. The Scriptural Rosary of our own time harkens back to it. The commoners next developed a rope with 150 knots, then strings with fifty wood pieces. Soon the technique spread to other parts of Europe where the faithful began to recite the Angelic Salutation with each piece of wood and where it became famous as the Rosary.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The words ring with power. The Lord is with thee. That was how the Rosary was first said. Blessed art thou among women. That was how they said it a thousand years ago, around the time it was first devised -- a time like today of miracles and apparitions. They were quoting the angel, an archangel, in the salutation (Luke 1:28) and every time it was repeated it allowed Mary's intercession. It was recited in the same way that a hymn or song was repeated, not a vain repetition but an invocation, and although it wasn't the whole Hail Mary, each recitation magnified her. It brought power because it was an invitation. The Lord was and is with those who invoke Mary. She was the one to go to when a person wanted His extra ear and the best way of doing it was by simply quoting the salutation because that was quoting the Bible and any quotation of Scripture shooed away the devil and brought the Holy Spirit. Each salutation parts the veil just as Gabriel had parted the veil and the more it was recited -the more it was recited in conjunction with a meditation on the mysteries of Christ -- the more of a heavenly atmosphere enveloped the person and the greater was the call for Mary to come to earth. It prepared her way. No vain repetition! It brought Mary. It brought the angels. It drowned out the pagan incantations. And the result was an explosion of manifestations linked to the Blessed Mother throughout the centuries including at the turn of the first millennium.
Mary was allowed to intercede the more folks acknowledged her and so the first century of the new millennium rang forth with apparitions that were not only significant enough to enter the records but would increase every century thereafter. In Turin, Italy, an old neglected church was replaced by a chapel after Mary appeared to a nobleman called Marquis Arduino of Ivrea and promised him his health if he would build the chapel in honor of Our Lady of Consolation, which he indeed started on November 23, 1014. (He was cured of his affliction.)
In Rome at St. Mary Major Basilica Emperor Henry of Italy, who had recently driven an anti- pope from Rome, was praying when he saw "the Sovereign and Eternal Priest Christ Jesus" enter to celebrate Mass, along with saints, angels, and the Blessed Virgin, who sent an angel to touch Henry on his thigh and say, "Accept this sign of God's love for your chastity and justice." (From that time on the emperor was presented with the gift of suffering, afterward lame.) It was like a miraculous Mass at Einsiedeln (where heavenly figures were actually seen in apparition) and as with many places the reality of seeing something not of earth, of touching up against eternity, however briefly, changed the emperor's entire perspective and shortly he used his treasury -- state money -- to build cathedrals. That was another of Mary's motifs: establishing great structures that instead of glorifying emperors -- instead of standing as tribute to men and their riches, instead of glorifying the world -- stood as flagships of Jesus. In England Westminster Abbey was built while in Chartres, France, where Mary had replaced a Druid stronghold, men were seen "humbly dragging carts and other conveyances" to help in the construction of an august cathedral that would rank in the world's top ten, their humility rewarded with miracles and healings.
Wonders were also reported at the heights of Montserrat, Spain, where a hidden statue from Barcelona, reputedly dating to the first century, was discovered when two shepherds from Olesa heard singing and saw lights as they were tending their flocks on the banks of the Llobregat River. It was a Saturday evening. There was the sweet mellow music and a peculiar light shining in the eastern part of the mountain. It was as if a thousand candles were descending. Nearby was a cave. "The astonished boys explained their vision to the priest of Monistrol, who did not believe them and wished to see the sight with his own eyes," wrote José María De Sagarra. "It appeared again the next Saturday. When the whole town had seen the marvel and the priest of Monistrol had told the bishop of Manresa, a long procession went to the luminous cave behind the bishop. The canticles, the lights, and the fragrant aroma that arose from this mysterious place affected the people so much that the bishop, filled with the deepest devotion, ordered that the cave be entered, and there they found the image which since then has been a fount of miracles and an object of universal veneration. The bishop wanted to take such a wonderful treasure to his cathedral at Manresa, but when those who were carrying the Virgin reached the place where today the monastery rises, they found that they could not move a single step backwards or forwards, and this new miracle was interpreted as a sign that the Virgin desired her sanctuary to be erected on that very spot, as was done."
I have visited this spot and have felt the power of Montserrat in a remarkable and nearly tangible fashion. The phenomena had been witnessed on four consecutive Saturdays as crowds sang hymns and prayed near the river and as phenomena rose shortly after sunset one of the evenings when a bright light suddenly split the gloom, "illuminating the sharply cut rocks, and rising and falling over the one spot," according to a later narrative. Then a most exquisite music filled the air and the crowd became silent, speechless with both fear and astonishment. The phenomenon had lasted for about ten minutes, after which the light sank among the crags and the music faded away. "The following day an expedition was organized to visit the place where these strange things had occurred, and it was with the greatest difficulty that those chosen for the task succeeded in their undertaking," wrote another chronicler, Isabel Allardyce. "They had to cling to one another to avoid falling over the narrow ledges, making large detours when the obstacles were insurmountable, and often being obliged to hew a foothold in a perpendicular rock that barred their passage. Near the summit of the mountain they came across a cave whose entrance was partly covered by stones, and after removing these they found inside a beautiful image of the Virgin and Child, carved in wood with great skill." Soon the image was placed in a small church erected on the towering rock, destined to turn into a huge complex of chapels and churches and the splendid monastery, one of the world's great pilgrimage spots.
Time and again from Iberia to Austria and all around the Mediterranean various appearances and miracles would repeat themselves, there would be luminosities that indicated the location of an ancient and lost relic or Mary would appear at the spot of burial (resurrecting what had been hidden from the Moslems) or a farm animal, a mule or ox, at times sheep, would hover at a location and refuse to budge, leading to the discovery of another lost icon, many of which were found in trees as Mary now took over the Druid and Viking spots, or there would be a case where an image was found and moved to a better location but the next day would be found back at the original place, repeating this mysterious relocation until the local people realized that Mary wanted a chapel built at the original spot of discovery for reasons that were equally mysterious. In still other cases workmen building a chapel would awaken the next morning to find their materials in a different place or would see birds lifting chips of wood to indicate the actual spot where the Virgin wanted a place of prayer as she set about constructing many sites of worship throughout Christendom, knowing one millennium had already passed and that the new one would build to a feverish pitch. These were the fortresses. This was the rock. They stood in the time of knights and feudal lords and they would continue to stand as months turned into years and years into decades, then centuries, defying all skepticism.
[adapted from Michael H. Brown's The Last Secret]
Friday, December 25, 2009
Pope knocked down at Midnight Mass
From www.rte.ie/news
A woman knocked Pope Benedict XVI to the ground after vaulting over security barricades in a dramatic start to Christmas Eve mass at St Peter's Basilica.
Video footage showed the woman in a red sweatshirt leaping over the barricade and grabbing the 82-year-old pope as he began the traditional procession to the altar.
The pontiff emerged unharmed and later delivered his homily, speaking out against selfishness as Christians across the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
'Conflict and lack of reconciliation in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into our own interests and opinions, into our own little private world,' said the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1bn Catholics.
The woman, described as 'apparently unbalanced' by the Vatican spokesman, was arrested by Vatican police.
In Bethlehem, thousands of pilgrims celebrated Christmas in the traditional birthplace of Jesus, with festivities on a scale unseen since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 2001.
At midnight mass, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land called on the faithful to pray for peace in the troubled region.
'Its inhabitants are brothers who see each other as enemies,' the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fuad Twal told worshippers. 'This land will deserve to be called holy when she breathes freedom, justice, love, reconciliation, peace and security.'
Live rock music mingled with traditional carols in Manger Square as thousands of pilgrims and Palestinians joined the festivities, providing some respite for a town living in the shadow of a huge Israeli-built wall.
'This is the place where God gave us his son, so it is very special for me to be here, for me and my whole community,' said Juan Cruz, 27, from Mexico.
In the United States, a huge winter storm forced scores of churches to cancel Christmas Eve services as blizzards and freezing rain brought treacherous holiday travel conditions for millions.
At least 19 deaths were attributed to the storm system spanning two thirds of the country.
US President Barack Obama left the freeze far behind, starting a family holiday in his native state of Hawaii cheered by a major health reform victory.
A woman knocked Pope Benedict XVI to the ground after vaulting over security barricades in a dramatic start to Christmas Eve mass at St Peter's Basilica.
Video footage showed the woman in a red sweatshirt leaping over the barricade and grabbing the 82-year-old pope as he began the traditional procession to the altar.
The pontiff emerged unharmed and later delivered his homily, speaking out against selfishness as Christians across the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
'Conflict and lack of reconciliation in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into our own interests and opinions, into our own little private world,' said the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1bn Catholics.
The woman, described as 'apparently unbalanced' by the Vatican spokesman, was arrested by Vatican police.
In Bethlehem, thousands of pilgrims celebrated Christmas in the traditional birthplace of Jesus, with festivities on a scale unseen since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 2001.
At midnight mass, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land called on the faithful to pray for peace in the troubled region.
'Its inhabitants are brothers who see each other as enemies,' the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fuad Twal told worshippers. 'This land will deserve to be called holy when she breathes freedom, justice, love, reconciliation, peace and security.'
Live rock music mingled with traditional carols in Manger Square as thousands of pilgrims and Palestinians joined the festivities, providing some respite for a town living in the shadow of a huge Israeli-built wall.
'This is the place where God gave us his son, so it is very special for me to be here, for me and my whole community,' said Juan Cruz, 27, from Mexico.
In the United States, a huge winter storm forced scores of churches to cancel Christmas Eve services as blizzards and freezing rain brought treacherous holiday travel conditions for millions.
At least 19 deaths were attributed to the storm system spanning two thirds of the country.
US President Barack Obama left the freeze far behind, starting a family holiday in his native state of Hawaii cheered by a major health reform victory.
Cathedral in Longford gutted in fire
From www.rte.ie/news
The Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Dr Colm O'Reilly, has said he will restore St Mel's Cathedral in Longford after a devastating fire on Christmas morning caused damage estimated at more than €2 million.
Gardai in Longford say that, while an investigation is already under way into the cause of the fire, a full forensic examination of the scene will not be possible until the fire services have made the building safe and handed it over to gardaí.
Inspector Joe McLoughlin says that house-to-house inquiries are under way in Longford and gardaí are operating a routine inquiry.
Dr O'Reilly said he celebrated midnight mass last night to a packed Cathedral. He said that it was an extraordinary contrast this morning.
The fire is understood to have started just after 5am on Christmas Day.
Construction on St Mel's started in 1840 and it opened in September, 1856.
The Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Dr Colm O'Reilly, has said he will restore St Mel's Cathedral in Longford after a devastating fire on Christmas morning caused damage estimated at more than €2 million.
Gardai in Longford say that, while an investigation is already under way into the cause of the fire, a full forensic examination of the scene will not be possible until the fire services have made the building safe and handed it over to gardaí.
Inspector Joe McLoughlin says that house-to-house inquiries are under way in Longford and gardaí are operating a routine inquiry.
Dr O'Reilly said he celebrated midnight mass last night to a packed Cathedral. He said that it was an extraordinary contrast this morning.
The fire is understood to have started just after 5am on Christmas Day.
Construction on St Mel's started in 1840 and it opened in September, 1856.
Two More Irish Bishops Resign
From www.rte.ie/news
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said he respects the decisions by Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field to offer to resign.
He called the two prelates 'extremely good bishops' to whom many in the archdiocese of Dublin were extremely grateful for the things they had done. But, he added, good people had to be accountable.
Archbishop Martin said he believed that there was a future place for his two auxiliaries in the Irish Church after they had stepped down. He revealed that he had spoken to both of them briefly to see what role they would like to play.
Dr Martin said the Dublin archdiocese had to ensure that the management of the past was entrusted to a new generation that thought differently.
The latest resignation offers were announced in a joint statement close to midnight.
The bishops expressed the hope that, on Christmas Day, their action might help to bring Christ's peace and reconciliation to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to whom they again apologised.
They assured those who had so bravely spoken out and others who continued to suffer in silence of their thoughts and prayers.
Dr Walsh has been a bishop for 19 years and ran the diocese of Ferns for four years after Brendan Comiskey resigned as a bishop over his cover-ups of abuse.
Dr Field has served for 12 years in Dublin and is president of the hierarchy's Commission for Justice and Social Affairs.
Asked about the future of Dr Martin Drennan, the Bishop of Galway, Archbishop Martin said it was Christmas Day and that he was not going to get involved in a discussion of that.
Like Bishops Walsh and Field, he was not singled out for criticism by the Murphy Commission. But Archbishop Martin has previously said that they should accept that they were collectively responsible for permitting clerical child sexual abuse to continue in Dublin.
Dr Martin made his comments to RTÉ News after his customary visit to an annual Christmas Day dinner for homeless people organised by the Knights of Saint Columbanus at the Royal Dublin Society.
During his Christmas morning sermon in Galway Cathedral, Bishop Drennan said that in the last couple of months we had seen record levels of anger and that we needed to find some way of entering into Christmas with peace and to move beyond that anger.
He said 2009 had left us with a great need to make peace with our past and not just with what the Ryan and Murphy Reports had said about child abuse in the Church.
In the business and political worlds there had been stories of greed and excessive expense accounts respectively, he said.
'Our anger needs to be steered to a better society and forgiveness,' the bishop said. 'If we can't forgive, the past will be a burden upon us.'
He urged that the year be closed not with anger but with Christ's light in order to achieve peace with the past and begin the New Year with fresh hope.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said he respects the decisions by Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field to offer to resign.
He called the two prelates 'extremely good bishops' to whom many in the archdiocese of Dublin were extremely grateful for the things they had done. But, he added, good people had to be accountable.
Archbishop Martin said he believed that there was a future place for his two auxiliaries in the Irish Church after they had stepped down. He revealed that he had spoken to both of them briefly to see what role they would like to play.
Dr Martin said the Dublin archdiocese had to ensure that the management of the past was entrusted to a new generation that thought differently.
The latest resignation offers were announced in a joint statement close to midnight.
The bishops expressed the hope that, on Christmas Day, their action might help to bring Christ's peace and reconciliation to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to whom they again apologised.
They assured those who had so bravely spoken out and others who continued to suffer in silence of their thoughts and prayers.
Dr Walsh has been a bishop for 19 years and ran the diocese of Ferns for four years after Brendan Comiskey resigned as a bishop over his cover-ups of abuse.
Dr Field has served for 12 years in Dublin and is president of the hierarchy's Commission for Justice and Social Affairs.
Asked about the future of Dr Martin Drennan, the Bishop of Galway, Archbishop Martin said it was Christmas Day and that he was not going to get involved in a discussion of that.
Like Bishops Walsh and Field, he was not singled out for criticism by the Murphy Commission. But Archbishop Martin has previously said that they should accept that they were collectively responsible for permitting clerical child sexual abuse to continue in Dublin.
Dr Martin made his comments to RTÉ News after his customary visit to an annual Christmas Day dinner for homeless people organised by the Knights of Saint Columbanus at the Royal Dublin Society.
During his Christmas morning sermon in Galway Cathedral, Bishop Drennan said that in the last couple of months we had seen record levels of anger and that we needed to find some way of entering into Christmas with peace and to move beyond that anger.
He said 2009 had left us with a great need to make peace with our past and not just with what the Ryan and Murphy Reports had said about child abuse in the Church.
In the business and political worlds there had been stories of greed and excessive expense accounts respectively, he said.
'Our anger needs to be steered to a better society and forgiveness,' the bishop said. 'If we can't forgive, the past will be a burden upon us.'
He urged that the year be closed not with anger but with Christ's light in order to achieve peace with the past and begin the New Year with fresh hope.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Second Irish Bishop Resigns
From www.rte.ie/news
Wednesday, 23 December 2009 20:24
Survivors of clerical abuse have welcomed the announcement that the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Dr James Moriarty is to resign following criticism of him in the Murphy Report.
Dr Moriarty offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI this afternoon.
The announcement was made following a meeting between the Bishop and Diocesan priests and staff in Portarlington, Co Laois.
Bishop Moriarty was an auxiliary Bishop of Dublin during some of the years in which the Murphy Commission found that the Archdiocese had covered up cases of clerical child sexual abuse.
Bishop Moriarty insisted that there were no grounds for his resignation in what was said about him in the Murphy Report.
The Murphy Commission found that Bishop Moriarty could have asked Archbishop Connell to research the files on Fr Edmondus after complaints about the priest had been received by the Diocese.
Dr Moriarty, who is due to retire in two years, said on Thursday that if it was for the good of the Catholic Church he would step down earlier.
He also emphasised that he had not been criticised in the Murphy Report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.
On RTÉ's News at One, Marie Collins, who was abused by a cleric identified as Fr Edmondus in the Murphy Report, said it was hard to understand why the individual bishops mentioned in the report have not taken responsibility for the cover-up.
In the report, there was implied criticism of Dr Moriarty for not doing enough to find out all detail about Fr Edmondus when suspicions were brought to his attention.
Last week Bishop Donal Murray became the first bishop to resign since the publication of the report.
Andrew Madden, an abuse survivor, welcomed the decision by Bishop Moriarty to offer his resignation.
However, he noted that both Bishop Murray and Bishop Moriarty 'have resigned for the good of the church and without accepting any responsibility for the cover up of child sexual abuse by priests'.
Mr Madden reiterated his call for Bishops Martin Drennan, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field to resign following publication of the Murphy Report.
Separately, a representative of victims of abuse has written an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI challenging him to come to Ireland to listen to them.
Christine Buckley, who represents victims of child abuse in Catholic institutions, has told Pope Benedict she is utterly dismayed at his 'apathetic approach' to heinous acts of depravity perpetrated on children by clergy and religious and covered up by Cardinal Desmond Connell and other bishops as revealed in the Murphy Report.
In the letter, she challenged the Pope to come to Ireland to listen to the pain of all victims of abuse.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Seán Brady has said Christmas brings fresh joy and hope to many who are greatly challenged by the recession, unprecedented flooding and the horrendous scandal of child abuse.
In his Christmas message Cardinal Brady says we all need to see a great light, especially when we find ourselves in the darkness of doom, gloom, despondency and despair, and that seeing the baby Jesus in the crib has strengthened people especially in bad times.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009 20:24
Survivors of clerical abuse have welcomed the announcement that the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Dr James Moriarty is to resign following criticism of him in the Murphy Report.
Dr Moriarty offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI this afternoon.
The announcement was made following a meeting between the Bishop and Diocesan priests and staff in Portarlington, Co Laois.
Bishop Moriarty was an auxiliary Bishop of Dublin during some of the years in which the Murphy Commission found that the Archdiocese had covered up cases of clerical child sexual abuse.
Bishop Moriarty insisted that there were no grounds for his resignation in what was said about him in the Murphy Report.
The Murphy Commission found that Bishop Moriarty could have asked Archbishop Connell to research the files on Fr Edmondus after complaints about the priest had been received by the Diocese.
Dr Moriarty, who is due to retire in two years, said on Thursday that if it was for the good of the Catholic Church he would step down earlier.
He also emphasised that he had not been criticised in the Murphy Report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.
On RTÉ's News at One, Marie Collins, who was abused by a cleric identified as Fr Edmondus in the Murphy Report, said it was hard to understand why the individual bishops mentioned in the report have not taken responsibility for the cover-up.
In the report, there was implied criticism of Dr Moriarty for not doing enough to find out all detail about Fr Edmondus when suspicions were brought to his attention.
Last week Bishop Donal Murray became the first bishop to resign since the publication of the report.
Andrew Madden, an abuse survivor, welcomed the decision by Bishop Moriarty to offer his resignation.
However, he noted that both Bishop Murray and Bishop Moriarty 'have resigned for the good of the church and without accepting any responsibility for the cover up of child sexual abuse by priests'.
Mr Madden reiterated his call for Bishops Martin Drennan, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field to resign following publication of the Murphy Report.
Separately, a representative of victims of abuse has written an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI challenging him to come to Ireland to listen to them.
Christine Buckley, who represents victims of child abuse in Catholic institutions, has told Pope Benedict she is utterly dismayed at his 'apathetic approach' to heinous acts of depravity perpetrated on children by clergy and religious and covered up by Cardinal Desmond Connell and other bishops as revealed in the Murphy Report.
In the letter, she challenged the Pope to come to Ireland to listen to the pain of all victims of abuse.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Seán Brady has said Christmas brings fresh joy and hope to many who are greatly challenged by the recession, unprecedented flooding and the horrendous scandal of child abuse.
In his Christmas message Cardinal Brady says we all need to see a great light, especially when we find ourselves in the darkness of doom, gloom, despondency and despair, and that seeing the baby Jesus in the crib has strengthened people especially in bad times.
“A-Ok” Hand sign: Sign of the Occult Music Industry?
From: http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=2969
We all know about the “devil’s horn” hand sign popularized by rock groups. Not many however realize that the “a-ok” sign, flashed as if it was a gang sign (well it is used by gangs but that’s not the topic here), has another meaning than simply “this is OK“. Due to the context of its usage, and often combined with other occult symbols, the a-ok seems to be is a sign of occult initiation in the music industry. They say a “picture is worth a thousand words” so I’ll let the pictures do the talking .
Hand signs have different meanings when found in different cultures. In America and most of Europe, the a-ok is used to signify approbation, satisfaction or excellence. In other countries, it is often considered obscene or a reference to the a-hole. It however carries a deeper meaning when one looks into occult symbolism.
“Westerner’s know it as the “okay” (or “OK”) sign. It’s done with the fingers and thumb of right or left hands (usually the right). Simply touch the index finger to the thumb, creating a circle. The other three fingers then spiral off and there you have it—the well-known symbol for OK. Universally, this sign means alright, acceptable, good, right-on, you bet!, A-OK, satisfactory…
But to occultists, the OK sign takes on darker significance. First, we have the circle, indicating the sun deity and the Mason’s never-ending quest for more light. To Freemasonry, the circle also represents the female genitalia, or yoni. In the Hindu religion, the OK sign is a revered mudra (sacred gesture) meaning “infinity” or perfection. It is associated with the female genitalia — thumb and forefinger pressed together at the tips with the other three fingers extended.
In the practice of tantric yoga (sex rituals), the OK sign is a token of ecstasy, spiritual and physical. In ancient Sumeria and Persia, charms and amulets have been discovered of fingers and hands in the modern OK position, joined along with horns implying fertility. The three fingers extended outward are symbolic of ecstatic union with the Goddess, the third member of the pagan trinity.
In Satanism, when making this sign the three fingers not used to make the circle are considered symbolic of the unholy trinity — horned God, Goddess, and offspring (antichrist). Some go so far as to adopt the view that the bent three fingers are shaped as three number six’s, or 666. Thus, we have 666, the sun deity (Lucifer), the Goddess (Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots), and the beast (antichrist, 666), all in one unitary hand sign. Oh what a web of evil wicked men can weave around something seemingly so ordinary and mundane.
In the Illuminist philosophy, the OK sign becomes a sign indicating approval of the Divine King, their coming Lord of Light, whom we as Christians know as antichrist. To them it means, “He approves our undertaking.” This meaning is roughly equivalent to the words in Latin atop the all-seeing eye of Osiris on our U.S. one dollar bill—Annuit Coeptus”
- Texe Marrs, Codex Magica
We all know about the “devil’s horn” hand sign popularized by rock groups. Not many however realize that the “a-ok” sign, flashed as if it was a gang sign (well it is used by gangs but that’s not the topic here), has another meaning than simply “this is OK“. Due to the context of its usage, and often combined with other occult symbols, the a-ok seems to be is a sign of occult initiation in the music industry. They say a “picture is worth a thousand words” so I’ll let the pictures do the talking .
Hand signs have different meanings when found in different cultures. In America and most of Europe, the a-ok is used to signify approbation, satisfaction or excellence. In other countries, it is often considered obscene or a reference to the a-hole. It however carries a deeper meaning when one looks into occult symbolism.
“Westerner’s know it as the “okay” (or “OK”) sign. It’s done with the fingers and thumb of right or left hands (usually the right). Simply touch the index finger to the thumb, creating a circle. The other three fingers then spiral off and there you have it—the well-known symbol for OK. Universally, this sign means alright, acceptable, good, right-on, you bet!, A-OK, satisfactory…
But to occultists, the OK sign takes on darker significance. First, we have the circle, indicating the sun deity and the Mason’s never-ending quest for more light. To Freemasonry, the circle also represents the female genitalia, or yoni. In the Hindu religion, the OK sign is a revered mudra (sacred gesture) meaning “infinity” or perfection. It is associated with the female genitalia — thumb and forefinger pressed together at the tips with the other three fingers extended.
In the practice of tantric yoga (sex rituals), the OK sign is a token of ecstasy, spiritual and physical. In ancient Sumeria and Persia, charms and amulets have been discovered of fingers and hands in the modern OK position, joined along with horns implying fertility. The three fingers extended outward are symbolic of ecstatic union with the Goddess, the third member of the pagan trinity.
In Satanism, when making this sign the three fingers not used to make the circle are considered symbolic of the unholy trinity — horned God, Goddess, and offspring (antichrist). Some go so far as to adopt the view that the bent three fingers are shaped as three number six’s, or 666. Thus, we have 666, the sun deity (Lucifer), the Goddess (Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots), and the beast (antichrist, 666), all in one unitary hand sign. Oh what a web of evil wicked men can weave around something seemingly so ordinary and mundane.
In the Illuminist philosophy, the OK sign becomes a sign indicating approval of the Divine King, their coming Lord of Light, whom we as Christians know as antichrist. To them it means, “He approves our undertaking.” This meaning is roughly equivalent to the words in Latin atop the all-seeing eye of Osiris on our U.S. one dollar bill—Annuit Coeptus”
- Texe Marrs, Codex Magica
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
St. Francis of Assisi and the Origins of the Nativity Scene
St. Bonaventure (d. 1274), in his Life of St. Francis of Assisi, writes:
"It happened in the third year before his death, that in order to excite the inhabitants of Grecio to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion, [St. Francis] determined to keep it with all possible solemnity; and lest he should be accused of lightness or novelty, he asked and obtained the permission of the sovereign Pontiff. Then he prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed. The brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise. The man of God [St. Francis] stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His Name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem. A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Grecio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvelously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep. This vision of the devout soldier is credible, not only by reason of the sanctity of him that saw it, but by reason of the miracles which afterwards confirmed its truth. For the example of Francis, if it be considered by the world, is doubtless sufficient to excite all hearts which are negligent in the faith of Christ; and the hay of that manger, being preserved by the people, miraculously cured all diseases of cattle, and many other pestilences; God thus in all things glorifying his servant, and witnessing to the great efficacy of his holy prayers by manifest prodigies and miracles."
"It happened in the third year before his death, that in order to excite the inhabitants of Grecio to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion, [St. Francis] determined to keep it with all possible solemnity; and lest he should be accused of lightness or novelty, he asked and obtained the permission of the sovereign Pontiff. Then he prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed. The brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise. The man of God [St. Francis] stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His Name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem. A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Grecio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvelously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep. This vision of the devout soldier is credible, not only by reason of the sanctity of him that saw it, but by reason of the miracles which afterwards confirmed its truth. For the example of Francis, if it be considered by the world, is doubtless sufficient to excite all hearts which are negligent in the faith of Christ; and the hay of that manger, being preserved by the people, miraculously cured all diseases of cattle, and many other pestilences; God thus in all things glorifying his servant, and witnessing to the great efficacy of his holy prayers by manifest prodigies and miracles."
The History of Christmas
Taken from Dom Gueranger's The Liturgical Year:
We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity of our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple; which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which she received the good tidings from the Angels (St. Luke 2:10) on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing four thousand years. The Faithful will remember that the Liturgy commemorates this long expectation by the four penitential weeks of Advent.
The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of our Saviour's Nativity by a feast or commemoration of forty days duration is founded on the holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfill, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.
The Feast of Mary's Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus' Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of forty days as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one, at least in the Roman Church. And firstly, with regard to our Saviour's Birth on December 25, we have St. John Chrysostom telling us, in his Homily for this Feast, that the Western Churches had, from the very commencement of Christianity, kept it on this day. He is not satisfied with merely mentioning the tradition; he undertakes to show that it is well founded, inasmuch as the Church of Rome had every means of knowing the true day of our Saviour's Birth, since the acts of the Enrollment, taken in Judea by command of Augustus, were kept in the public archives of Rome. The holy Doctor adduces a second argument, which he founds upon the Gospel of St. Luke, and he reasons thus: we know from the sacred Scriptures that it must have been in the fast of the seventh month [note: Leviticus 23:24 and following verses. The seventh month (or Tisri) corresponded to the end of our September and beginning of our October] that the Priest Zachary had the vision in the Temple; after which Elizabeth, his wife, conceived St. John the Baptist: hence it follows that the Blessed Virgin having, as the Evangelist St. Luke relates, received the Angel Gabriel's visit, and conceived the Saviour of the world in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, that is to say, in March, the Birth of Jesus must have taken place in the month of December.
But it was not till the fourth century that the Churches of the East began to keep the Feast of our Saviour's Birth in the month of December. Up to that period they had kept it at one time on the sixty of January, thus uniting it, under the generic term of Epiphany, with the Manifestation of our Saviour made to the Magi, and in them to the Gentiles; at another time, as Clement of Alexandria tells us, they kept in on the 25th of the month Pachon (May 15), or on the 25th of the month Pharmuth (April 20). St. John Chrysostom, in the Homily we have just cited, which he gave in 386, tells us that the Roman custom of celebrating the Birth of our Saviour on December 25 had then only been observed ten years in the Church of Antioch. It is probable that this change had been introduced in obedience to the wishes of the Apostolic See, wishes which received additional weight by the edict of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, which appeared towards the close of the fourth century, and decreed that the Nativity and Epiphany of our Lord should be made two distinct Festivals. The only Church that has maintained the custom of celebrating the two mysteries on January 6 is that of Armenia; owing, no doubt, to the circumstance of that country not being under the authority of the Emperors; as also because it was withdrawn at an early period from the influence of Rome by schism and heresy.
The Feast of Our Lady's Purification, with which the forty days of Christmas close, is, in the Latin Church, of very great antiquity; so ancient, indeed, as to preclude the possibility of our fixing the date of its institution. According to the unanimous opinion of liturgists, it is the most ancient of all the Feasts of the Holy Mother of God; and as her Purification is related in the Gospel itself, they rightly infer that its anniversary was solemnized at the very commencement of Christianity. Of course, this is only to be understood of the Roman Church; for as regards the Oriental Church, we find that this Feast was not definitely fixed to February 2 until the reign of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century. It is true that the Eastern Christians had previously to that time a sort of commemoration of this Mystery, but it was far from being a universal custom, and it was kept a few days after the Feast of our Lord's Nativity, and not on the day itself of Mary's going up to the Temple.
But what is the characteristic of Christmas in the Latin liturgy? It is twofold: it is joy, which the whole Church feels at the coming of the divine Word in the Flesh; and it is admiration of that glorious Virgin, who was made the Mother of God. There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in the liturgy of this glad season, which does not imply these two grand Mysteries: an Infant-God, and a Virgin-Mother.
For example, on all Sundays and Feasts which are not Doubles, the Church, throughout these forty days, makes a commemoration of the fruitful virginity of the Mother of God, by three special prayers in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She begs the suffrage of Mary by proclaiming her quality of Mother of God and her inviolate purity, which remained in her even after she had given birth to her Son. And again the magnificent anthem, Alma Redemptoris, composed by the Monk Herman Contractus, continues, up to the very day of the Purification, to be the termination of each Canonical Hour. It is by such manifestations of her love and veneration that the Church, honouring the Son in the Mother, testifies her holy joy during this season of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas.
Our readers are aware that, when Easter Sunday falls at its latest—that is, in April—the ecclesiastical calendar counts as many as six Sundays after the Epiphany. Christmastide (that is, the forty days between Christmas Day and the Purification) includes sometimes four out of these six Sundays; frequently only two; and sometimes only one, as in the case when Easter comes so early as to necessitate keeping Septuagesima, and even Sexagesima Sunday, in January. Still, nothing is changed, as we have already said, in the ritual observances of this joyous season, excepting only that on those two Sundays, the fore-runners of Lent, the vestments are purple, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted.
Although our holy Mother the Church honours with especial devotion the Mystery of the Divine Infancy during the whole season of Christmas; yet, she is obliged to introduce into the liturgy of this same season passages from the holy Gospels which seem premature, inasmuch as they relate to the active life of Jesus. This is owing to there being less than six months allotted by the calendar for the celebration of the entire work of our Redemption: in other words, Christmas and Easter are so near each other, even when Easter is as late as it can be, that Mysteries must of necessity be crowded into the interval; and this entails anticipation. And yet the liturgy never tires in their praises, during the whole period from the Nativity to the day when Mary comes to the Temple to present her Jesus.
The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary in their Offices of this season: but they have a special veneration for the twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their liturgy, are called the Dodecameron. During this time they observe no days of abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect for the great mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that the courts of law should be closed, until after January 6.
From this outline of the history of the holy season, we can understand what is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas, and which has ever been a season most dear to the Christian world.
We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity of our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple; which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which she received the good tidings from the Angels (St. Luke 2:10) on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing four thousand years. The Faithful will remember that the Liturgy commemorates this long expectation by the four penitential weeks of Advent.
The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of our Saviour's Nativity by a feast or commemoration of forty days duration is founded on the holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfill, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.
The Feast of Mary's Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus' Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of forty days as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one, at least in the Roman Church. And firstly, with regard to our Saviour's Birth on December 25, we have St. John Chrysostom telling us, in his Homily for this Feast, that the Western Churches had, from the very commencement of Christianity, kept it on this day. He is not satisfied with merely mentioning the tradition; he undertakes to show that it is well founded, inasmuch as the Church of Rome had every means of knowing the true day of our Saviour's Birth, since the acts of the Enrollment, taken in Judea by command of Augustus, were kept in the public archives of Rome. The holy Doctor adduces a second argument, which he founds upon the Gospel of St. Luke, and he reasons thus: we know from the sacred Scriptures that it must have been in the fast of the seventh month [note: Leviticus 23:24 and following verses. The seventh month (or Tisri) corresponded to the end of our September and beginning of our October] that the Priest Zachary had the vision in the Temple; after which Elizabeth, his wife, conceived St. John the Baptist: hence it follows that the Blessed Virgin having, as the Evangelist St. Luke relates, received the Angel Gabriel's visit, and conceived the Saviour of the world in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, that is to say, in March, the Birth of Jesus must have taken place in the month of December.
But it was not till the fourth century that the Churches of the East began to keep the Feast of our Saviour's Birth in the month of December. Up to that period they had kept it at one time on the sixty of January, thus uniting it, under the generic term of Epiphany, with the Manifestation of our Saviour made to the Magi, and in them to the Gentiles; at another time, as Clement of Alexandria tells us, they kept in on the 25th of the month Pachon (May 15), or on the 25th of the month Pharmuth (April 20). St. John Chrysostom, in the Homily we have just cited, which he gave in 386, tells us that the Roman custom of celebrating the Birth of our Saviour on December 25 had then only been observed ten years in the Church of Antioch. It is probable that this change had been introduced in obedience to the wishes of the Apostolic See, wishes which received additional weight by the edict of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, which appeared towards the close of the fourth century, and decreed that the Nativity and Epiphany of our Lord should be made two distinct Festivals. The only Church that has maintained the custom of celebrating the two mysteries on January 6 is that of Armenia; owing, no doubt, to the circumstance of that country not being under the authority of the Emperors; as also because it was withdrawn at an early period from the influence of Rome by schism and heresy.
The Feast of Our Lady's Purification, with which the forty days of Christmas close, is, in the Latin Church, of very great antiquity; so ancient, indeed, as to preclude the possibility of our fixing the date of its institution. According to the unanimous opinion of liturgists, it is the most ancient of all the Feasts of the Holy Mother of God; and as her Purification is related in the Gospel itself, they rightly infer that its anniversary was solemnized at the very commencement of Christianity. Of course, this is only to be understood of the Roman Church; for as regards the Oriental Church, we find that this Feast was not definitely fixed to February 2 until the reign of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century. It is true that the Eastern Christians had previously to that time a sort of commemoration of this Mystery, but it was far from being a universal custom, and it was kept a few days after the Feast of our Lord's Nativity, and not on the day itself of Mary's going up to the Temple.
But what is the characteristic of Christmas in the Latin liturgy? It is twofold: it is joy, which the whole Church feels at the coming of the divine Word in the Flesh; and it is admiration of that glorious Virgin, who was made the Mother of God. There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in the liturgy of this glad season, which does not imply these two grand Mysteries: an Infant-God, and a Virgin-Mother.
For example, on all Sundays and Feasts which are not Doubles, the Church, throughout these forty days, makes a commemoration of the fruitful virginity of the Mother of God, by three special prayers in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She begs the suffrage of Mary by proclaiming her quality of Mother of God and her inviolate purity, which remained in her even after she had given birth to her Son. And again the magnificent anthem, Alma Redemptoris, composed by the Monk Herman Contractus, continues, up to the very day of the Purification, to be the termination of each Canonical Hour. It is by such manifestations of her love and veneration that the Church, honouring the Son in the Mother, testifies her holy joy during this season of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas.
Our readers are aware that, when Easter Sunday falls at its latest—that is, in April—the ecclesiastical calendar counts as many as six Sundays after the Epiphany. Christmastide (that is, the forty days between Christmas Day and the Purification) includes sometimes four out of these six Sundays; frequently only two; and sometimes only one, as in the case when Easter comes so early as to necessitate keeping Septuagesima, and even Sexagesima Sunday, in January. Still, nothing is changed, as we have already said, in the ritual observances of this joyous season, excepting only that on those two Sundays, the fore-runners of Lent, the vestments are purple, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted.
Although our holy Mother the Church honours with especial devotion the Mystery of the Divine Infancy during the whole season of Christmas; yet, she is obliged to introduce into the liturgy of this same season passages from the holy Gospels which seem premature, inasmuch as they relate to the active life of Jesus. This is owing to there being less than six months allotted by the calendar for the celebration of the entire work of our Redemption: in other words, Christmas and Easter are so near each other, even when Easter is as late as it can be, that Mysteries must of necessity be crowded into the interval; and this entails anticipation. And yet the liturgy never tires in their praises, during the whole period from the Nativity to the day when Mary comes to the Temple to present her Jesus.
The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary in their Offices of this season: but they have a special veneration for the twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their liturgy, are called the Dodecameron. During this time they observe no days of abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect for the great mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that the courts of law should be closed, until after January 6.
From this outline of the history of the holy season, we can understand what is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas, and which has ever been a season most dear to the Christian world.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Pope declares Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II Venerable
From http://www.spiritdaily.com/timestemplate.htm
Taken from Inside the Vatican Magazine
By Robert Moynihan, reporting from America
In a dramatic move, after long hesitation, Pope Benedict XVI has signed a decree declaring Pope Pius XII -- the Pope who led the Church during the Second World War and has been repeatedly accused by many Jewish and progressive Catholic groups of not doing enough to help the Jews during the Nazi persecution -- as "venerable," the first major step on the road toward canonization as a Catholic saint.
In the same decree, Benedict has declared Pope John Paul II, known for his friendship with the Jewish people and his dramatic visits to the synagogue of Rome in 1986 and to the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2000, as also worthy to be called "venerable" in the Church.
Benedict's decree, published today in connection with the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Congregation for the Cuases of Saints, recognizes the "heroic virtues" of the two Popes, paving the way for their beatification and canonization, which can come with the approval of first one, then a second miracle attributed to their intercession.
Also approved were the martyrdom of the Polish priest Fr Popielusko and a miracle attributed to Mary McKillop (Australia).
Pius XII, the Pope who led the Church during the Second World War (he was Pope from 1939 to 1958), and John Paul II (Pope from 1978 to 2005) are now officially to be called "Venerable" (meaning able to be venerated), because Benedict XVI has confirmed that their lives displayed "heroic virtues," that they were heroes because of their remarkable virtue.
This is particuarly dramatic with regard to Pius, because he has been accused, not only of not being a hero, but even of being evil, of being "Hitler's Pope." (A book under that title was published several years ago by British author John Cornwell, who later retracted much of what he had written.)
The attacks on Pius seem to have given Benedict pause. Not because he believed their truth, but because he knew that many did believe they were true, and would be scandalized if Pius was declared "Venerable" without clarifying that the charges against him were false.
This explains why the documentation to sign the Pius XII decree was given to Pope almost two years ago, and not signed until now.
Many Vatican observers had noted that Benedict was taking his time before signing the decree. Senior Vatican officials told me that he was waiting until Jewish and progressive Catholic groups themselves recognized that the charges of anti-Semitism raised against Pius XII were without foundation. And this is what has occcurred.
Over the past several years, due in large measure to the work of committed Catholic and Jewish scholars and activists ranging from Sr. Margherita Marchione, an American Catholic nun, to Gary Krupp, an American Jewish businessman, clear evidence that Pius XII worked heroically "behind the scenes" to save nearly 1 million Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps has now been discovered and published. (We have printed much of this in the pages on Inside the Vatican magazine.)
In fact, this evidence even suggests that Pius XII did more to help victims of the persecution than virtually any other single person in Europe during the war years, making his denigration all the more unjust.
And because an increasing number of scholars have come to conclude that the charges raised against Pius XII were a calmny, the opinion about Pius in the world's Jewish community has slowly been transformed from an absolutely negative one to a far more positive one.
"I received a call from Rome just now to inform me that the Holy Father proclaimed Pius XII as venerable," Krupp emailed to me this morning. "Congratulations to all of you for the hard work over the years to right a terrible wrong perpetrated by the historical revisionists."
Judging Sanctity
The Congregation for the Causes of Saints today published a series of decrees in which the pontiff recognizes 5 miracles attributed to several people (including the venerable Mary McKillop, Australia) and also recognizes the "heroic virtues" of a further 10 people, among them the two Popes.
These decrees pave the way for their beatification, as soon as there is the recognition of a miracle attributed to them.
Another decree recognizes the martyrdom of the Polish priest, Fr Jerzy Popieluszko, killed by the communist police in 1984.
Benedict XVI met with all the members of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints for celebration marking the 40th anniversary of the dicastery.
In his address, citing the various stages leading to the canonization of a candidate, the Pope said: "In the first instance, the People of God are invited to look at those brothers who, after an initial careful discernment, are proposed as models of Christian life; the a cult of veneration and invocation confined within local churches or religious orders is urged; finally, we are called to rejoice with the whole community of believers in the certainty that, thanks to solemn papal proclamation, a son or daughter has reached the glory of God, where they participate in perpetual intercession of Christ in favor of his or her brethren (cf. Heb 7:25)."
We will have a more complete report on all the implications of this decision for Catholic-Jewish relations in future reports.
Five of the December 19 decrees testified to the authenticity of miracles attributed to candidates who have already been beatified, and are now qualified for canonization. They are:
Bl. Stanislaus Soltys (Kazimierczyk) (1433-89), whose liturgical cult was formally recognized by Pope John Paul in 1993.
Bl. André Bessette (1845-1937), a Canadian renowned for his devotion to St. Joseph who developed a reputation as a miracle worker in his lifetime.
Bl. Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), who founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart and will become Australia’s first canonized saint.
Bl. Giulia Salzano (1846-1929), foundress of the Congregation of the Catechetical Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
Bl. Camilla Battista da Varano (1458-1524), a Poor Clare nun.
The Congregation also approved miracles for five other candidates who, like Father Popieluszko, will now be scheduled for beatification:
Father José Tous y Soler (1811-71), a Capuchin Franciscan.
Brother Leopoldo de Alpandeire (1866-1956), a Capuchin Franciscan.
Manuel Lozano Garrido (1920-71), a Spanish layman.
Teresa Manganiello (1849-76), a Third Order Franciscan.
Chiara Badano (1971-90), a laywoman of the Focolare Movement.
In addition, the Congregation declared the heroic virtue of Bl. Giacomo Illirico da Bitetto, a Franciscan.
The Congregation also proclaimed the heroic virtue of nine others, who now qualify for the title "Venerable" and may be beatified with the approval of a miracle:
Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) (1876-1958).
Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) (1920-2005).
Father Louis Brisson (1817-1908), founder of the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales.
Father Giuseppe Quadrio (1921-63), a Salesian.
Sister Mary Ward (1545-1615), an Englishwoman who founded the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loreto Sisters).
Sister Antonia Maria Verna (1773-1838), foundress of the Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception of Ivrea.
Sister Francesca Farolfi (Maria Chiara Serafina of Jesus) (1853-1917), foundress of the Missionary Franciscan Clarists of the Blessed Sacrament.
Sister Enrichetta Alfieri (1891-1951).
Giunio Tinarelli (1912-56), a layman and member of the Silent Workers of the Cross.
Taken from Inside the Vatican Magazine
By Robert Moynihan, reporting from America
In a dramatic move, after long hesitation, Pope Benedict XVI has signed a decree declaring Pope Pius XII -- the Pope who led the Church during the Second World War and has been repeatedly accused by many Jewish and progressive Catholic groups of not doing enough to help the Jews during the Nazi persecution -- as "venerable," the first major step on the road toward canonization as a Catholic saint.
In the same decree, Benedict has declared Pope John Paul II, known for his friendship with the Jewish people and his dramatic visits to the synagogue of Rome in 1986 and to the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2000, as also worthy to be called "venerable" in the Church.
Benedict's decree, published today in connection with the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Congregation for the Cuases of Saints, recognizes the "heroic virtues" of the two Popes, paving the way for their beatification and canonization, which can come with the approval of first one, then a second miracle attributed to their intercession.
Also approved were the martyrdom of the Polish priest Fr Popielusko and a miracle attributed to Mary McKillop (Australia).
Pius XII, the Pope who led the Church during the Second World War (he was Pope from 1939 to 1958), and John Paul II (Pope from 1978 to 2005) are now officially to be called "Venerable" (meaning able to be venerated), because Benedict XVI has confirmed that their lives displayed "heroic virtues," that they were heroes because of their remarkable virtue.
This is particuarly dramatic with regard to Pius, because he has been accused, not only of not being a hero, but even of being evil, of being "Hitler's Pope." (A book under that title was published several years ago by British author John Cornwell, who later retracted much of what he had written.)
The attacks on Pius seem to have given Benedict pause. Not because he believed their truth, but because he knew that many did believe they were true, and would be scandalized if Pius was declared "Venerable" without clarifying that the charges against him were false.
This explains why the documentation to sign the Pius XII decree was given to Pope almost two years ago, and not signed until now.
Many Vatican observers had noted that Benedict was taking his time before signing the decree. Senior Vatican officials told me that he was waiting until Jewish and progressive Catholic groups themselves recognized that the charges of anti-Semitism raised against Pius XII were without foundation. And this is what has occcurred.
Over the past several years, due in large measure to the work of committed Catholic and Jewish scholars and activists ranging from Sr. Margherita Marchione, an American Catholic nun, to Gary Krupp, an American Jewish businessman, clear evidence that Pius XII worked heroically "behind the scenes" to save nearly 1 million Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps has now been discovered and published. (We have printed much of this in the pages on Inside the Vatican magazine.)
In fact, this evidence even suggests that Pius XII did more to help victims of the persecution than virtually any other single person in Europe during the war years, making his denigration all the more unjust.
And because an increasing number of scholars have come to conclude that the charges raised against Pius XII were a calmny, the opinion about Pius in the world's Jewish community has slowly been transformed from an absolutely negative one to a far more positive one.
"I received a call from Rome just now to inform me that the Holy Father proclaimed Pius XII as venerable," Krupp emailed to me this morning. "Congratulations to all of you for the hard work over the years to right a terrible wrong perpetrated by the historical revisionists."
Judging Sanctity
The Congregation for the Causes of Saints today published a series of decrees in which the pontiff recognizes 5 miracles attributed to several people (including the venerable Mary McKillop, Australia) and also recognizes the "heroic virtues" of a further 10 people, among them the two Popes.
These decrees pave the way for their beatification, as soon as there is the recognition of a miracle attributed to them.
Another decree recognizes the martyrdom of the Polish priest, Fr Jerzy Popieluszko, killed by the communist police in 1984.
Benedict XVI met with all the members of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints for celebration marking the 40th anniversary of the dicastery.
In his address, citing the various stages leading to the canonization of a candidate, the Pope said: "In the first instance, the People of God are invited to look at those brothers who, after an initial careful discernment, are proposed as models of Christian life; the a cult of veneration and invocation confined within local churches or religious orders is urged; finally, we are called to rejoice with the whole community of believers in the certainty that, thanks to solemn papal proclamation, a son or daughter has reached the glory of God, where they participate in perpetual intercession of Christ in favor of his or her brethren (cf. Heb 7:25)."
We will have a more complete report on all the implications of this decision for Catholic-Jewish relations in future reports.
Five of the December 19 decrees testified to the authenticity of miracles attributed to candidates who have already been beatified, and are now qualified for canonization. They are:
Bl. Stanislaus Soltys (Kazimierczyk) (1433-89), whose liturgical cult was formally recognized by Pope John Paul in 1993.
Bl. André Bessette (1845-1937), a Canadian renowned for his devotion to St. Joseph who developed a reputation as a miracle worker in his lifetime.
Bl. Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), who founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart and will become Australia’s first canonized saint.
Bl. Giulia Salzano (1846-1929), foundress of the Congregation of the Catechetical Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
Bl. Camilla Battista da Varano (1458-1524), a Poor Clare nun.
The Congregation also approved miracles for five other candidates who, like Father Popieluszko, will now be scheduled for beatification:
Father José Tous y Soler (1811-71), a Capuchin Franciscan.
Brother Leopoldo de Alpandeire (1866-1956), a Capuchin Franciscan.
Manuel Lozano Garrido (1920-71), a Spanish layman.
Teresa Manganiello (1849-76), a Third Order Franciscan.
Chiara Badano (1971-90), a laywoman of the Focolare Movement.
In addition, the Congregation declared the heroic virtue of Bl. Giacomo Illirico da Bitetto, a Franciscan.
The Congregation also proclaimed the heroic virtue of nine others, who now qualify for the title "Venerable" and may be beatified with the approval of a miracle:
Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) (1876-1958).
Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) (1920-2005).
Father Louis Brisson (1817-1908), founder of the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales.
Father Giuseppe Quadrio (1921-63), a Salesian.
Sister Mary Ward (1545-1615), an Englishwoman who founded the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loreto Sisters).
Sister Antonia Maria Verna (1773-1838), foundress of the Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception of Ivrea.
Sister Francesca Farolfi (Maria Chiara Serafina of Jesus) (1853-1917), foundress of the Missionary Franciscan Clarists of the Blessed Sacrament.
Sister Enrichetta Alfieri (1891-1951).
Giunio Tinarelli (1912-56), a layman and member of the Silent Workers of the Cross.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Bishop Murray resigns
From www.irishtimes.com
Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray’s decision to resign following criticism of his handling of allegations of child sexual abuse was the “right thing” for his diocese and for the wider Irish Church, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.
The Vatican confirmed this morning that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of the Bishop Murray.
The bishop is one of a number of auxiliary bishops criticised in the Murphy commission report into the handling of allegations of child sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004.
In a statement this evening, Archbishop Martin commended Bishop Murray's decision to resign, saying “responsibility must be taken by all who hold a position of authority”.
“The Murphy report indicated how decisions were taken which resulted in further children being abused.
Accountability must be assumed for that and radical reform is required in the archdiocese, not just in the area of children protection,” he said.
Cardinal Seán Brady said he acknowledged and respected the decision of Bishop Murray.
In a brief statement, the Vatican earlier confirmed: “The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral governance of the diocese of Limerick, presented by Monsignor Donal Brendan Murray, in conformity with article 401,2 of Code of Canon Law."
Article 401.2 of Canon Law, as promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1984, reads: “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly required to present his resignation from office”.
Asked about the “other grave cause” which prompted Bishop Murray’s resignation, senior Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told The Irish Times : “That seems to me obvious, given the situation that had been created by the publication of the (Murphy) Report and given that he was one of the people involved in the events dealt with by the report. For that reason and for the good of the church, for a greater serenity, he spontaneously presented his resignation.”
Asked if Bishop Murray had met with the pope whilst in Rome last week, Father Lombardi said: “I don’t believe he did, I have no information in regard to that, as far as I know the normal procedure was followed and that would mean that Bishop Murray discussed his situation with Cardinal Re at the Congregation of Bishops. Then the Cardinal will have informed the Holy Father.
Fr Lombardi acknowledged that the resignation had been expected by the Holy See, saying: “This was not a surprise, he was in Rome a number of days ago and he presented his resignation off his own initiative and his own will. The diocese now remains vacant and a diocesan administrator will now be elected until such time as a successor, a new Bishop is appointed, all in line with normal practice.”
Asked if the resignation of Bishop Murray might be merely the first of several resignations by those mentioned in the Murphy report, Fr Lombardi said: “I have no idea and I have nothing to say about that."
In an address to churchgoers at Mass at St John's Cathedral in Limerick this morning, Bishop Murray said he "humbly" apologised to those who were abused as children. He had heard the views of many survivors, especially in the days following the publication of the Murphy report.
"Some expressed the wish that I should resign; others asked me not to do so. I know full well that my resignation cannot undo the pain that survivors of abuse have suffered in the past and continue to suffer each day. I humbly apologise once again to all who were abused as little children. To all survivors of abuse I repeat that my primary concern is to assist in every way that I can, on their journey towards finding closure and serenity."
The bishop said he had asked the pope to allow him resign and to appoint a new bishop to the diocese because "I believe that my presence will create difficulties for some of the survivors who must have first place in our thoughts and prayers."
Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray’s decision to resign following criticism of his handling of allegations of child sexual abuse was the “right thing” for his diocese and for the wider Irish Church, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.
The Vatican confirmed this morning that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of the Bishop Murray.
The bishop is one of a number of auxiliary bishops criticised in the Murphy commission report into the handling of allegations of child sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004.
In a statement this evening, Archbishop Martin commended Bishop Murray's decision to resign, saying “responsibility must be taken by all who hold a position of authority”.
“The Murphy report indicated how decisions were taken which resulted in further children being abused.
Accountability must be assumed for that and radical reform is required in the archdiocese, not just in the area of children protection,” he said.
Cardinal Seán Brady said he acknowledged and respected the decision of Bishop Murray.
In a brief statement, the Vatican earlier confirmed: “The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral governance of the diocese of Limerick, presented by Monsignor Donal Brendan Murray, in conformity with article 401,2 of Code of Canon Law."
Article 401.2 of Canon Law, as promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1984, reads: “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly required to present his resignation from office”.
Asked about the “other grave cause” which prompted Bishop Murray’s resignation, senior Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told The Irish Times : “That seems to me obvious, given the situation that had been created by the publication of the (Murphy) Report and given that he was one of the people involved in the events dealt with by the report. For that reason and for the good of the church, for a greater serenity, he spontaneously presented his resignation.”
Asked if Bishop Murray had met with the pope whilst in Rome last week, Father Lombardi said: “I don’t believe he did, I have no information in regard to that, as far as I know the normal procedure was followed and that would mean that Bishop Murray discussed his situation with Cardinal Re at the Congregation of Bishops. Then the Cardinal will have informed the Holy Father.
Fr Lombardi acknowledged that the resignation had been expected by the Holy See, saying: “This was not a surprise, he was in Rome a number of days ago and he presented his resignation off his own initiative and his own will. The diocese now remains vacant and a diocesan administrator will now be elected until such time as a successor, a new Bishop is appointed, all in line with normal practice.”
Asked if the resignation of Bishop Murray might be merely the first of several resignations by those mentioned in the Murphy report, Fr Lombardi said: “I have no idea and I have nothing to say about that."
In an address to churchgoers at Mass at St John's Cathedral in Limerick this morning, Bishop Murray said he "humbly" apologised to those who were abused as children. He had heard the views of many survivors, especially in the days following the publication of the Murphy report.
"Some expressed the wish that I should resign; others asked me not to do so. I know full well that my resignation cannot undo the pain that survivors of abuse have suffered in the past and continue to suffer each day. I humbly apologise once again to all who were abused as little children. To all survivors of abuse I repeat that my primary concern is to assist in every way that I can, on their journey towards finding closure and serenity."
The bishop said he had asked the pope to allow him resign and to appoint a new bishop to the diocese because "I believe that my presence will create difficulties for some of the survivors who must have first place in our thoughts and prayers."
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Christmas Novena
From www.communityofhopeinc.org
Say this Novena beginning on 16 December and ending on 24 December. This Novena, though it starts one day earlier than the O Antiphons, correlates with the O Antiphons in the titles used to address Jesus between 17 and 24 December. It would, therefore, make a good Novena to pray when your family prays the O Antiphons.
16 December:
O Shepherd that rulest Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep, come to guide and comfort us.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
17 December:
O Wisdom that comest out of the mouth of the Most High, that reachest from one end to another, and orderest all things mightily and sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
18 December:
O Adonai, and Ruler of the house of Israel, Who didst appear unto Moses in the burning bush, and gavest him the law in Sinai, come to redeem us with an outstretched arm!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
19 December:
O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at Whom the kings shall shut their mouths, Whom the Gentiles shall seek, come to deliver us, do not tarry.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
20 December:
O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel, that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth, come to liberate the prisoner from the prison, and them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
21 December:
O Dayspring, Brightness of the everlasting light, Son of justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
22 December:
O King of the Gentiles, yea, and desire thereof! O Corner-stone, that makest of two one, come to save man, whom Thou hast made out of the dust of the earth!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
23 December:
O Emmanuel, our King and our Law-giver, Longing of the Gentiles, yea, and salvation thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
24 December:
O Thou that sittest upon the cherubim, God of hosts, come, show Thy face, and we shall be saved.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
Say this Novena beginning on 16 December and ending on 24 December. This Novena, though it starts one day earlier than the O Antiphons, correlates with the O Antiphons in the titles used to address Jesus between 17 and 24 December. It would, therefore, make a good Novena to pray when your family prays the O Antiphons.
16 December:
O Shepherd that rulest Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep, come to guide and comfort us.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
17 December:
O Wisdom that comest out of the mouth of the Most High, that reachest from one end to another, and orderest all things mightily and sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
18 December:
O Adonai, and Ruler of the house of Israel, Who didst appear unto Moses in the burning bush, and gavest him the law in Sinai, come to redeem us with an outstretched arm!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
19 December:
O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at Whom the kings shall shut their mouths, Whom the Gentiles shall seek, come to deliver us, do not tarry.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
20 December:
O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel, that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth, come to liberate the prisoner from the prison, and them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
21 December:
O Dayspring, Brightness of the everlasting light, Son of justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
22 December:
O King of the Gentiles, yea, and desire thereof! O Corner-stone, that makest of two one, come to save man, whom Thou hast made out of the dust of the earth!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
23 December:
O Emmanuel, our King and our Law-giver, Longing of the Gentiles, yea, and salvation thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God!
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
24 December:
O Thou that sittest upon the cherubim, God of hosts, come, show Thy face, and we shall be saved.
Recite one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory be.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
December 12th: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
From Message Marial, by the Brothers of the Christian Schools (FEC Press: Montreal, 1947).
One of the most beautiful series of apparitions of the Queen of Heaven occurred on the American continent on a December day of 1531, only ten years after the Spanish conquest. A fervent Christian Indian in his fifties, Juan Diego, a widower, was on his way to Mass in Mexico City from his home eight miles distant, a practice he and his wife had followed since their conversion, in honor of Our Lady on Her day, Saturday. He had to pass near the hill of Tepeyac, and was struck there by the joyous song of birds, rising up in the most melodious of concerts; he stopped to listen. Looking up to the hilltop, he perceived a brilliant cloud, surrounded by a light brighter than a fiery sun, and a gentle voice called him by name, saying, “Juan, come.” His first fear was transformed into a sweet happiness by this voice, and he mounted the slope. There he beheld the One he had intended to honor by hearing Her Mass. She was surrounded by a radiance so brilliant it sent out rays that seemed to transform the very rocks into scintillating jewels.
“Where are you going, My child?” She asked him. “To Saint James to hear the Mass sung by the minister of the Most High in honor of the Mother of the Saviour.” “That is good, My son; your devotion is agreeable to Me, as is also the humility of your heart. Know then that I am that Virgin Mother of God, Author of Life and Protector of the weak. I desire that a temple be built here, where I will show Myself to be your tender Mother, the Mother of your fellow citizens and of all who invoke My name with confidence. Go to the bishop and tell him faithfully all you have seen and heard.”
Juan continued on his way, and the bishop, Monsignor Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan of great piety and enlightened prudence, heard him kindly and asked questions, but sent him home without any promises. Juan was disappointed, but on his way past the hill, he once again found the Lady, who seemed to be waiting for him as though to console him. He excused himself for the failure of his mission, but She only repeated Her desire to have a temple built at this site, and told him to return again to the bishop. This he did on the following day, begging the bishop to accomplish the desires of the Virgin. Monsignor said to him: “If it is the Most Holy Virgin who sends you, She must prove it; if She wants a church, She must give me a sign of Her will.” On his way home, Juan Diego found Her again, waiting, and She said to him, “Come back tomorrow and I will give you a certain mark of the truthfulness of your words.”
The next day Juan was desolate to find his uncle, with whom he lived, fallen grievously sick; the old gentleman was clearly on the brink of death. Juan had to go and find a priest in the city. As he was passing the hill, Our Lady again appeared to him, saying, “Do not be anxious, Diego, because of your uncle’s illness. Don’t you know that I am your Mother and that you are under My protection? At this moment your uncle is cured.” “Then please give me the sign you told me of,” replied Juan. Mary told him to come up to the hilltop and cut the flowers he would find there, place them under his cloak, and bring them to Her. “I will tell you then what to do next.” Juan found the most beautiful of roses and lilies, and chose the most fragrant ones for Mary. She made a bouquet of them and placed it in a fold of his cloak or tilma — a large square of coarse cloth resembling burlap. “Take these lilies and roses on My behalf to the bishop,” She said. “This is the certain sign of My will. Let there be no delay in raising here a temple in My honor.” With joy Juan continued on to the city and the bishop’s residence, where he had to wait nearly all day in the antechamber. Other visitors noted the fragrance of his flowers, and went so far as to open his mantle to see what he was carefully holding in it, but found only flowers pictured on the cloth. When finally he was admitted to the presence of the prelate, he opened his cloak and the fresh flowers fell on the floor. That was not the only sign; on his cloak there was imprinted a beautiful image of the Virgin. It remains today still visible in the Cathedral of Mexico City, conserved under glass and in its original state, having undergone no degeneration in 470 years.
Juan found his uncle entirely cured that evening; he heard him relate that Our Lady had cured him, and had said to him also: “May a sanctuary be raised for Me under the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” The bishop lost no time in having a small church built at the hill of Tepeyac, and Juan Diego himself dwelt near there to answer the inquiries of the pilgrims who came in great numbers. In effect, nearly all of the land became Catholic in a few years’ time, having learned to love the gentle Lady who like God their Father showed Herself to be the ever-watchful friend of the poor. In 1737 the pestilence ceased immediately in Mexico city after the inhabitants made a vow to proclaim Our Lady of Guadalupe the principal Patroness of New Spain. In 1910 She was proclaimed by Saint Pius X “Celestial Patroness of all Latin America.” Recent studies of the image of Our Lady on the tilma have discovered in one of Her eyes the portrait of Juan Diego, the son She chose to favor by this triduum of heavenly apparitions and conversations.
One of the most beautiful series of apparitions of the Queen of Heaven occurred on the American continent on a December day of 1531, only ten years after the Spanish conquest. A fervent Christian Indian in his fifties, Juan Diego, a widower, was on his way to Mass in Mexico City from his home eight miles distant, a practice he and his wife had followed since their conversion, in honor of Our Lady on Her day, Saturday. He had to pass near the hill of Tepeyac, and was struck there by the joyous song of birds, rising up in the most melodious of concerts; he stopped to listen. Looking up to the hilltop, he perceived a brilliant cloud, surrounded by a light brighter than a fiery sun, and a gentle voice called him by name, saying, “Juan, come.” His first fear was transformed into a sweet happiness by this voice, and he mounted the slope. There he beheld the One he had intended to honor by hearing Her Mass. She was surrounded by a radiance so brilliant it sent out rays that seemed to transform the very rocks into scintillating jewels.
“Where are you going, My child?” She asked him. “To Saint James to hear the Mass sung by the minister of the Most High in honor of the Mother of the Saviour.” “That is good, My son; your devotion is agreeable to Me, as is also the humility of your heart. Know then that I am that Virgin Mother of God, Author of Life and Protector of the weak. I desire that a temple be built here, where I will show Myself to be your tender Mother, the Mother of your fellow citizens and of all who invoke My name with confidence. Go to the bishop and tell him faithfully all you have seen and heard.”
Juan continued on his way, and the bishop, Monsignor Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan of great piety and enlightened prudence, heard him kindly and asked questions, but sent him home without any promises. Juan was disappointed, but on his way past the hill, he once again found the Lady, who seemed to be waiting for him as though to console him. He excused himself for the failure of his mission, but She only repeated Her desire to have a temple built at this site, and told him to return again to the bishop. This he did on the following day, begging the bishop to accomplish the desires of the Virgin. Monsignor said to him: “If it is the Most Holy Virgin who sends you, She must prove it; if She wants a church, She must give me a sign of Her will.” On his way home, Juan Diego found Her again, waiting, and She said to him, “Come back tomorrow and I will give you a certain mark of the truthfulness of your words.”
The next day Juan was desolate to find his uncle, with whom he lived, fallen grievously sick; the old gentleman was clearly on the brink of death. Juan had to go and find a priest in the city. As he was passing the hill, Our Lady again appeared to him, saying, “Do not be anxious, Diego, because of your uncle’s illness. Don’t you know that I am your Mother and that you are under My protection? At this moment your uncle is cured.” “Then please give me the sign you told me of,” replied Juan. Mary told him to come up to the hilltop and cut the flowers he would find there, place them under his cloak, and bring them to Her. “I will tell you then what to do next.” Juan found the most beautiful of roses and lilies, and chose the most fragrant ones for Mary. She made a bouquet of them and placed it in a fold of his cloak or tilma — a large square of coarse cloth resembling burlap. “Take these lilies and roses on My behalf to the bishop,” She said. “This is the certain sign of My will. Let there be no delay in raising here a temple in My honor.” With joy Juan continued on to the city and the bishop’s residence, where he had to wait nearly all day in the antechamber. Other visitors noted the fragrance of his flowers, and went so far as to open his mantle to see what he was carefully holding in it, but found only flowers pictured on the cloth. When finally he was admitted to the presence of the prelate, he opened his cloak and the fresh flowers fell on the floor. That was not the only sign; on his cloak there was imprinted a beautiful image of the Virgin. It remains today still visible in the Cathedral of Mexico City, conserved under glass and in its original state, having undergone no degeneration in 470 years.
Juan found his uncle entirely cured that evening; he heard him relate that Our Lady had cured him, and had said to him also: “May a sanctuary be raised for Me under the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” The bishop lost no time in having a small church built at the hill of Tepeyac, and Juan Diego himself dwelt near there to answer the inquiries of the pilgrims who came in great numbers. In effect, nearly all of the land became Catholic in a few years’ time, having learned to love the gentle Lady who like God their Father showed Herself to be the ever-watchful friend of the poor. In 1737 the pestilence ceased immediately in Mexico city after the inhabitants made a vow to proclaim Our Lady of Guadalupe the principal Patroness of New Spain. In 1910 She was proclaimed by Saint Pius X “Celestial Patroness of all Latin America.” Recent studies of the image of Our Lady on the tilma have discovered in one of Her eyes the portrait of Juan Diego, the son She chose to favor by this triduum of heavenly apparitions and conversations.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Chastisement during the Middle Ages Contd
From http://www.spiritdaily.com/blackdeath2.htm
We left off, last week, in our lengthy article on the Black Death, recounting the absolute devastation in Italy by plague [see previous article].
Most people have no idea how incredible this chastisement was. Could it recur? Are we in an age of pandemics?
Many worry about vaccines -- and even health effects from them.
In the Middle Ages, there were no vaccines, just a strange sickness that had come (as a number of negative things had come) from Asia, and specifically, the "Land of the Dragon," China -- with hordes of migrating horsemen who may have transported rats and fleas.
Let's see what else occurred:
It decimated Florence, where 100,000 died. It hit Venice -- where shortly before a tremor had set church bells tolling.
From Italy the plague made its way to the western Mediterranean with the same deadly results. In Avignon, France, where the papal palace had relocated -- in lust-ridden Avignon -- 11,000 were buried in a six-week stretch and soon a third of the cardinals died with half of the lay population.
Indeed, along with Florence, Avignon was most severely affected. Mortality among priests was particularly high and hundreds who worked at the luxurious papal palace were counted among the deceased. In a short time Pope Clement VI had to flee the city. No one could be sure exactly how the Black Death was spreading but at least one of its three forms was fantastically contagious.
Astrologers tried to find an explanation in the stars but there was precious little to go on as the disease spread northward along the river valleys and arrived in Paris by 1348, with more than five hundred corpses carted each day out of the main hospital in that city, the sick tended to be courageous nuns who in all humility, in all selflessness, gave no thought to their own imminent expiration. That horrid year 28 percent of Europe's cardinals and 207 bishops succumbed to illness.
In Spain it had reached Saragossa and other parts in this nation where the same image said to have been used by Gregory the Great during the scourge in Rome -- the same Madonna and Child! -- had resurfaced from that cavern at Guadalupe to help men against this new and more awesome plague. Throughout the continent, towns were special targets. The sick were ruthlessly deserted and turned quickly into cadavers that were simply left in the front of homes or piled like cordwood.
Eventually the bodies were disposed in huge communal pits while the neglected crops withered and livestock roamed untended. Jeremiah indeed! As if repulsed, wolves shied from scavenging the dead animals and at one hospital in Montpellier nearly every doctor died while in Marseilles all of the 150 Franciscans -- every one -- were counted as fatalities.
In some locales the plague was believed to descend like a ball of fire. "One such ball was fortunately spotted while hovering above Vienna and exorcised by a passing bishop," wrote the historian Ziegler. "It fell harmlessly to the ground and a stone effigy of the Madonna was raised to commemorate this unique victory..."
But such triumphs were temporary. Many more were the defeats. Vienna suffered as badly as Avignon and the whole of Europe was the picture of emptiness: cattle without herdsmen, widows without children. In England the plague made its way along the coast to Bristol killing with the same vengeance as on the mainland -- especially the poor clergy who bravely ministered to the dying. Sickness hit County Dorset in 1348 and 44 to fifty percent died at manors in Suffolk and Worcestershire. Bath and Wells seemed to suffer their most devastating period between November 1348 and May 13, 1349, and so bad was the shortage of priests, so few were clergy, that Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury issued a letter declaring that a dying person could make his or her last Confession to another layman if a priest was not available. (The same was true of the Eucharist, which could now be administered by a deacon if the vicinity was priestless.)
The fact that Confession was open to laymen meant it was an unprecedented emergency. Clement decided it was necessary to grant absolution to all who had succumbed because so many had no minister. Before the plague there had been 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in English monasteries but within two years there were about -- half -- that number. Many believed it was the end of humankind and in Kilkenny, Ireland, a friar named John Clyn -- alone among dead men -- sensed "the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One."
That precarious position had been earned by lust and greed, by irreverence among knights, by lack of respect for life and God, by the astrology and crystal⌐gazing which of late had become so startlingly popular in Europe. The people had tapped into dark powers and were now reaping the result. "God for the sins of men has struck the world with this great punishment of sudden death," bemoaned King Magnus II of Sweden. "By it, most of the people in the land to the west of our country are dead. It is now ravaging Norway and Holland and is approaching our kingdom of Sweden."
While Germany was not hit as hard as southern Europe the devastation affected places as far off as Greenland. There was no escape, no respite. Venturing to Rome in 1349 as the plague still raged, Saint Bridget advised everyone to "abolish earthly vanity in the way of extravagant clothes, give free alms to the needy, and order all parish priests to celebrate Mass once a month in honor," she advised, "of the Holy Trinity."
If few in Rome were willing to heed such words no one could deny Bridget's impressive presence. Nor could they deny her miracles. One woman watching her dying son said, "If only the Lady Bridget were here!" and at that moment the saint walked in, laid her hands on the man's forehead, and a few hours later the man was healed.
In other cases relief was sought at shrines like Willesden.
There a statue of the Blessed Mother was carried in procession and there were reported healings. The king of Sweden called for fasting on bread and a special holy year was declared by the pope for 1350. Obviously it was ridiculous to blame the Church for all this woe (especially a plague that began in pagan land), but guilt was still felt by a hierarchy that had counted piles of money at the papal palace in Avignon and had turned the Church into a granite bureaucracy.
There was evil in that. There was evil in the legalism and pretension. There was evil that filtered down to the local level and the pope, traumatized by the disaster, criticized many of his clergy as "the proudest of the world, arrogant and given to pomp... grasping... covetous," wasting their money, he charged, "on pimps and swindlers."
The Pope's tirade was no doubt magnified by stress and there was ample reason. His agents calculated that the plague -- this chastisement allowed by God -- had killed 23,840,000 in Christian Europe (as well as up to a third of those living in the Middle East and much of Asia).
[Adapted from The Last Secret]
We left off, last week, in our lengthy article on the Black Death, recounting the absolute devastation in Italy by plague [see previous article].
Most people have no idea how incredible this chastisement was. Could it recur? Are we in an age of pandemics?
Many worry about vaccines -- and even health effects from them.
In the Middle Ages, there were no vaccines, just a strange sickness that had come (as a number of negative things had come) from Asia, and specifically, the "Land of the Dragon," China -- with hordes of migrating horsemen who may have transported rats and fleas.
Let's see what else occurred:
It decimated Florence, where 100,000 died. It hit Venice -- where shortly before a tremor had set church bells tolling.
From Italy the plague made its way to the western Mediterranean with the same deadly results. In Avignon, France, where the papal palace had relocated -- in lust-ridden Avignon -- 11,000 were buried in a six-week stretch and soon a third of the cardinals died with half of the lay population.
Indeed, along with Florence, Avignon was most severely affected. Mortality among priests was particularly high and hundreds who worked at the luxurious papal palace were counted among the deceased. In a short time Pope Clement VI had to flee the city. No one could be sure exactly how the Black Death was spreading but at least one of its three forms was fantastically contagious.
Astrologers tried to find an explanation in the stars but there was precious little to go on as the disease spread northward along the river valleys and arrived in Paris by 1348, with more than five hundred corpses carted each day out of the main hospital in that city, the sick tended to be courageous nuns who in all humility, in all selflessness, gave no thought to their own imminent expiration. That horrid year 28 percent of Europe's cardinals and 207 bishops succumbed to illness.
In Spain it had reached Saragossa and other parts in this nation where the same image said to have been used by Gregory the Great during the scourge in Rome -- the same Madonna and Child! -- had resurfaced from that cavern at Guadalupe to help men against this new and more awesome plague. Throughout the continent, towns were special targets. The sick were ruthlessly deserted and turned quickly into cadavers that were simply left in the front of homes or piled like cordwood.
Eventually the bodies were disposed in huge communal pits while the neglected crops withered and livestock roamed untended. Jeremiah indeed! As if repulsed, wolves shied from scavenging the dead animals and at one hospital in Montpellier nearly every doctor died while in Marseilles all of the 150 Franciscans -- every one -- were counted as fatalities.
In some locales the plague was believed to descend like a ball of fire. "One such ball was fortunately spotted while hovering above Vienna and exorcised by a passing bishop," wrote the historian Ziegler. "It fell harmlessly to the ground and a stone effigy of the Madonna was raised to commemorate this unique victory..."
But such triumphs were temporary. Many more were the defeats. Vienna suffered as badly as Avignon and the whole of Europe was the picture of emptiness: cattle without herdsmen, widows without children. In England the plague made its way along the coast to Bristol killing with the same vengeance as on the mainland -- especially the poor clergy who bravely ministered to the dying. Sickness hit County Dorset in 1348 and 44 to fifty percent died at manors in Suffolk and Worcestershire. Bath and Wells seemed to suffer their most devastating period between November 1348 and May 13, 1349, and so bad was the shortage of priests, so few were clergy, that Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury issued a letter declaring that a dying person could make his or her last Confession to another layman if a priest was not available. (The same was true of the Eucharist, which could now be administered by a deacon if the vicinity was priestless.)
The fact that Confession was open to laymen meant it was an unprecedented emergency. Clement decided it was necessary to grant absolution to all who had succumbed because so many had no minister. Before the plague there had been 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in English monasteries but within two years there were about -- half -- that number. Many believed it was the end of humankind and in Kilkenny, Ireland, a friar named John Clyn -- alone among dead men -- sensed "the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One."
That precarious position had been earned by lust and greed, by irreverence among knights, by lack of respect for life and God, by the astrology and crystal⌐gazing which of late had become so startlingly popular in Europe. The people had tapped into dark powers and were now reaping the result. "God for the sins of men has struck the world with this great punishment of sudden death," bemoaned King Magnus II of Sweden. "By it, most of the people in the land to the west of our country are dead. It is now ravaging Norway and Holland and is approaching our kingdom of Sweden."
While Germany was not hit as hard as southern Europe the devastation affected places as far off as Greenland. There was no escape, no respite. Venturing to Rome in 1349 as the plague still raged, Saint Bridget advised everyone to "abolish earthly vanity in the way of extravagant clothes, give free alms to the needy, and order all parish priests to celebrate Mass once a month in honor," she advised, "of the Holy Trinity."
If few in Rome were willing to heed such words no one could deny Bridget's impressive presence. Nor could they deny her miracles. One woman watching her dying son said, "If only the Lady Bridget were here!" and at that moment the saint walked in, laid her hands on the man's forehead, and a few hours later the man was healed.
In other cases relief was sought at shrines like Willesden.
There a statue of the Blessed Mother was carried in procession and there were reported healings. The king of Sweden called for fasting on bread and a special holy year was declared by the pope for 1350. Obviously it was ridiculous to blame the Church for all this woe (especially a plague that began in pagan land), but guilt was still felt by a hierarchy that had counted piles of money at the papal palace in Avignon and had turned the Church into a granite bureaucracy.
There was evil in that. There was evil in the legalism and pretension. There was evil that filtered down to the local level and the pope, traumatized by the disaster, criticized many of his clergy as "the proudest of the world, arrogant and given to pomp... grasping... covetous," wasting their money, he charged, "on pimps and swindlers."
The Pope's tirade was no doubt magnified by stress and there was ample reason. His agents calculated that the plague -- this chastisement allowed by God -- had killed 23,840,000 in Christian Europe (as well as up to a third of those living in the Middle East and much of Asia).
[Adapted from The Last Secret]
Vatican 'dismayed' at Murphy Report findings
From www.rte.ie/news
Tuesday, 8 December 2009 16:47
The Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, has said the findings of the Murphy Commission have shocked and dismayed the Vatican.
The Nuncio made his comments following a 45-minute meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Dublin this morning.
Micheál Martin requested the meeting with Archbishop Leanza in the wake of the latest report into the Catholic Church's handling of clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
AdvertisementThe Papal Nuncio admitted during the meeting that he should have responded to a letter from the commission formally.
Mr Martin said he informed the Papal Nuncio that the Government expected the church to respond fully to the questions asked by the Murphy Commission.
He said the Vatican needs to respond substantially and comprehensively to the questions posed by the commission and he said it should do so as soon as possible.
The Minister also said that the Vatican should prepare whatever documents are necessary to forward them to the commission in order to address the questions posed.
The Papal Nuncio described the meeting as 'serious' and 'meaningful'.
Afterwards he told the media he felt at the time that he did not need to respond to the commission's letter, which he felt was forwarded to him for information purposes.
When asked about the silence of the Vatican following the publication of the Murphy and Ryan reports, he said time is needed to study their contents.
He said the Murphy Report is now under study at the Vatican and he said he hoped there would be a response to its contents following a meeting on Friday.
The Papal Nuncio said he expected a response from the Vatican following the meeting between Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin with the Pope in the Vatican this week.
He said clear mistakes had been made but the church had condemned clerical child abuse and the Vatican had already apologised for hurt caused.
Minister Martin said he had sought a commitment from the Archbishop that the church would co-operate fully with upcoming the Cloyne inquiry.
Meanwhile, Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, who was criticised in the Murphy Report because of his handling of abuse complaints, is expected to tender his resignation in Rome this week.
Another of Dublin's auxiliary bishops, Dr Eamonn Walsh, has said that the report speaks for itself concerning his responses to allegations of clerical child sexual abuse.
Bishop Walsh was responding to a newspaper report quoting Vatican sources as saying he will have to resign.
He also said that he would be responding to last week's letter from Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin requesting bishops mentioned in the report to account for their child protection record in the Archdiocese.
Meanwhile, Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe has acknowledged that tomorrow's planned meeting of the country's bishops will be a very difficult one.
Speaking after a dedication ceremony at a new chapel at Skycourt Shopping Centre in Shannon this afternoon, Bishop Walsh said he and his fellow bishops were going to that meeting in a' very humble and repentant spirit'.
He said he hopes and prays that they can in some way touch the hearts of those who have been hurt and in some way begin the journey of healing.
'That really is ultimately our only hope for the future' he said.
He said they had to be brave enough to bring the real spirit of Christ back- the virtues of truth, justice compassion and love--if our Church is not about those things, it is not worth anything, he added.
'Certainly all of us going into that meeting, whatever our failings in the past, all of use are going into that meeting in that spirit where we must get back to the values and teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and whatever we have to lose or shed or change in our church, then thats our only possible answer at this time of crisis.
In making the comments Bishop Walsh specifically said he would not comment on any of his colleagues because he did not want to hurt anyone or cause any more pain.
He again made a sincere apology to victims of clerical sexual abuse who may have been hurt by a media interview he did last week.
He said he was very conscious at this time of deep crisis in the Church, that ill-chosen words he made during a radio interview last week caused deep hurt and he had no hesitation in apologising.
He said the last thing he wanted to do was to add to the deep hurt that has been caused to survivors of abuse over the years.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009 16:47
The Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, has said the findings of the Murphy Commission have shocked and dismayed the Vatican.
The Nuncio made his comments following a 45-minute meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Dublin this morning.
Micheál Martin requested the meeting with Archbishop Leanza in the wake of the latest report into the Catholic Church's handling of clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
AdvertisementThe Papal Nuncio admitted during the meeting that he should have responded to a letter from the commission formally.
Mr Martin said he informed the Papal Nuncio that the Government expected the church to respond fully to the questions asked by the Murphy Commission.
He said the Vatican needs to respond substantially and comprehensively to the questions posed by the commission and he said it should do so as soon as possible.
The Minister also said that the Vatican should prepare whatever documents are necessary to forward them to the commission in order to address the questions posed.
The Papal Nuncio described the meeting as 'serious' and 'meaningful'.
Afterwards he told the media he felt at the time that he did not need to respond to the commission's letter, which he felt was forwarded to him for information purposes.
When asked about the silence of the Vatican following the publication of the Murphy and Ryan reports, he said time is needed to study their contents.
He said the Murphy Report is now under study at the Vatican and he said he hoped there would be a response to its contents following a meeting on Friday.
The Papal Nuncio said he expected a response from the Vatican following the meeting between Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin with the Pope in the Vatican this week.
He said clear mistakes had been made but the church had condemned clerical child abuse and the Vatican had already apologised for hurt caused.
Minister Martin said he had sought a commitment from the Archbishop that the church would co-operate fully with upcoming the Cloyne inquiry.
Meanwhile, Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, who was criticised in the Murphy Report because of his handling of abuse complaints, is expected to tender his resignation in Rome this week.
Another of Dublin's auxiliary bishops, Dr Eamonn Walsh, has said that the report speaks for itself concerning his responses to allegations of clerical child sexual abuse.
Bishop Walsh was responding to a newspaper report quoting Vatican sources as saying he will have to resign.
He also said that he would be responding to last week's letter from Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin requesting bishops mentioned in the report to account for their child protection record in the Archdiocese.
Meanwhile, Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe has acknowledged that tomorrow's planned meeting of the country's bishops will be a very difficult one.
Speaking after a dedication ceremony at a new chapel at Skycourt Shopping Centre in Shannon this afternoon, Bishop Walsh said he and his fellow bishops were going to that meeting in a' very humble and repentant spirit'.
He said he hopes and prays that they can in some way touch the hearts of those who have been hurt and in some way begin the journey of healing.
'That really is ultimately our only hope for the future' he said.
He said they had to be brave enough to bring the real spirit of Christ back- the virtues of truth, justice compassion and love--if our Church is not about those things, it is not worth anything, he added.
'Certainly all of us going into that meeting, whatever our failings in the past, all of use are going into that meeting in that spirit where we must get back to the values and teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and whatever we have to lose or shed or change in our church, then thats our only possible answer at this time of crisis.
In making the comments Bishop Walsh specifically said he would not comment on any of his colleagues because he did not want to hurt anyone or cause any more pain.
He again made a sincere apology to victims of clerical sexual abuse who may have been hurt by a media interview he did last week.
He said he was very conscious at this time of deep crisis in the Church, that ill-chosen words he made during a radio interview last week caused deep hurt and he had no hesitation in apologising.
He said the last thing he wanted to do was to add to the deep hurt that has been caused to survivors of abuse over the years.
Monday, December 7, 2009
December 8th: The Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin
Taken from Dom Gueranger's The Liturgical Year:
At length, on the distant horizon, rises, with a soft and radiant light, the aurora of the Sun which has been so long desired. The happy Mother of the Messias was to be born before the Messias Himself; and this is the day of the Conception of Mary. The earth already possesses a first pledge of the Divine mercy; the Son of Man is near at hand. Two true Israelites, Joachim and Anne, noble branches of the family of David, find their union, after a long barrenness, made fruitful by the Divine omnipotence. Glory be to God, Who has been mindful of His promises, and Who deigns to announce, from the high heavens, the end of the deluge of iniquity, by sending upon the earth the sweet white dove that bears the tidings of peace!
The feast of the Blessed Virgin's Immaculate Conception is the most solemn of all those which the Church celebrates during the holy time of Advent; and if the first part of the cycle had to offer us the commemoration of some one of the mysteries of Mary, there was none whose object could better harmonize with the spirit of the Church in this mystic season of expectation. Let us, then, celebrate this solemnity with joy; for the Conception of Mary tells us that the Birth of Jesus is not far oft.
The intention of the Church, in this feast, is not only to celebrate the anniversary of the happy moment in which began, in the womb of the pious Anne, the life of the ever-glorious Virgin Mary; but also to honor the sublime privilege, by which Mary was preserved from the original stain, which, by a sovereign and universal decree, is contracted by all the children of Adam the very moment they are conceived in their mother's womb.
The faith of the Catholic Church on the subject of the Conception of Mary is this: that at the very instant when God united the soul of Mary, which He had created, to the body which it was to animate, this ever-blessed soul did not only not contract the stain, which at that same instant defiles every human soul, but was filled with an immeasurable grace which rendered her, from that moment, the mirror of the sanctity of God Himself, as far as this is possible to a creature. The Church with her infallible authority, declared, by the lips of Pius IX, that this article of her faith had been revealed by God Himself. The Definition was received with enthusiasm by the whole of Christendom, and the eighth of December of the year 1854 was thus made one of the most memorable days of the Church's history.
It was due to His own infinite sanctity that God should suspend, in this instance, the law which His Divine justice had passed upon all the children of Adam. The relations which Mary was to bear to the Divinity, could not be reconciled with her undergoing the humiliation of this punishment. She was not only daughter of the eternal Father; she was destined also to become the very Mother of the Son, and the veritable bride of the Holy Ghost. Nothing defiled could be permitted to enter, even for an instant of time, into the creature that was thus predestined to contract such close relations with the adorable Trinity; not a speck could be permitted to tarnish in Mary that perfect purity which the infinitely holy God requires even in those who are one day to be admitted to enjoy the sight of His Divine majesty in Heaven; in a word, as the great Doctor St. Anselm says, "it was just that this holy Virgin should be adorned with the greatest purity which can be conceived after that of God Himself, since God the Father was to give to her, as her Child, that only-begotten Son, whom He loved as Himself, as being begotten to Him from His own bosom; and this in such a manner, that the selfsame Son of God was, by nature, the Son of both God the Father and this blessed Virgin. This same Son chose her to be substantially His Mother; and the Holy Ghost willed that in her womb He would operate the conception and birth of Him from whom He Himself proceeded."
Moreover, the close ties which were to unite the Son of God with Mary, and which would elicit from Him the tenderest love and the most filial reverence for her, had been present to the Divine thought from all eternity: and the conclusion forces itself upon us that therefore the Divine Word had for this His future Mother a love infinitely greater than that which He bore to all His other creatures. Mary's honor was infinitely dear to Him, because she was to be His Mother, chosen to be so by His eternal and merciful decrees. The Son's love protected the Mother. She, indeed, in her sublime humility, willingly submitted to whatever the rest of God's creatures had brought on themselves, and obeyed every tittle of those laws which were never meant for her: but that humiliating barrier, which confronts every child of Adam at the first moment of his existence, and keeps him from light and grace until he shall have been regenerated by a new birth—oh! this could not be permitted to stand in Mary's way, her Son forbade it.
The eternal Father would not do less for the second Eve than He had done for the first, who was created, as was also the first Adam, in the state of original justice, which she afterwards forfeited by Sin. The Son of God would not permit that the woman, from whom He was to take the nature of Man, should be deprived of that gift which He had given even to her who was the mother of sin. The Holy Ghost, who was to overshadow Mary and produce Jesus within her by His Divine operation, would not permit that foul stain, in which we alone are aIl conceived, to rest, even for an instant, on this His Bride. All men were to contract the sin of Adam; the sentence was universal; but God's Own Mother is not included. God who is the author of that law, God who was free to make it as He willed, had power to exclude from it her whom He had predestined to be His own in so many ways; He could exempt her, and it was just that He should exempt her; therefore, He did it.
Was it not this grand exemption which God Himself foretold, when the guilty pair, whose children we all are, appeared before Him in the garden of Eden. In the anathema which fell upon the serpent, there was included a promise of mercy to us. 'I will put enmities,' said the Lord, ' between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head.'
Thus was salvation promised the human race under the form of a victory over Satan; and this victory is to be gained by the Woman, and she will gain it for us also. Even granting, as some read this text, that it is the Son of the Woman that is alone to gain this victory, the enmity between the Woman and the serpent is clearly expressed, and she, the Woman, with her own foot, is to crush the head of the hated serpent. The second Eve is to be worthy of the second Adam, conquering and not to be conquered. The human race is one day to be avenged not only by God, made Man, but also by the Woman miraculously exempted from every stain of sin, in whom the primeval creation, which was in justice and holiness, will thus reappear, just as though the Original Sin had never been committed.
Raise up your heads, then, ye children of Adam, and shake off your chains! This day the humiliation which weighed you down is annihilated. Behold! Mary, who is of the same flesh and blood as yourselves, has seen the torrent of sin, which swept along all the generations of mankind, flow back at her presence and not touch her: the infernal dragon has turned away his head, not daring to breathe his venom upon her; the dignity of your origin is given to her in all its primitive grandeur. This happy day, then, on which the original purity of your race is renewed, must be a feast to you. The second Eve is created; and from her own blood [which, with the exception of the element of sin, is the same as that which makes you to be the children of Adam], she is shortly to give you the God-Man, who proceeds from her according to the flesh, as He proceeds from the Father according to the eternal generation.
And how can we do less than admire and love the incomparable purity of Mary in her Immaculate Conception, when we hear even God, Who thus prepared her to become His Mother, saying to her, in the Divine Canticle, these words of complacent love: 'Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!' It is the God of all holiness that here speaks; that eye, which sees all things, finds not a vestige, not a shadow of sin; therefore does He delight in her, and admire in her that gift of His own condescending munificence. We cannot be surprised after this, that Gabriel, when he came down from Heaven to announce the Incarnation to her, should be full of admiration at the sight of that purity, whose beginning was so glorious and whose progress was immeasurable; and that this blessed spirit should bow down profoundly before this young Maid of Nazareth, and salute her with 'Hail, O full of grace!' And who is this Gabriel? An Archangel, that lives amidst the grandest magnificences of God's creation, amidst all the gorgeous riches of Heaven; who is brother to the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the Thrones and Dominations; whose eye is accustomed to gaze on those nine angelic choirs with their dazzling brightness of countless degrees of light and grace; he has found on earth, in a creature of a nature below that of Angels, the fulness of grace, of that grace which had been given to the Angels measuredly. This fulness of grace was in Mary from the very first instant of her existence. She is the future Mother of God, and she was ever holy, ever pure, ever Immaculate.
This truth of Mary's Immaculate Conception—which was revealed to the Apostles by the Divine Son of Mary, inherited by the Church, taught by the holy fathers, believed by each generation of the Christian people with an ever increasing explicitness—was implied in the very notion of a Mother of God. To believe that Mary was Mother of God, was implicitly to believe that she, on whom this sublime dignity was conferred, had never been defiled with the slightest stain of sin, and that God had bestowed upon her an absolute exemption from sin. But now the Immaculate Conception of Mary rests on an explicit definition dictated by the Holy Ghost. Peter has spoken by the mouth of Pius; and when Peter has spoken, every Christian should believe; for the Son of God has said: 'I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not.' And again: 'The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.'
The Symbol of our faith has therefore received not a new truth, but a new light on a truth which was previously the object of the universal belief. On that great day of the definition, the infernal serpent was again crushed beneath the victorious foot of the Virgin-Mother, and the Lord graciously gave us the strongest pledge of His mercy. He still loves this guilty earth, since He has deigned to enlighten it with one of the brightest rays of His Mother's glory. How this earth of ours exulted! The present generation will never forget the enthusiasm with which the entire universe received the tidings of the definition. It was an event of mysterious importance which thus marked this second half of our century ; and we shall look forward to the future with renewed confidence; for if the Holy Ghost bids us tremble for the days when truths are diminished among the children of men, He would, consequently, have us look on those times as blessed by God in which we receive an increase of truth; an increase both in light and authority.
The Church, even before the solemn proclamation of the grand dogma, kept the feast of this eighth day of December; which was, in reality, a profession of her faith. It is true that the feast was not called the Immaculate Conception, but simply the Conception of Mary. But the fact of such a feast being instituted and kept, was an unmistakable expression of the faith of Christendom in that truth.
St. Bernard and the angelical doctor, St. Thomas, both teach that the Church cannot celebrate the feast of what is not holy; the Conception of Mary, therefore, was holy and immaculate, since the Church has, for ages past, honored it with a special feast. The Nativity of the same holy Virgin is kept as a solemnity in the Church, because Mary was born full of grace; therefore, had the first moment of Mary's existence been one of sin, as is that of all the other children of Adam, it never could have been made the subject of the reverence of the Church. Now, there are few feasts so generally and so firmly established in the Church as this which we are keeping today.
The Greek Church, which, more easily than the Latin, could learn what were the pious traditions of the east, kept this feast even in the sixth century, as is evident from the ceremonial or, as it is called, the Type, of St. Sabas. In the west, we find it established in the Gothic Church of Spain as far back as the eighth century. A celebrated calendar which was engraved on marble, in the ninth century, for the use of the Church of Naples, attests that it had already been introduced there. Paul the deacon, secretary to the emperor Charlemagne, and afterwards monk at Monte-Cassino, composed a celebrated hymn on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception; we will insert this piece later on, as it is given in the manuscript copies of Monte-Cassino and Benevento. In 1066, the feast was first established in England, in consequence of the pious Abbot Helsyn's (Some writers call him Elsym, and others Elpyn. See Baronius in his notes on the Roman Martyrology, Dec. 8. [Tr.]) being miraculously preserved from shipwreck; and shortly after that, was made general through the whole island by the zeal of the great St. Anselm, monk of the Order of St. Benedict, and archbishop of Canterbury. From England it passed into Normandy, and took root in France. We find it sanctioned in Germany, in a council held in 1049, at which St. Leo IX. was present; in Navarre, 1090, at the abbey of Irach; in Belgium, at Liege, in 1142. Thus did the Churches of the west testify their faith in this mystery, by accepting its feast, which is the expression of faith.
Lastly, it was adopted by Rome herself, and her doing so rendered the united testimony of her children, the other Churches, more imposing than ever. It was Pope Sixtus IV who, in the year 1476, published the decree of the feast of our Lady's Conception for the city of St. Peter. In the next century. 1568, St. Pius V published the universal edition of the Roman breviary, and in its calendar was inserted this feast as one of those Christian solemnities which the faithful are every year bound to observe. It was not from Rome that the devotion of the Catholic world to this mystery received its first impulse; she sanctioned it by her liturgical authority, just as she has confirmed it by her doctrinal authority in these our own days.
The three great Catholic nations of Europe, Germany, France, and Spain, vied with each other in their devotion to this mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception. France, by her king Louis XIV, obtained from Clement IX that this feast should be kept with an octave throughout the kingdom; which favour was afterwards extended to the universal Church by Innocent XII. For centuries previous to this, the theological faculty of Paris had always exacted from its professors the oath that they would defend this privilege of Mary; a pious practice which continued as long as the university itself.
As regards Germany, the emperor Ferdinand III, in 1647, ordered a splendid monument to be erected in the great square of Vienna. It is covered with emblems and figures symbolical of Mary's victory over sin, and on the top is the statue of the Immaculate Queen, with this solemn and truly Catholic inscription:
TO GOD, INFINITE IN GOODNESS AND POWER,
KING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,
BY WHOM KINGS REIGN;
TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOD
CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN,
BY WHOM PRINCES COMMAND,
WHOM AUSTRIA, DEVOUTLY LOVING, HOLDS AS HER QUEEN AND PATRON;
FERDINAND III, EMPEROR,
CONFIDES, GIVES, CONSECRATES HIMSELF, CHILDREN, PEOPLE, ARMIES, PROVINCES,
AND ALL THAT IS HIS,
AND ERECTS IN ACCOMPLISHMENT OF A VOW
THIS STATUE,
AS A PERPETUAL MEMORIAL. (D. O. M. supremo cœli terræquæ imperatori, per quem reges regnant; Virgini Deiparæ Immaeulatæ Conceptræ, per quam principes imperant, in peculiarem Dominam, Austriæ Patronam, singulari pietate susceptæ, se, liberos, populos, exercitus, provincias, omnia denique confidit, donat, consecrat, et in perpetuam rei memoriam statuam hanc ex voto ponit Ferdinandus III Augustus.)
But the zeal of Spain for the privilege of the holy Mother of God surpassed that of all other nations. In the year 1398, John I, king of Arragon, issued a chart in which he solemnly places his person and kingdom under the protection of Mary Immaculate. Later on, kings Philip III and Philip IV sent ambassadors to Rome, soliciting, in their names, the solemn definition, which heaven reserved, in its mercy, for our days. King Charles III, in the eighteenth century, obtained permission from Clement XIII, that the Immaculate Conception should be the patronal feast of Spain. The people of Spain, which is so justly called the Catholic kingdom, put over the door, or on the front of their houses, a tablet with the words of Mary's privilege written on it; and when they meet, they greet each other with an expression in honour of the same dear mystery. It was a Spanish nun, Mary of Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Agreda, who wrote God's Mystic City, which inspired Murillo with his Immaculate Conception, the masterpiece of the Spanish school.
But, whilst thus mentioning the different nations which have been foremost in their zeal for this article of our holy faith, the Immaculate Conception, it were unjust to pass over the immense share which the seraphic Order, the Order of St. Francis of Assisi, has had in the earthly triumph of our blessed Mother, the Queen of heaven and earth. As often as this feast comes round, is it not just that we should think with reverence and gratitude on him, who was the first theologian that showed how closely connected with the divine mystery of the Incarnation is this dogma of the Immaculate Conception? First, then, all honour to the name of the pious and learned John Duns Scotus! And when at length the great day of the definition of the Immaculate Conception came, how justly merited was that grand audience, which the Vicar of Christ granted to the Franciscan Order, and with which closed the pageant of the glorious solemnity! Plus IX received from the hands of the children of St. Francis a tribute of homage and thankfulness, which the Scotist school, after having fought four hundred years in defence of Mary's Immaculate Conception, now presented to the Pontiff.
In the presence of the fifty-four Cardinals, forty-two archbishops, and ninety-two bishops; before an immense concourse of people that filled St. Peter's, and had united in prayer, begging the assistance of the Spirit of truth; the Vicar of Christ had just pronounced the decision which so many ages had hoped to hear. The Pontiff had offered the holy Sacrifice on the Confession of St. Peter. He had crowned the statue of the Immaculate Queen with a splendid diadem. Carried on his lofty throne, and wearing his triple crown, he had reached the portico of the basilica; there he is met by the two representatives of St. Francis: they prostrate before the throne: the triumphal procession halts: and first, the General of the Friars Minor Observantines advances, and presents to the holy Father a branch of silver lilies: he is followed by the General of the Conventual Friars, holding in his hand a branch of silver roses. The Pope graciously accepted both. The lilies and the roses were symbolical of Mary's purity and love; the whiteness of the silver was the emblem of the lovely brightness of that orb, on which is reflected the light of the Sun; for, as the Canticle says of Mary, `she is beautiful as the moon.' (Cant. vi. 9.) The Pontiff was overcome with emotion at these gifts of the family of the seraphic patriarch, to which we might justly apply what was said of the banner of the Maid of Orleans: `It had stood the brunt of the battle; it deserved to share in the glory of the victory.' And thus ended the glories of that grand morning of the eighth of December, eighteen hundred and fifty-four.
It is thus, O thou the humblest of creatures, that thy Immaculate Conception has been glorified on earth! And how could it be other than a great joy to men, that thou art honoured by them, thou the aurora of the Sun of justice? Dost thou not bring them the tidings of their salvation? Art not thou, O Mary, that bright ray of hope, which suddenly bursts forth in the deep abyss of the world's misery? What should we have been without Jesus? And thou art His dearest Mother, the holiest of God's creatures, the purest of virgins, and our own most loving Mother!
How thy gentle light gladdens our wearied eyes, sweet Mother! Generation had followed generation on this earth of ours. Men looked up to heaven through their tears, hoping to see appear on the horizon the star which they had been told should disperse the gloomy horrors of the world's darkness; but death came, and they sank into the tomb, without seeing even the dawn of the light, for which alone they cared to live. It is for us that God had reserved the blessing of seeing thy lovely rising, O thou fair morning star! which sheddest thy blessed rays on the sea, and bringest calm after the long stormy night! Oh! prepare our eyes that they may behold the divine Sun which will soon follow in thy path, and give to the world His reign of light and day. Prepare our hearts, for it is to our hearts that this Jesus of thine wishes to show Himself. To see Him, our hearts must be pure: purify them, O thou Immaculate Mother! The divine wisdom has willed that of the feasts which the Church dedicates to thee, this of thy Immaculate Conception should be celebrated during Advent; that thus the children of the Church, reflecting on the jealous care wherewith God preserved thee from every stain of sin because thou wast to be the Mother of His divine Son, might prepare to receive this same Jesus by the most perfect renunciation of every sin and of every attachment to sin. This great change must be made; and thy prayers, O Mary! will help us to make it. Pray—we ask it of thee by the grace God gave thee in thy Immaculate Conception—that our covetousness may be destroyed, our concupiscence extinguished, and our pride turned into humility. Despise not our prayers, dear Mother of that Jesus who chose thee for His dwelling-place, that He might afterwards find one in each of us.
O Mary! Ark of the covenant, built of an incorruptible wood, and covered over with the purest gold! help us to correspond with those wonderful designs of our God, who, after having found His glory in thine incomparable purity, wills now to seek His glory in our unworthiness, by making us, from being slaves of the devil, His temples and His abode, where He may find His delight. Help us to this, O thou that by the mercy of thy Son hast never known sin! and receive this day our devoutest praise. Thou art the ark of salvation; the one creature unwrecked in the universal deluge; the white fleece filled with the dew of heaven, whilst the earth around is parched; the flame which the many waters could not quench; the lily blooming amidst thorns; the garden shut against the infernal serpent; the fountain sealed, whose limpid water was never ruffled; the house of the Lord, whereon His eyes were ever fixed, and into which nothing defiled could ever enter; the mystic city, of which such glorious things are said. (Ps. lxxxvi. 3.) We delight in telling all thy glorious titles, O Mary! for thou art our Mother, and we love thee, and the Mother's glory is the glory of her children. Cease not to bless and protect all those that honour thy immense privilege, O thou who wert conceived on this day! May this feast fit us for that mystery, for which thy Conception, thy Birth, and thy Annunciation, are all preparations—the Birth of thy Jesus in Bethlehem: yea, dear Mother, we desire thy Jesus, give Him to us and satisfy the longings of our love.
At length, on the distant horizon, rises, with a soft and radiant light, the aurora of the Sun which has been so long desired. The happy Mother of the Messias was to be born before the Messias Himself; and this is the day of the Conception of Mary. The earth already possesses a first pledge of the Divine mercy; the Son of Man is near at hand. Two true Israelites, Joachim and Anne, noble branches of the family of David, find their union, after a long barrenness, made fruitful by the Divine omnipotence. Glory be to God, Who has been mindful of His promises, and Who deigns to announce, from the high heavens, the end of the deluge of iniquity, by sending upon the earth the sweet white dove that bears the tidings of peace!
The feast of the Blessed Virgin's Immaculate Conception is the most solemn of all those which the Church celebrates during the holy time of Advent; and if the first part of the cycle had to offer us the commemoration of some one of the mysteries of Mary, there was none whose object could better harmonize with the spirit of the Church in this mystic season of expectation. Let us, then, celebrate this solemnity with joy; for the Conception of Mary tells us that the Birth of Jesus is not far oft.
The intention of the Church, in this feast, is not only to celebrate the anniversary of the happy moment in which began, in the womb of the pious Anne, the life of the ever-glorious Virgin Mary; but also to honor the sublime privilege, by which Mary was preserved from the original stain, which, by a sovereign and universal decree, is contracted by all the children of Adam the very moment they are conceived in their mother's womb.
The faith of the Catholic Church on the subject of the Conception of Mary is this: that at the very instant when God united the soul of Mary, which He had created, to the body which it was to animate, this ever-blessed soul did not only not contract the stain, which at that same instant defiles every human soul, but was filled with an immeasurable grace which rendered her, from that moment, the mirror of the sanctity of God Himself, as far as this is possible to a creature. The Church with her infallible authority, declared, by the lips of Pius IX, that this article of her faith had been revealed by God Himself. The Definition was received with enthusiasm by the whole of Christendom, and the eighth of December of the year 1854 was thus made one of the most memorable days of the Church's history.
It was due to His own infinite sanctity that God should suspend, in this instance, the law which His Divine justice had passed upon all the children of Adam. The relations which Mary was to bear to the Divinity, could not be reconciled with her undergoing the humiliation of this punishment. She was not only daughter of the eternal Father; she was destined also to become the very Mother of the Son, and the veritable bride of the Holy Ghost. Nothing defiled could be permitted to enter, even for an instant of time, into the creature that was thus predestined to contract such close relations with the adorable Trinity; not a speck could be permitted to tarnish in Mary that perfect purity which the infinitely holy God requires even in those who are one day to be admitted to enjoy the sight of His Divine majesty in Heaven; in a word, as the great Doctor St. Anselm says, "it was just that this holy Virgin should be adorned with the greatest purity which can be conceived after that of God Himself, since God the Father was to give to her, as her Child, that only-begotten Son, whom He loved as Himself, as being begotten to Him from His own bosom; and this in such a manner, that the selfsame Son of God was, by nature, the Son of both God the Father and this blessed Virgin. This same Son chose her to be substantially His Mother; and the Holy Ghost willed that in her womb He would operate the conception and birth of Him from whom He Himself proceeded."
Moreover, the close ties which were to unite the Son of God with Mary, and which would elicit from Him the tenderest love and the most filial reverence for her, had been present to the Divine thought from all eternity: and the conclusion forces itself upon us that therefore the Divine Word had for this His future Mother a love infinitely greater than that which He bore to all His other creatures. Mary's honor was infinitely dear to Him, because she was to be His Mother, chosen to be so by His eternal and merciful decrees. The Son's love protected the Mother. She, indeed, in her sublime humility, willingly submitted to whatever the rest of God's creatures had brought on themselves, and obeyed every tittle of those laws which were never meant for her: but that humiliating barrier, which confronts every child of Adam at the first moment of his existence, and keeps him from light and grace until he shall have been regenerated by a new birth—oh! this could not be permitted to stand in Mary's way, her Son forbade it.
The eternal Father would not do less for the second Eve than He had done for the first, who was created, as was also the first Adam, in the state of original justice, which she afterwards forfeited by Sin. The Son of God would not permit that the woman, from whom He was to take the nature of Man, should be deprived of that gift which He had given even to her who was the mother of sin. The Holy Ghost, who was to overshadow Mary and produce Jesus within her by His Divine operation, would not permit that foul stain, in which we alone are aIl conceived, to rest, even for an instant, on this His Bride. All men were to contract the sin of Adam; the sentence was universal; but God's Own Mother is not included. God who is the author of that law, God who was free to make it as He willed, had power to exclude from it her whom He had predestined to be His own in so many ways; He could exempt her, and it was just that He should exempt her; therefore, He did it.
Was it not this grand exemption which God Himself foretold, when the guilty pair, whose children we all are, appeared before Him in the garden of Eden. In the anathema which fell upon the serpent, there was included a promise of mercy to us. 'I will put enmities,' said the Lord, ' between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head.'
Thus was salvation promised the human race under the form of a victory over Satan; and this victory is to be gained by the Woman, and she will gain it for us also. Even granting, as some read this text, that it is the Son of the Woman that is alone to gain this victory, the enmity between the Woman and the serpent is clearly expressed, and she, the Woman, with her own foot, is to crush the head of the hated serpent. The second Eve is to be worthy of the second Adam, conquering and not to be conquered. The human race is one day to be avenged not only by God, made Man, but also by the Woman miraculously exempted from every stain of sin, in whom the primeval creation, which was in justice and holiness, will thus reappear, just as though the Original Sin had never been committed.
Raise up your heads, then, ye children of Adam, and shake off your chains! This day the humiliation which weighed you down is annihilated. Behold! Mary, who is of the same flesh and blood as yourselves, has seen the torrent of sin, which swept along all the generations of mankind, flow back at her presence and not touch her: the infernal dragon has turned away his head, not daring to breathe his venom upon her; the dignity of your origin is given to her in all its primitive grandeur. This happy day, then, on which the original purity of your race is renewed, must be a feast to you. The second Eve is created; and from her own blood [which, with the exception of the element of sin, is the same as that which makes you to be the children of Adam], she is shortly to give you the God-Man, who proceeds from her according to the flesh, as He proceeds from the Father according to the eternal generation.
And how can we do less than admire and love the incomparable purity of Mary in her Immaculate Conception, when we hear even God, Who thus prepared her to become His Mother, saying to her, in the Divine Canticle, these words of complacent love: 'Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!' It is the God of all holiness that here speaks; that eye, which sees all things, finds not a vestige, not a shadow of sin; therefore does He delight in her, and admire in her that gift of His own condescending munificence. We cannot be surprised after this, that Gabriel, when he came down from Heaven to announce the Incarnation to her, should be full of admiration at the sight of that purity, whose beginning was so glorious and whose progress was immeasurable; and that this blessed spirit should bow down profoundly before this young Maid of Nazareth, and salute her with 'Hail, O full of grace!' And who is this Gabriel? An Archangel, that lives amidst the grandest magnificences of God's creation, amidst all the gorgeous riches of Heaven; who is brother to the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the Thrones and Dominations; whose eye is accustomed to gaze on those nine angelic choirs with their dazzling brightness of countless degrees of light and grace; he has found on earth, in a creature of a nature below that of Angels, the fulness of grace, of that grace which had been given to the Angels measuredly. This fulness of grace was in Mary from the very first instant of her existence. She is the future Mother of God, and she was ever holy, ever pure, ever Immaculate.
This truth of Mary's Immaculate Conception—which was revealed to the Apostles by the Divine Son of Mary, inherited by the Church, taught by the holy fathers, believed by each generation of the Christian people with an ever increasing explicitness—was implied in the very notion of a Mother of God. To believe that Mary was Mother of God, was implicitly to believe that she, on whom this sublime dignity was conferred, had never been defiled with the slightest stain of sin, and that God had bestowed upon her an absolute exemption from sin. But now the Immaculate Conception of Mary rests on an explicit definition dictated by the Holy Ghost. Peter has spoken by the mouth of Pius; and when Peter has spoken, every Christian should believe; for the Son of God has said: 'I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not.' And again: 'The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.'
The Symbol of our faith has therefore received not a new truth, but a new light on a truth which was previously the object of the universal belief. On that great day of the definition, the infernal serpent was again crushed beneath the victorious foot of the Virgin-Mother, and the Lord graciously gave us the strongest pledge of His mercy. He still loves this guilty earth, since He has deigned to enlighten it with one of the brightest rays of His Mother's glory. How this earth of ours exulted! The present generation will never forget the enthusiasm with which the entire universe received the tidings of the definition. It was an event of mysterious importance which thus marked this second half of our century ; and we shall look forward to the future with renewed confidence; for if the Holy Ghost bids us tremble for the days when truths are diminished among the children of men, He would, consequently, have us look on those times as blessed by God in which we receive an increase of truth; an increase both in light and authority.
The Church, even before the solemn proclamation of the grand dogma, kept the feast of this eighth day of December; which was, in reality, a profession of her faith. It is true that the feast was not called the Immaculate Conception, but simply the Conception of Mary. But the fact of such a feast being instituted and kept, was an unmistakable expression of the faith of Christendom in that truth.
St. Bernard and the angelical doctor, St. Thomas, both teach that the Church cannot celebrate the feast of what is not holy; the Conception of Mary, therefore, was holy and immaculate, since the Church has, for ages past, honored it with a special feast. The Nativity of the same holy Virgin is kept as a solemnity in the Church, because Mary was born full of grace; therefore, had the first moment of Mary's existence been one of sin, as is that of all the other children of Adam, it never could have been made the subject of the reverence of the Church. Now, there are few feasts so generally and so firmly established in the Church as this which we are keeping today.
The Greek Church, which, more easily than the Latin, could learn what were the pious traditions of the east, kept this feast even in the sixth century, as is evident from the ceremonial or, as it is called, the Type, of St. Sabas. In the west, we find it established in the Gothic Church of Spain as far back as the eighth century. A celebrated calendar which was engraved on marble, in the ninth century, for the use of the Church of Naples, attests that it had already been introduced there. Paul the deacon, secretary to the emperor Charlemagne, and afterwards monk at Monte-Cassino, composed a celebrated hymn on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception; we will insert this piece later on, as it is given in the manuscript copies of Monte-Cassino and Benevento. In 1066, the feast was first established in England, in consequence of the pious Abbot Helsyn's (Some writers call him Elsym, and others Elpyn. See Baronius in his notes on the Roman Martyrology, Dec. 8. [Tr.]) being miraculously preserved from shipwreck; and shortly after that, was made general through the whole island by the zeal of the great St. Anselm, monk of the Order of St. Benedict, and archbishop of Canterbury. From England it passed into Normandy, and took root in France. We find it sanctioned in Germany, in a council held in 1049, at which St. Leo IX. was present; in Navarre, 1090, at the abbey of Irach; in Belgium, at Liege, in 1142. Thus did the Churches of the west testify their faith in this mystery, by accepting its feast, which is the expression of faith.
Lastly, it was adopted by Rome herself, and her doing so rendered the united testimony of her children, the other Churches, more imposing than ever. It was Pope Sixtus IV who, in the year 1476, published the decree of the feast of our Lady's Conception for the city of St. Peter. In the next century. 1568, St. Pius V published the universal edition of the Roman breviary, and in its calendar was inserted this feast as one of those Christian solemnities which the faithful are every year bound to observe. It was not from Rome that the devotion of the Catholic world to this mystery received its first impulse; she sanctioned it by her liturgical authority, just as she has confirmed it by her doctrinal authority in these our own days.
The three great Catholic nations of Europe, Germany, France, and Spain, vied with each other in their devotion to this mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception. France, by her king Louis XIV, obtained from Clement IX that this feast should be kept with an octave throughout the kingdom; which favour was afterwards extended to the universal Church by Innocent XII. For centuries previous to this, the theological faculty of Paris had always exacted from its professors the oath that they would defend this privilege of Mary; a pious practice which continued as long as the university itself.
As regards Germany, the emperor Ferdinand III, in 1647, ordered a splendid monument to be erected in the great square of Vienna. It is covered with emblems and figures symbolical of Mary's victory over sin, and on the top is the statue of the Immaculate Queen, with this solemn and truly Catholic inscription:
TO GOD, INFINITE IN GOODNESS AND POWER,
KING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,
BY WHOM KINGS REIGN;
TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOD
CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN,
BY WHOM PRINCES COMMAND,
WHOM AUSTRIA, DEVOUTLY LOVING, HOLDS AS HER QUEEN AND PATRON;
FERDINAND III, EMPEROR,
CONFIDES, GIVES, CONSECRATES HIMSELF, CHILDREN, PEOPLE, ARMIES, PROVINCES,
AND ALL THAT IS HIS,
AND ERECTS IN ACCOMPLISHMENT OF A VOW
THIS STATUE,
AS A PERPETUAL MEMORIAL. (D. O. M. supremo cœli terræquæ imperatori, per quem reges regnant; Virgini Deiparæ Immaeulatæ Conceptræ, per quam principes imperant, in peculiarem Dominam, Austriæ Patronam, singulari pietate susceptæ, se, liberos, populos, exercitus, provincias, omnia denique confidit, donat, consecrat, et in perpetuam rei memoriam statuam hanc ex voto ponit Ferdinandus III Augustus.)
But the zeal of Spain for the privilege of the holy Mother of God surpassed that of all other nations. In the year 1398, John I, king of Arragon, issued a chart in which he solemnly places his person and kingdom under the protection of Mary Immaculate. Later on, kings Philip III and Philip IV sent ambassadors to Rome, soliciting, in their names, the solemn definition, which heaven reserved, in its mercy, for our days. King Charles III, in the eighteenth century, obtained permission from Clement XIII, that the Immaculate Conception should be the patronal feast of Spain. The people of Spain, which is so justly called the Catholic kingdom, put over the door, or on the front of their houses, a tablet with the words of Mary's privilege written on it; and when they meet, they greet each other with an expression in honour of the same dear mystery. It was a Spanish nun, Mary of Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Agreda, who wrote God's Mystic City, which inspired Murillo with his Immaculate Conception, the masterpiece of the Spanish school.
But, whilst thus mentioning the different nations which have been foremost in their zeal for this article of our holy faith, the Immaculate Conception, it were unjust to pass over the immense share which the seraphic Order, the Order of St. Francis of Assisi, has had in the earthly triumph of our blessed Mother, the Queen of heaven and earth. As often as this feast comes round, is it not just that we should think with reverence and gratitude on him, who was the first theologian that showed how closely connected with the divine mystery of the Incarnation is this dogma of the Immaculate Conception? First, then, all honour to the name of the pious and learned John Duns Scotus! And when at length the great day of the definition of the Immaculate Conception came, how justly merited was that grand audience, which the Vicar of Christ granted to the Franciscan Order, and with which closed the pageant of the glorious solemnity! Plus IX received from the hands of the children of St. Francis a tribute of homage and thankfulness, which the Scotist school, after having fought four hundred years in defence of Mary's Immaculate Conception, now presented to the Pontiff.
In the presence of the fifty-four Cardinals, forty-two archbishops, and ninety-two bishops; before an immense concourse of people that filled St. Peter's, and had united in prayer, begging the assistance of the Spirit of truth; the Vicar of Christ had just pronounced the decision which so many ages had hoped to hear. The Pontiff had offered the holy Sacrifice on the Confession of St. Peter. He had crowned the statue of the Immaculate Queen with a splendid diadem. Carried on his lofty throne, and wearing his triple crown, he had reached the portico of the basilica; there he is met by the two representatives of St. Francis: they prostrate before the throne: the triumphal procession halts: and first, the General of the Friars Minor Observantines advances, and presents to the holy Father a branch of silver lilies: he is followed by the General of the Conventual Friars, holding in his hand a branch of silver roses. The Pope graciously accepted both. The lilies and the roses were symbolical of Mary's purity and love; the whiteness of the silver was the emblem of the lovely brightness of that orb, on which is reflected the light of the Sun; for, as the Canticle says of Mary, `she is beautiful as the moon.' (Cant. vi. 9.) The Pontiff was overcome with emotion at these gifts of the family of the seraphic patriarch, to which we might justly apply what was said of the banner of the Maid of Orleans: `It had stood the brunt of the battle; it deserved to share in the glory of the victory.' And thus ended the glories of that grand morning of the eighth of December, eighteen hundred and fifty-four.
It is thus, O thou the humblest of creatures, that thy Immaculate Conception has been glorified on earth! And how could it be other than a great joy to men, that thou art honoured by them, thou the aurora of the Sun of justice? Dost thou not bring them the tidings of their salvation? Art not thou, O Mary, that bright ray of hope, which suddenly bursts forth in the deep abyss of the world's misery? What should we have been without Jesus? And thou art His dearest Mother, the holiest of God's creatures, the purest of virgins, and our own most loving Mother!
How thy gentle light gladdens our wearied eyes, sweet Mother! Generation had followed generation on this earth of ours. Men looked up to heaven through their tears, hoping to see appear on the horizon the star which they had been told should disperse the gloomy horrors of the world's darkness; but death came, and they sank into the tomb, without seeing even the dawn of the light, for which alone they cared to live. It is for us that God had reserved the blessing of seeing thy lovely rising, O thou fair morning star! which sheddest thy blessed rays on the sea, and bringest calm after the long stormy night! Oh! prepare our eyes that they may behold the divine Sun which will soon follow in thy path, and give to the world His reign of light and day. Prepare our hearts, for it is to our hearts that this Jesus of thine wishes to show Himself. To see Him, our hearts must be pure: purify them, O thou Immaculate Mother! The divine wisdom has willed that of the feasts which the Church dedicates to thee, this of thy Immaculate Conception should be celebrated during Advent; that thus the children of the Church, reflecting on the jealous care wherewith God preserved thee from every stain of sin because thou wast to be the Mother of His divine Son, might prepare to receive this same Jesus by the most perfect renunciation of every sin and of every attachment to sin. This great change must be made; and thy prayers, O Mary! will help us to make it. Pray—we ask it of thee by the grace God gave thee in thy Immaculate Conception—that our covetousness may be destroyed, our concupiscence extinguished, and our pride turned into humility. Despise not our prayers, dear Mother of that Jesus who chose thee for His dwelling-place, that He might afterwards find one in each of us.
O Mary! Ark of the covenant, built of an incorruptible wood, and covered over with the purest gold! help us to correspond with those wonderful designs of our God, who, after having found His glory in thine incomparable purity, wills now to seek His glory in our unworthiness, by making us, from being slaves of the devil, His temples and His abode, where He may find His delight. Help us to this, O thou that by the mercy of thy Son hast never known sin! and receive this day our devoutest praise. Thou art the ark of salvation; the one creature unwrecked in the universal deluge; the white fleece filled with the dew of heaven, whilst the earth around is parched; the flame which the many waters could not quench; the lily blooming amidst thorns; the garden shut against the infernal serpent; the fountain sealed, whose limpid water was never ruffled; the house of the Lord, whereon His eyes were ever fixed, and into which nothing defiled could ever enter; the mystic city, of which such glorious things are said. (Ps. lxxxvi. 3.) We delight in telling all thy glorious titles, O Mary! for thou art our Mother, and we love thee, and the Mother's glory is the glory of her children. Cease not to bless and protect all those that honour thy immense privilege, O thou who wert conceived on this day! May this feast fit us for that mystery, for which thy Conception, thy Birth, and thy Annunciation, are all preparations—the Birth of thy Jesus in Bethlehem: yea, dear Mother, we desire thy Jesus, give Him to us and satisfy the longings of our love.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)