Really:
Relics played an important role in medieval Christianity. The physical remains of saints and holy figures were considered an essential part of the faith, offering a powerful connection with Heaven.....
The most important relics were those associated with Jesus Christ – such as the True Cross where he died upon, or the mother’s milk of Mary. However, since Jesus was said to ascend to Heaven with his body, there could not be any of his own bodily remains left – except, perhaps, those that he left behind before he was killed, such as his blood or his finger nails.
All this brings us to the story of Jesus’ circumcision, which the Roman Catholic Church celebrated eight days after his birth on January 1st. Following the Jewish rite, Jesus was circumcised, which leaves the question of what became of his foreskin.
Very few articles have been written on the topic of the Holy Foreskin, partly because in the year 1900 the Roman Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate anyone who did so. However, Robert Palazzo bravely did his research and his article “The Veneration of the Sacred Foreskin(s) of Baby Jesus: A Documentary Analysis,” offers some interesting details about this relic. He notes that apocryphal gospels, such as the The First Gospel of Baby Jesus, which was written sometime before the 6th century, described how the foreskin was kept and passed down from generation to generation.
By the eleventh century, several churches in Europe explained they had the Holy Foreskin – the story often went something like this – Jesus’ mother Mary kept the foreskin, along with the umbilical cord, and later gave it to Mary Magdalene. We then jump forward several centuries to the time of Charlemagne, when an angel gave the relic to the Emperor. From there it went to this place or that place, including to Rome. In 1421, it was even sent to Cathernine of Valois in England, so that it would bring good fortune (and a pregnancy) to her marriage with Henry V.
Palazzo has been able to find at least 31 churches in Europe that claimed to have the Holy Foreskin sometime during the Middle Ages, including ones in Paris, Antwerp, Bologna, Compostela and Toulouse.
Meanwhile, one can also read a lot of theological commentary about whether or not the Holy Foreskin could be real, much of it negative.
Now that's a new one on me. I knew that in the old days that New Year's Day was the feast of the Circumcision prior to it being changed to the feast of Mary, the Mother of God, but I'd never heard about the Holy Foreskin.
60 Minutes featured two stories last night. One was a pro-NSA
propaganda piece, and the other was about the Coptic Christians of Egypt, who elect a pope by whittling the field down to three candidates, then having a boy select one of three balls with a candidate's name in it to determine the pope:
It
looks like the Pope and I agree on a few things:
Pope Francis is once again shaking things up in the Catholic Church. On Tuesday, he issued his first “apostolic exhortation,” declaring a new enemy for the Catholic Church: modern capitalism. “Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” he wrote. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”
He couldn't be much clearer. The pope has taken a firm political stance against right-leaning, pro-free market economic policies, and his condemnation appears to be largely pointed at Europe and the United States. His explicit reference to “trickle-down” economic policies—the hallmark of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and their political successors—is just the beginning: Throughout 224 pages on the future of the Church, he condemns income inequality, “the culture of prosperity,” and “a financial system which rules rather than serves.”
Taken in the context of the last half-century of Roman Catholicism, this is a radical move. Fifty years ago, around the time of the Second Vatican Council, Church leaders quietly declared a very different economic enemy: communism. But Pope Francis’s communitarian, populist message shows just how far the Church has shifted in five decades—and how thoroughly capitalism has displaced communism as a monolithic political philosophy.
This will burn up the conservatives. But shit, who can claim that "trickle down economics" works? We've got over thirty years of it not working, and we keep being told that it will work with one more tax cut. Bullshit. Taxes should go up on the very high end of the income range. You don't have to be the Vicar of Christ to figure that shit out, but I'm glad he's out there pointing out the shortcomings of our supposedly capitalist economy.
The
tale of St. Thomas More's beard:
His beard is shrouded in mystery. What he did with it is simply amazing.
Henry VIII condemned St. Thomas More to death after he refused to deny papal supremacy. More had been confined in the Tower of London for over a year (hence the beard, and why it’s not pictured). As the executioner lifted his axe, More asked him to wait. The blindfolded saint-to-be carefully laid his beard on the outside of the block, out of the executioner’s path. "This hath not offended the king," he quipped, thus protecting his beard from the blade.
Then the axe fell.
You read that correctly. His last words before beholding the Beatific Vision were a beard joke. While that might not fit the modern notion of a saint, it completely matches his personality. One biographer wrote, “"that innocent mirth which had been so conspicuous in his life, did not forsake him to the last . . .his death was of a piece with his life.”
Please remember this the next time someone tries to say holiness and humor do not mix.
And then spend some time contemplating St. Thomas More's glorified heavenly beard.
While there is some humor to be had there, I prefer the story of the martyrdom of
St. Lawrence for saintly humor:
A well-known legend has persisted from earliest times. As deacon in Rome, Lawrence was charged with the responsibility for the material goods of the Church, and the distribution of alms to the poor. St. Ambrose of Milan relates that when St. Lawrence was asked for the treasures of the Church he brought forward the poor, among whom he had divided the treasure as alms. "Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the church’s crown." The prefect was so angry that he had a great gridiron prepared, with coals beneath it, and had Lawrence’s body placed on it (hence St. Lawrence's association with the gridiron). After the martyr had suffered the pain for a long time, the legend concludes, he made his famous cheerful remark, “I'm well done. Turn me over!” From this derives his patronage of cooks and chefs.
He is sometimes considered a patron saint of comedians, although being the patron saint of cooks and chefs is darkly humorous, too.
NYT:
When Pope Francis was elected in March, Bridget Kurt received a small prayer card with his picture at her church and put it up on her refrigerator at home, next to pictures of her friends and her favorite saints.
She is a regular attender of Mass, a longtime stalwart in her church’s anti-abortion movement and a believer that all the church’s doctrines are true and beautiful and should be obeyed. She loved the last two popes, and keeps a scrapbook with memorabilia from her road trip to Denver in 1993 to see Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day.
But Ms. Kurt recently took the Pope Francis prayer card down and threw it away.
“It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?” said Ms. Kurt, a hospice community educator. “Even when it was discouraging working in pro-life, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.”
In the eight months since he became pope, Francis has won affection worldwide for his humble mien and common touch. His approval numbers are skyrocketing. Even atheists are applauding.
But not everyone is so enchanted. Some Catholics in the church’s conservative wing in the United States say Francis has left them feeling abandoned and deeply unsettled.
The Pope's too liberal for conservatives after years of saying that if you disagreed with the Pope you weren't really a Catholic? Hee hee. I wonder how many of those folks are praying that we'll get a new Pope soon.
The Vatican cricket team is
working on ecumenalism:
Some 500 years after England's King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican is vowing to defeat the Church of England — not in the pews, but on the cricket pitch.
The Vatican has launched its own cricket club — a move aimed at forging ties with teams of other faiths.
Rome's Capannelle Cricket Club is hosting training matches that will lead to the creation of the Vatican team, the St. Peter's Cricket Club.
The Catholic Church has long championed sports as good for mind, body and soul. And one of the players, Sri Lankan seminarian Antony Fernando, says sports are particularly important for those aspiring to the priesthood.
"Learn a lot of things in sports, to accept both victory and defeat, in life of priesthood we need to accept things, because in the future as a priest we know that things are not going that easy," he says.
The Vatican already has its Clericus Cup soccer tournament, which pitches the Swiss Guards against seminarians. Now, its cricket team will sport the official colors of the tiny city-state, yellow and white, and players' jackets will have the seal of the papacy, two crossed keys.
The image some people have of cricket is that of the well-to-do in white playing on country estates. But sponsors of the Vatican initiative say that image is very dated. Today, cricket is one of the world's most popular sports, with a mass following in Asia and Oceania.
I know nothing about cricket, but this still entertains me.
St. Fidelis Church, Victoria, Kansas.
Wichita Eagle:
The rose window is one of the stained-glass windows of St. Fidelis Catholic Church that has beenundergoing restoration since August. (Travis Heying/Wichita Eagle)
St. Fidelis Catholic Church in Victoria is one of the most iconic buildings in Kansas, with twin towers soaring 140 feet above the plains and featuring exquisite stained-glass windows.
Most people know it as the Cathedral of the Plains, a nickname bestowed by former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan after he visited the town in 1912, shortly after the church was dedicated.
Now the church, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, is getting a new look.
The church has undertaken a $155,000 project to protect its 48 historic stained-glass windows. Installed in 1916 by Munich Studios in Chicago at a cost of $3,700, the windows are now valued at more than $1 million.
Members of the rural church, which serves 480 families, are paying for the project through donations and fundraising projects.
A little history of the church:
Built by Volga Germans who settled the area in the late 19th century, St. Fidelis was actually their fourth church. The parishioners kept quickly outgrowing each previous church.
Fashioned in the Romanesque style, the current church was built to last by the parishioners themselves using local hand-quarried stone. They used block-and-tackle and wood scaffoldings to hoist and place the stone.
“I think when people come here, they are most impressed by those Volga German farmers who could mostly with their own labor and with no machinery of any kind – with just themselves and horses – could construct an edifice of this nature without very much help,” Windholz said.
“When you look at how high those towers go, you have to ask, ‘Who would dare to go up there and lay stone?’ ”
According to the church history, each member of the church who was 12 or older was asked to give $45 a year and six wagonloads of stone to help construct the building. Some families brought as many as 70 to 80 wagonloads of stone.
When it was dedicated in 1911, it was considered the largest church west of the Mississippi River.
More on the Volga Germans
here. As the article points out, it is amazing how much the immigrant communities sunk into their churches, when they were struggling to get by as it was. I've stopped by the
Basilica of St. Francis Xavier in Dyersville, Iowa, and have toured many of the churches in West Central Ohio, and went to numerous masses at the
Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, and each of these places is amazing, especially considering when they were constructed. That they were built by immigrants on the margins of their society is all the more impressive.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/11/02/3093400/kansas-cathedral-of-the-plains.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/11/02/3093400/kansas-cathedral-of-the-plains.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/11/02/3093400/kansas-cathedral-of-the-plains.html#storylink=cpy
Pope Francis is really
getting people talking:
Pope Francis has warned that the Catholic Church's moral structure might "fall like a house of cards" if it doesn't balance its divisive rules about abortion, gays and contraception with the greater need to make it a merciful, more welcoming place for all.
Six months into his papacy, Francis set out his vision for the church and his priorities as pope in a lengthy and remarkably blunt interview with La Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit magazine. It was published simultaneously Thursday in Jesuit journals in 16 countries, including America magazine in the U.S.
John Allen, a senior correspondent with the National Catholic Reporter, told CBS Radio News the pope is not changing church policy but makes it clear that he wants a less judgmental church.
"I think he is conscious that he's at a sort of make-or-break moment where the kind of pope he wants to be - if he wants to affect real change - he's got to be explicit about it," Allen said.
In the 12,000-word article, Francis expands on his ground-breaking comments over the summer about gays and acknowledges some of his own faults. He sheds light on his favorite composers, artists, authors and films (Mozart, Caravaggio, Dostoevsky and Fellini's "La Strada") and says he prays even while at the dentist's office.
But his vision of what the church should be stands out, primarily because it contrasts so sharply with many of the priorities of his immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. They were both intellectuals for whom doctrine was paramount, an orientation that guided the selection of a generation of bishops and cardinals around the globe.
Francis said the dogmatic and the moral teachings of the church were not all equivalent.
"The church's pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently," Francis said. "We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel."
I really didn't anticipate the Pope saying that the Church harps on gays, abortion and birth control too much. I'm not going to argue with him, I'm just really, really surprised. I haven't been hanging out with any Shiite Catholics lately, but it'd be interesting to hear what they have to say about all this stuff. I'm sure they would point out that the Pope hasn't really changed any teachings, but I would imagine they are kind of taken aback by this Pope's willingness to challenge the conservative direction of the Church over the past 35 years.
NPR:
The Vatican's new secretary of state made some comments in an interview with a Venezuelan newspaper earlier this week that have surprised many.
Archbishop Pietro Parolin, whom Pope Francis appointed on Aug. 31, said the issue of priest celibacy is open to discussion.
"It is not a church dogma and it can be discussed because it is a church tradition," , adding that changing a tradition does take a lot of thought.
"We cannot simply say that it is part of the past," he said. "It is a great challenge for the pope, because he is the one with the ministry of unity and all of those decisions must be made thinking about the unity of the church and not about its division. Therefore we can talk, reflect on these subjects that are not definite, and we can think about some modifications, but always with the consideration of unity, and all according to the will of God. It is not about what I would like but what God wants for His church."
Even though nothing will probably come of that, it sounds more moderate than the last couple popes have been. Even a basic statement like that has to get the conservative side of the hierarchy a bit flustered.
Last night, I led my first, and last, Church League softball post-game prayer. Traditionally, our team, as the only Catholic team in the league, defers to the other team for the post-game prayer. The main reason for that is that most of the other teams have the Pastor, or a youth pastor or some elder on the team, whereas our priest and deacons do not play on the team (and most of the players on our team either aren't very religious or aren't even Catholic). Plus, Catholics aren't well known for improvising prayers. We're much better with the rote, memorized prayers. But our reticence to pray has recently been altered.
A couple of games ago, our coach decided to lead the post-game prayer. As best as I can remember, here's his prayer:
Lord, our judge, thank you for the gift of softball....and the camaraderie and for bringing us together this evening, Amen.
We hadn't walked 20 feet away from the prayer circle when one of my teammates started heckling him with, "Lord, our judge, thank you for the gift of softball? What was that?" Since then, we've been giving him a ton of crap about it. Last week, we were having a cookout after the game, and we had a bunch of emails flying around giving each other shit. I jumped in with a message saying the coach was working on our pre-meal prayer for the cookout:
Lord, our judge, thank you for the gifts of softball, ground beef and processed pig snouts and anuses....
That got a few laughs. Then, at the end of that game, coach put his brother-in-law in charge of the prayer. He did a passable job, but the other team commented about it being short and sweet, like a prayer before a big meal. This week, however, was my turn, especially after I struck out swinging (with the excuse that I'd badly sprained my ankle the inning before).
I had already planned out two lines of the prayer. Since it had been hotter than Hell this week, I started out, "Lord, thank you for this cool evening for us to come out and enjoy, and thank you for the heat this afternoon, to remind us of where we want to be for eternity....and thank you for the opportunity to come together and for the chance to be together on Sunday....Amen."
When I gave the line about eternity, one of my teammates started laughing. Afterwards, the appropriateness of delivering one-liners in prayers was discussed, along with the fact that some of my teammates took that line to mean that I wanted to go to Hell, as opposed to the idea that the oppressive heat was a reminder to try to get to Heaven and avoid the fires of Hell. it was also determined that I would no longer be charged with leading post-game prayers.
