Barry Hudock's Blog, page 23

Francis unmasked

More evidence of the foolishness and unorthodoxy of Pope Francis comes to light on the blogosphere! Another one of them has made himself known, thus unmasking Francis. One of what? One of those people, one of “all the wrong people” whom Pope Francis (secularist dupe that he is) makes “happy”! I’m here referring, of course, to the suggestion made recently by a priest in a letter to Archbishop Chaput that “the problem [with Pope Francis] is that he makes all of the wrong people happy, people who will never believe in the Gospel and who will continue to persecute the Church.” (I reflected a bit on this wise and lovely sentiment here.)

One of these wrong people wrote yesterday to Andrew Sullivan (of course! because Sullivan’s another one of ‘em!!) about the moving pictures taken at yesterday’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square of Pope Francis going to a man bearing what most of us would regard as gruesome facial deformities, embracing him, and praying with him. Seeing these pictures, some hellbound soul wrote to Sullivan:

This is the first time I’ve ever been compelled to write you about a non-political issue, but your link to the article about Pope Francis embracing a horribly disfigured man really hit me.

I’m a complete and thorough atheist. I was raised religious, but went away from it very consciously and actively as I rejected the entire logical foundation of religion. I am still as confident in my atheism as I’ve ever been. I preface my thoughts this way merely to put into context the unalloyed awe and admiration I have at the actions this Pope has taken. Acts of profound and sincere compassion are all too rare in this world, and whether those acts come from an atheist or a pope, they are to be treasured and cherish….

In 6 months, Pope Francis has lifted the image of his faith far above anything I’d thought possible in my 28 years of life. May he continue to do so.

Evil, clearly, is afoot. (I am sure the aforementioned priest who wrote to Chaput noted, when he read this, that this atheist is “still as confident in my atheism as I’ve ever been” and shrewdly concluded that Francis clearly is to blame for this.)

Come to think of it, I wonder if Pope Francis stopped to ask the gentleman in the Square whether or not he bears any resentment toward God for his problems? Or maybe the guy was wearing an “I hate God for what he did to me” banner. Probably so, because that’s just the type that damnable Francis seems to appeal to.

Bishops conference calls for employers to pay a living wage

From the Catholic bishops of England and Wales:

To coincide with Living Wage Week, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales together with three of its leading Catholic Agencies: the Catholic Education Service, CSAN (Caritas Social Action Network) and CAFOD, have reiterated the Church’s teaching on just wages and its support for the Living Wage and its importance for the support of workers’ families.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Catholic Education Service have produced a Living Wage Resource encouraging Catholic organisations, schools and charities in England and Wales to work towards its implementation.

Read the rest here.

Now the family moves even closer to the center of Pope Francis’s pastoral concerns

It was just a few days ago, during the conversation I had with Sean Herriott on his Morning Air with Sean Herriott radio show, that I was talking about the prominent place that the family has taken in the still-young pontificate of Pope Francis. I pointed out to Sean that the Vatican has recently announced the Pope’s call for an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops (the first such gathering since Pope John Paul II called for one in 1985) on the topic of “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of the Evangelization.” It will meet at the Vatican in October of 2014.

Following upon that announcement came the Pope’s fascinating meeting with families in St. Peter’s Square, held to help mark the close of the Year of Faith. Though its most memorable moment was clearly the Pope’s wonderful interaction with the young boy who refused to leave his side, it was also notable as a clear expression of the prominent place the family has on Francis’s pastoral radar.

Now comes a dramatic development. Yesterday the Vatican released the Synod’s Preparatory Document. What is, to me, the most fascinating part came at the very beginning, in a sentence that explained the Synod plans the Pope has in mind:

[T]he Holy Father has decided to call for a Synod of Bishops, which is to have a two-staged itinerary: firstly, an Extraordinary General Assembly in 2014, intended to define the “status quaestionis” and to collect the bishops’ experiences and proposals in proclaiming and living the Gospel of the Family in a credible manner; and secondly, an Ordinary General Assembly in 2015 to seek working guidelines in the pastoral care of the person and the family.

In short: not one, but two synods, in two years, on the topic of the family! (Looking a step farther ahead, by the way, this suggests that a major papal document on the family is highly likely to result from all this, not to mention perhaps other significant initiatives or developments in the Pope’s ministry or Vatican policy regarding the church’s pastoral care of married couples and families.)

And don’t forget this part: All of this leads up to the World Meeting of Families (WMF), to be held in September 2015 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (scheduled before Pope Benedict’s resignation). The WMF is a triennial event, founded by Pope John Paul II very much along the lines of a World Youth Day, but for families instead of young people. The reigning pope has attended every other event of this kind in the past, wherever on the globe it has been held. (Most recently it was Pope Benedict in Milan, Italy, in 2012.)

To my knowledge, the Vatican has not yet confirmed that Pope Francis will attend the 2015 WMF. But given the central place the Pope obviously intends to give to family life in his ministry, I would, frankly, be very surprised if he declined the opportunity to be there. And that means that we’ll likely see the first visit of Pope Francis to the United States in less than two years’ time, in September 2015. And it will give him an opportunity to address a topic that is very much on his mind. Should be very interesting.

Exciting feedback on the Grillo translation!

Having translated Andrea Grillo’s Beyond Pius V: Conflicting Interpretations of the Liturgical Reform from the Italian, I am excited about its upcoming December publication. That’s still a month away, but the positive comments from several scholars who got an early look at its contents have begun coming in. (Click on “Editorial Reviews” at the link above to see them all.) Each of these comments is exciting to see, since it’s a great book and I’m honored to have a hand in bringing it to English-language readers. But I am especially gratified to see this line included in the blurb provided by Patrick Regan, OSB:

Barry Hudock deserves commendation for introducing one of Italy’s most prolific and highly respected theologians to the English-speaking world in such a clear and readable translation.

Fr. Patrick is Professor Emeritus of the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm in Rome and a fine scholar of liturgical history and liturgical theology. This comment of his is the first outside feedback I’ve had on the work I did translating Beyond Pius V, so his positive assessment is a hell of a thrill.

The U.S Catholic Bookclub November selection!

I am happy to say that Faith Meets World is the featured pick for November for the U.S. Catholic Book Club! I am honored and excited to learn about it.

Elizabeth Lefebvre, assistant editor at U.S. Catholic, writes this about the book:

We live in a world filled with tough moral questions. In Faith Meets World, author Barry Hudock presents the church’s moral teaching as a guideline for navigating some of these complexities. With human dignity and solidarity as the founding principles of Catholic social teaching, we learn how to serve the common good by living out the heart of the gospel message of love.

Using a blend of secular and Catholic history, Hudock demonstrates how the church has both initiated and responded to changes in society over the past few centuries. And while the book’s clear, everyday examples shed light on what is often called the church’s “best kept secret,” Faith Meets World still leaves room for readers to explore both the beauty and the challenges inherent in Catholic social teaching.

The announcement is here. I believe there are some study questions to come soon on that page. My appreciation and thanks to the good folks at U.S. Catholic and also at Liguori Publications!

Wow! Now this would be a wonderful surprise

At Mass near John Paul’s tomb, pope focuses on experiencing God’s

love

By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Surprising pilgrims at Blessed John Paul II’s tomb, Pope Francis made an early morning visit to St. Peter’s Basilica and celebrated Mass with the mostly Polish pilgrims.

More than 100 priests and pilgrims were gathered Oct. 31 at the basilica’s Chapel of St. Sebastian for a morning Mass near Blessed John Paul’s tomb. Pope Francis arrived unannounced to preside at the liturgy and prayed for the late pope’s intercession to help today’s Christians be strong, not weak in their faith.

The rest, published today, here.

On “Morning Air” this morning

I was on Morning Air with Sean Herriott again this morning. This was our third chat, and I enjoyed it once again. We talked saints and social justice, Cardinal Maradiaga, and Pope Francis. Audio is archived here. Go to October 31 on the calendar and click on Hour 3. I’m at 38:30 on the timer, and it goes about 13 minutes.

On “Morning Air” this morning! (UPDATED)

I’ll be on Morning Air with Sean Herriott again this morning at 8:40. This will be our third chat, and the first two have been a lot of fun. Sean is a great conversation partner. You can stream it here.

UPDATE: A good chat! We talked saints and social justice, Cardinal Maradiaga, and Pope Francis. Audio is archived here. Go to October 31 on the calendar and click on Hour 3. I’m at 38:30 on the timer, and it goes about 13 minutes.

On “Morning Air” this morning!

I’ll be on Morning Air with Sean Herriott again this morning at 8:40. This will be our third chat, and the first two have been a lot of fun. Sean is a great conversation partner. You can stream it here.

Maradiaga on the state of the church

This past weekend, I attended the annual University of Dallas Ministry Conference. I was there because Liturgical Press, for which I work, was an exhibitor, offering our wares at a booth in the exhibition hall. One thing that made me glad to be present was the chance to sit in on the keynote address that was offered by Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga. The announced title of his talk was “The State of the Church: The Importance of the New Evangelization.”

Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga is the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras. He is also the coordinator of the group of eight cardinals appointed by Pope Francis to advise him on the reform of the Roman Curia. (That’s them in the photo, gathered for the first time with the Pope. Maradiaga is directly to the Pope’s right.) Given that latter role, what he has to say on the state of the church is well worth paying attention to.

And the Cardinal did not disappoint. He offered a thoroughly engaging talk, delivered with gusto, even though English is not his first language. What he had to say was also somewhat surprising at times. I think it’s fair to say that several of his main points were ideas that we have not heard proclaimed very loudly in the church in recent decades.

I offer here just a few snippets, which I transcribed from a recording I purchased at the conference. (I actually was not able to sit in on the event in person, as the room was filled to capacity and doors were closed before I arrived.) I emphasize that there is much more from the Cardinal’s talk that’s well worth quoting, but I don’t have permission to reprint the whole thing, so I look forward with hope to the publication of the full talk.

Within the people [of the church] there is not a dual classification of Christians — laity and clergy, essentially different. No! The church as a society of unequals disappears. There is therefore in Christ and in the church no inequality. No ministry can be placed above this dignity common to all. Neither the clergy are the men of God nor are the laity the men of the world. That is a false dichotomy. To speak correctly, we should not speak of clergy and laity, but instead of community and ministry. All the baptized are consecrated as a spiritual house and as a holy priesthood, as we read in Lumen Gentium 10. Therefore, not only we clergymen are priests, but also side by side with the ordained ministry, there is the common priesthood of the faithful. This change in the concept of priesthood is a fundamental one. In Christ, the priesthood is changed, as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews. Indeed, the first trait of the priesthood of Jesus is that he had to be made like his brothers in every respect. The original priesthood of Jesus is the one that has to be continued in history, and it is the basis of understanding the presbyterium and of course the common priesthood. Thus, the whole church, the people of God, continues the priesthood of Jesus without losing their lay character.

***

The calling of the Church in the likeness of Jesus is to proclaim the kingdom of God…. Her calling is to serve, not to rule…. She must do this service living in the world, herself a part of the world and in solidarity with it, because the world is the only subject that interests God. And there the church, in humble company, helps make life intelligible and dignified, making it a community of equals without castes or classes, without rich or poor, without imposition or anathemas. Her foremost goal is to care for the penultimate — hunger, housing, clothing, [shoes?], health, education – to be then able to care for the ultimate, those problems that rob us of sleep after work, our finiteness, our solitude before death, the meaning of life, pain, and evil. The answer the church gives to the penultimate will entitle her to speak about the ultimate.

***

The globalization of the exchange of services, capital, and patents has led over the past ten years to establish a world dictatorship of financial capital. The small transcontinental oligarchies that hold the financial capital that dominates the planet. The lords of the financial world, of financial capital, wield over billions of human beings the power of life and death. Through their investment strategies, their market speculations, their alliances, they decide day to day who has the right to live on this planet and who is doomed to die. The effects and consequences of the neo-liberal dictatorship that rule democacries are not hard to uncover. They invade us with the industry of entertainment, they make us forget about human rights, they convince us that nothing can be done, that there is no possible alternative. To change the system, it would be necessary to destroy the power of the new feudal lords. You mean that this is [chimerical?], utopia? The church decidely bets on living the globalization of mercy and solidarity. How can the church aim to counteract the deleterious effect of the preponderance of economism and its fundamental postulates? Return to the church of the poor!

***

To go into the new evangelization, we need, all of us, a heart test, because many times we are ill. We are ill of cardiac insufficiency. One day, Saint Paul didn’t feel well and went to the cardiologist. And when the cardiologist was listening to the heart of Saint Paul, do you know what he heard?  He was not listening like, “Boom boom, boom boom, boom boom.” No. The heart of Saint Paul beat like this: ”Woe on me if I don’t preach the Gospel. Woe on me if I don’t preach the Gospel! Woe on me if I don’t preach the Gospel!” You mean that that’s the way our hearts are beating now? Do we have that heart? That is why I have said, each of us are ill of cardiac unsufficiency, missionary insufficiency. What happens to a person who has cardiac insufficiency? He gets a very small device, a little one, a pacemaker, and after that the heart is powerful again. We have to ask the Holy Spirit to give us a spiritual pacemaker, that our hearts will beat like Saint Paul’s and go forth to evangelize! “Woe on me if I don’t preach the Gospel!”

On that last passage, you should hear the tone in the Cardinal’s voice as he repeats that line, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” Full of passion and intensity — there’s is no question the idea beats strong in his own heart.

UPDATE: Rocco Palmo has the full text of the Cardinal’s Dallas address.

I did notice a few differences, sometimes significant, between the prepared text and what the Cardinal actually said, though. The final passage I quote above, for example, about Saint Paul’s visit to the cardiologist, is not present at all the version Rocco received.