Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 149

The Idea of a Catholic Society

The Idea of a Catholic Society | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

What would it mean for society and its institutions, including government, to become Catholic?

At the close of the Second Vatican
Council, Paul
VI noted that the Council had displayed an unparalleled desire “to know, to
draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in
which she lives.” That desire reflected a constant goal of the Church, to make
her message effective by bringing it to men where they are. Modern man had
become centered on himself, so perhaps the Church could reach him, and start
the process that would eventually bring him to God, by joining in the concerns
and movements of the day. 

It’s been a bumpy ride, and some
have suggested course corrections. The journey is not over, though, and to
the extent the Church does reach and persuade people, they will become closer
to her. As men are, so are their institutions, so ultimate success of the
Second Vatican Council would mean that society and its institutions become
Catholic. That should be no surprise, since the Council reaffirmed “traditional
Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true
religion and toward the one Church of Christ.”

But what would it mean for society and
its institutions, including government, to become Catholic? The idea seems
silly and wrong to many people. However things may have seemed fifty or a
hundred years ago, it now seems ridiculous to speak of such a thing. Here in
the West we’re losing whatever public influence we once had, and if we manage
to stay legal while retaining our doctrines and something of our way of life
we’ll be doing well for ourselves.

Beyond such immediate practicalities,
many people have raised basic objections to the idea of a Catholic society. All
societies are unjust, they say, so no society can be Christian. If a society claims
to be Christian, then Christianity and power become entangled and Christianity
becomes corrupted. Also, not everyone is Catholic, and that situation won’t
change, so a Catholic public order would unjustly force a particular religion
on those who disagree with it. And past societies that have called themselves
Catholic have put most of their efforts into other and less lofty goals. So the
idea is impractical, tyrannical, and hypocritical by its very nature. The
Constantinian idea of a Catholic empire was a bad one, and good riddance to it.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Know Him in the Breaking of Bread

Know Him in the Breaking of Bread | Fr. Francis Randolph
| From Know Him in the Breaking of Bread: A Guide To The Mass




The First Mass



In the evening of the first day of the week, two disciples were walking from
Jerusalem to Emmaus. And one came up beside them and began to explain the Scriptures
that told of Jesus the Christ, how he was destined to suffer and rise again.
And as he spoke, the hearts of the disciples burned within them; they were stirred


and enlightened by the new explanation of scriptural words they had heard so
many times before. But it was not until they sat together, and he took bread
and broke it, that they recognized that the person actually present with them
was the same Jesus about whom they had been speaking (Lk 24:13-35).



From that day till this, Christians have met to hear the Scriptures explained
and to know Jesus in the breaking of bread. These three elements are the essence
of the Mass: Christians come together and discern the spirit of Jesus in each
other. They listen to the Word of God, and their hearts burn within them as
they hear it. And in the breaking of bread they recognize Jesus himself
actually present, given for them.



The coming together is vital; it is only in the Church that the Mass can take
place. This does not mean necessarily in a special church building, though that
helps. Nor does it mean that many people are necessarily gathered on any
particular occasion, though that is desirable. It means that the Mass is celebrated
within the unity of the One Church, that the celebration is not a private,
exclusive affair but is in conscious union with the Church throughout the world.
One of the most moving descriptions of the Mass I have read is by the American
Jesuit Walter Ciszek, who was a prisoner in the old Soviet Union. He managed to
slip away into the forest with only one companion and celebrated Mass quietly
and secretly, using a tree stump as an altar. And in so doing he was far from
alone; he was one with millions of Catholics all over the world. The whole
Church came into the heart of that forest; Christ was made present among a people
who were unaware of his existence. That lonely Mass was very much the
expression of Christians coming together, uniting in the one sacrifice. [1]



Listening to the Word of God is vital; unless we have heard about Jesus, how
can we love him? There may be only a brief, whispered passage from the Gospel,
or there may be a long, drawn-out sequence of readings, but in one way or other
the message of Scripture must be proclaimed. The Church first expressed her
faith in the words of the Bible, and the long centuries of developing tradition
have deepened and enhanced those words. We do not hear them alone but within
the Church that gave birth to them, and even now, even after they have been spoken
so many, many times, they are still capable of awakening our hearts to burn
within us.


The breaking of bread is the apex of the Mass. In the Consecration of bread and
wine and the sharing of that Blessed Sacrament among the faithful, we know Jesus
himself, directly, without intermediary. Still it is within the Church alone
that we find him, for the Church herself is actually constituted by the sharing
of Holy Communion. It is in receiving the Body of Jesus Christ that we become
his Body, the Universal Church. That is why St. Paul warns of the risks at
stake if we try to partake of that Body without recognizing the Body, if we
imagine that we can receive Communion without desiring to be part of that Body
which is the Church (1 Cor 11:29). Jesus Christ is not a tame lion; we approach
him at our peril if we defy him; but if we come in love, open to his Word,
recognizing his Body, then we shall be loved and welcomed indeed. We cannot
impose conditions on him; we come to him to learn, to listen, to follow his
guidance. And his message is always the same, the message of his love for us,
his love for all our fellow creatures.



The Discipline of Secrecy



For some centuries after Pentecost, the Church remained very silent about the
Mass. It was above all the "secret", the "mystery", the one
thing known to initiated Christians that was on no account to be divulged to
those outside the Church. Those prepar- ing for baptism knew that some great
secret was to come, but it was not revealed to them until after they had been
baptized. The union between God and his people was too personal, too intimate
to display in public to a cynical and unsympathetic world. As a result, our
knowledge about early Christian worship has to be gleaned from hints and
allusions, tantalizing comments like "the initiated will know what I am talking
about", and ambiguous references that even now can puzzle the commentator.
Paintings and graffiti in the catacombs help to fill out the picture, but it
remains true that we do not really know what Liturgy in "the early
Church" was like.



St. Justin Martyr



This makes it rather a surprise to find one author who tears the veil of
secrecy. The martyr St. Justin, in about A.D. 150, wrote a book called the Apologia,
which is a simple explanation of what Christians believe and what they do,
intended to persuade the emperor and other hostile powers to let Christians
live in peace. In the course of this Apology, he describes the Mass and explains briefly what it means. It had not
yet come to its modern form, of course, but the basic elements are recognizable.
The faithful meet on Sunday, and the "memoirs of the apostles" or the
writings of the prophets are read for as long as time permits. Then the priest
explains the readings and exhorts the people. They rise then and pray in common
for themselves and for all men everywhere, so that they may be recognized to be
good, loyal citizens. At the end of the prayers, they salute each other with a
kiss. Then bread and a cup of water mixed with wine are brought to the priest;
he offers them, giving thanks. All present give their assent in the word
"Amen". Then the deacons distribute the Eucharist and carry it away
to those who are absent. The congregation does not disperse before a collection
has been taken.








As well as describing the actions of the Mass, St. Justin gives away the
central secret of what it means: "We do not receive these things as if it
were common bread and common drink, but just as Jesus Christ our Savior was
made flesh through the Word of God, possessing flesh and blood to rescue us, in
the same way the nourishment over which thanks have been given through the
prayer of the Word who was with God, and which feeds our own body and blood as
it is transformed, we have been taught to identify as the body and blood of
that same Jesus who was made flesh." For this reason, he goes on to say,
only those who are full members of the Church may receive the Eucharist. My own
copy of Justin formerly belonged to a Protestant college, and someone has
written in a neat eighteenth-century hand "Is not this a little like transubstantiation?"
It is indeed: St. Justin in the second century is saying, in a slightly
convoluted and undeveloped way, exactly what the Catholic Church has been
teaching ever since. The basic structure of Justin's Mass is still
recognizable: the coming together as members of one Church, the reading and
explanation of Scripture, the prayer of the faithful, the sign of peace, and
the offering and breaking of bread, which the faithful receive as the Body of
Christ. The collection also is a familiar element! [2]



After the conversion of the Empire, there was no further need for secrecy in a
world where everyone knew what the Christian faith was about. But now arose the
opposite problem: since everyone knew the truth, there was no reason to write
it down! As a result, systematic writings about the Mass are not found until it
first came to be doubted, many centuries later. It is the great medieval
theologians, particularly St. Thomas, who first explored the meaning of the Mass
in depth, not because the ideas were new in their time, but because it was only
in their time that anyone had begun to question them.



Now that we again live in a pagan society that is hostile to the Church, like
that of the ancient Roman Empire, it might seem a good idea to practice the discipline
of secrecy again, but since the secret has been so widely published for so long
it would be absurd to try to conceal it. All the same I often feel uneasy about
the way in which the Mass is televised, filming the actual Consecration and the
moment of Communion, as if the cameras were intruding on something too intimate
for the public gaze. I am hoping at least that readers of this book will be
sympathetic, will be trying to come to love our Lord, if they are not yet fully
communicating members of his Catholic Church. In explaining what we mean when we
talk of the presence of Jesus Christ, of transubstantiation, of the mystical
union of Holy Communion, I am aware that I am treading on very delicate ground.
I hope and trust that I am keeping firmly within the mainline tradition of the
Church, to whose judgment everything I say is submitted.



ENDNOTES:



[1] Walter Ciszek, He Leadeth Me (San Francisco: Ignatius Press; 1995), 37.



[2] Justin, Apologia Prima, 97-98; most accessible in Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian
Church (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), section VII, iv.







Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:







• Benedict and the Eucharist: On the Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis | Carl E. Olson

• For "Many" or For "All"? | From God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart
of Life | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


• Foreword to
U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer
| Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

• Music and Liturgy | From The Spirit of the Liturgy
| Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer | From The Spirit of the Liturgy
| Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

• The Meaning and Purpose of the Year of the Eucharist | Carl E. Olson


• The Doctrine (and the Defense) of the Eucharist | Carl E. Olson

• Walking
To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the
Oratory


• Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, STD


• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP


• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.


• Liturgy, Catechesis,
and Conversion | Barbara Morgan


• Understanding
The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, STL


• The Eucharist:
Source and Summit of Christian Spirituality | Mark Brumley


• Eucharistic
Adoration: Reviving An Ancient Tradition | Valerie Schmalz













Fr. Francis Randolph studied Classics and Theology in
Oxford and Rome. He has traveled widely, and worked as a parish priest,
hospital and military chaplain, and six years as a university
chaplain. He currently works in a busy parish in central England. He is
also the
author of Pardon and Peace: A Sinner's Guide to Confession .

The Blessed Sacrament: It's either All or nothing

Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for June 2, 2013, The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and
Blood of Christ | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Gen 14:18-20
• Ps 110:1, 2, 3, 4
• 1 Cor 11:23-26
• Lk 9:11b-17

Shortly after my wife and I entered the Catholic Church in
1997, I had a conversation with an Evangelical friend that was as disconcerting
as it was friendly. A.J., who I met in Bible college several years earlier, was
curious about the Catholic doctrine that the Eucharist is the true Body and
Blood of Jesus Christ. I say “curious” because A.J., unlike some of my other
Protestant friends, was not really bothered or offended by this belief, merely
puzzled. After much discussion, he said, “I don’t see what the big deal is. I
believe that Communion is symbolic, and you believe it is more than a symbol.
But, either way, we’re both Christians.”

His comment surprised me because it was readily evident to
me—as it is to many Protestants—that the Catholic belief in the Eucharist
(shared by Eastern Orthodox and Ancient Oriental Christians) is an “all or
nothing” proposition. If the Eucharist is Jesus, it calls for a response of
humble acceptance; if the Eucharist is not really Jesus, it is an idolatrous
offense against God—worshipping bread and wine as though they are somehow
divine.

On this feast day celebrating the Most Holy Body and Blood
of Christ, the readings reveal, in different ways, the truthfulness of the
ancient and consistent belief in the Eucharist. It is fitting that this great
mystery has ancient roots in one of most mysterious of all biblical figures:
the priest Melchizedek, who makes just one historical appearance in the
Scriptures (Gen. 14:18-20), is mentioned once more in the Old Testament (Ps.
110:4), and then reappears in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the
Hebrews.

Having just left the battlefield, Abram encountered the
“king of Salem”, who was also a “priest of God Most High.” Melchizedek brought
bread and wine to Abram and blessed the patriarch, and Abram responded with a
tithe. Both actions indicated Melchizedek’s superior position, as noted in the
letter to the Hebrews (Heb 7:1-7). It is the first time a priest is mentioned
in the Scriptures, several centuries before the Hebrews had a priesthood.

“The Christian tradition,” the Catechism states, “considers Melchizedek, ‘priest of God Most
High,’ as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique ‘high priest
after the order of Melchizedek’” (CCC 1544, 1333). Christ’s priesthood is
superior to the Aaronic priesthood. Because He is the Son of God and is God
Himself (the argument of Hebrews 1), His priesthood is validated by His eternal
nature and His infinite being (Heb. 7:16, 24ff). Melchizedek’s importance lies
in his loyalty to God Most High, the purity of his intentions, and his
sacrifice of bread and wine.  He
represents a time when the priesthood was part of the natural order of family
structure. By establishing the New and universal covenant through His death and
resurrection, Jesus Christ formed a new and everlasting family of God, bound
not by ethnicity, but by grace and the Holy Spirit.

And because Jesus is God, He is able to give the household
of God His Body and Blood for the nourishment of soul and body, and for the
forgiveness of sins. By providing this Eucharistic banquet, a foretaste of the
Kingdom of God, He fulfills the promise of a worldwide family of God
foreshadowed in the person of the king-priest Melchizedek. The feeding of the
five thousand, described in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, anticipates and
represents the sacrament of the Eucharist, as Christ miraculously feeds—with the
assisting hands and efforts of His priests, the Apostles—those who hunger to
hear His words.



If the bread and wine remained unchanged, Christ would be, at best, equal to
Melchizedek. But the King of Kings said, “This is my body that is for you”, and
the High Priest declared, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The
Eucharist is Jesus Christ. That is the great truth we humbly celebrate
today—and every day we receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the June 10, 2007, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Carl's Cuts for the End of May

Carl's Cuts for the End of May | Carl E. Olson | CWR



Thoughts on news and views from CWR's editor

More cuts! My goal is to post such cuts once a week. Last week, I missed the cut. Here goes!

• From Andrew Fitzgerald, a day after the horrific tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma:

Oklahoma
City Archbishop Paul Coakley was a guest this morning on The Catholic
Channel on SiriusXM. The Archbishop was in Moore, OK, yesterday
surveying the damage and talking to residents in the aftermath of the
tornado and he talked about the remarkable resiliency of the people he
encountered.

 He
described meeting a 94 year old woman who’d had her home destroyed.  It
was the second time she had lost her home to a tornado, the last time
being in the devastating 1999 storm.

 “She
reached into her pocket and pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills
and she was handing them out to people,” recalled Archbishop Coakley. 
“This was a woman who, the day before, had lost her home for the second
time and her response was to give, to share.  This was truly the widow
of ‘The Widow’s Might.’  She had nothing and yet she was giving her
all.”

Amazing. Let's continue to keep the people in Moore in our prayers,
along with all people, wherever they are, who are suffering because of
natural disasters.

• Speaking of praying, this coming Sunday, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Holy Father will be leading an hour-long, worldwide Eucharistic Adoration. This, says Vatican Information Service, "will be broadcast from St. Peter’s Basilica next Sunday, 2 June from 5:00pm-6:00pm local time":

Its
theme is: “One Lord, One Faith”, which was chosen to testify to the deep
unity that characterizes it. “It will be an event,” Archbishop
Fisichella explained, “occurring for the first time in the history of
the Church, which is why we can describe it as ‘historical’. The
cathedrals of the world will be synchronized with Rome and will, for an
hour, be in communion with the Pope in Eucharistic adoration. There has
been an incredible response to this initiative, going beyond the
cathedrals and involving episcopal conferences, parishes, lay
associations, and religious congregations, especially cloistered ones.”



From
the Cook Islands to Chile, Burkina Faso, Taiwan, Iraq, Bangladesh, the
United States, and the Philippines, the dioceses will be synchronized
with St. Peter’s and will pray for the intentions proposed by the Pope.
The first is: “For the Church spread throughout the world and united
today in the adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist as a sign of unity.
May the Lord make her ever more obedient to hearing his Word in order to
stand before the world ‘ever more beautiful, without stain or blemish,
but holy and blameless.’ That through her faithful announcement, the
Word that saves may still resonate as the bearer of mercy and may
increase love to give full meaning to pain and suffering, giving back
joy and serenity.”

• Congratulations to the great Dr. Ray Dennehy, who will receive, this weekend, the Rupert and Timothy Smith Award for Distinguished Contributions to Pro-Life Scholarship.

When
asked what receiving the Smith award meant to him, Professor Dennehy
told CalCatholic: “For the last 48 semesters I have debated abortion at
UC Berkeley—for the last 10 years in front of their School of Public
Health, mostly with Malcolm Potts. This year, for the first time, I did
not receive an invitation, so that was kind of disheartening, but then I
heard I was getting the Smith Award. That’s very meaningful. This is an
award given by my peers, by people in the trenches, and that gives it a
special kind of meaning.”



Professor Dennehy also told the story
of a recent email from a former student who had never agreed with the
pro-life position. “But once she got pregnant, and re-read some of my
stuff, she told me that there was no way she could ever have an
abortion. That one email made my whole career worthwhile.”

• Three weeks ago, I wrote a post, "Pope Francis, Romans 8, and the theme of theosis";
yesterday, the Holy Father began a series of audiences focused on
ecclesiology, and he once again took up the topic of theosis, or
divinization:

Continue reading on the CWR site.





The Truth About Joan of Arc

The Truth About Joan of Arc | The Foreword and Preface to
The Retrial of Joan of Arc
by Régine Pernoud







Foreword to The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence
For Her Vindication by Régine
Pernoud | Katherine Anne Porter




In the many hundreds of books in French about the condemnation and retrial of
Joan of Arc, the authors invariably base their criticism of the first trial on


the evidence given by witnesses in the second. None of these books has been
translated into English. The French seem to write them for each other, or
perhaps even at this late day the English reader does not enjoy seeing his
nation put so soundly and irreparably in the poorest light of its history.
Whatever the reason, this is the first book based firmly on the retrial of Joan
of Arc to be translated into English, and the whole tremendous history is told
again, this time by her childhood playmates and relatives, her royal and noble
friends, her confessor, her valet, her squires and heralds, and her fellow
soldiers. There are a few of the old enemies of the first court still in Rouen,
but they can do her no more harm: and indeed their presence here perhaps lends
even a more powerful authenticity to this story than if we heard only from her
friends.



It is indeed a beautiful book, well translated, with the speed and symmetry and
direction of the life it celebrates; and besides its merit as a work of
scholarship, there is warmth and sanity in it, often absent from books about
Joan of Arc, who inspires strange fervors and theories. In my small collection,
out of the hundreds, there is one that proves to the hilt that Joan was a
Catharist, that outcropping of ancient Manichaeism in medieval Provence;
another, that she and her fellow captain, Gilles de Laval, Sire de Rais, were
sorcerers, adept in Black Magic. The fact that Joan's first trial has been
exposed in its falseness over and over has no effect on these infatuated minds;
nor that Gilles de Rais, though proved a man of bad morals, still was tried and
condemned by a court as corrupt as that which condemned Joan. Still a third
book has been published to prove that Joan was a by-blow of the blood royal,
and that the "secret" she whispered to the Dauphin in proof of her
mission was that she was his half-sister, bastard daughter of his father King
Charles VI, the virgin sent to save France after France had been betrayed by a
woman.



The woman who had betrayed France was the infamous Isabeau of Bavaria who
disavowed her son the Dauphin to make way for Henry VI of England; she had
riddled the royal family with bastardy in so many directions, it is possible
she may not have been certain which of her many children were legitimate. There
is still a small school of thought in France, more Royalist than any king,
which holds that only royal blood could have given Joan her splendor of courage
and faith. There is not a word anywhere in the records of either trial to
support a claim of royal blood, yet from time to time it is put forth again
with passionate lunatic arguments.


The people of Domremy knew exactly who Joan was. Her old friends, neighbors,
former playmates, godmothers and godfathers, confessors, and "uncles"
by marriage in a distant connection--each in turn tells us something about her,
with great freshness of feeling and speech. Remembering her tragedy during all
those years when they were silenced by the fact that she was a condemned
heretic, now that the Inquisition had lifted its ban, and they were free to say
what they really thought, they claimed her for their own. When they said,
"She was just like us", they meant to say also, "We are like
her; she is one of the family; we never thought her so unusual; there were many
others like her." They never denied her superiority in all the general
virtues, but admired it and wished to borrow virtue from her; and indeed, what
happened is so gently and Christianly true--she borrowed virtue from them, in
turn. As they shed light on her childhood and young girlhood among them, by
their love and remembrance saving her true story for us, so she shed glory on
them. There is a nimbus around every humble country figure, "good Catholics,
as those farming people are", said Dunois, who came forward to speak for
her before the papal commissioners who were--remotely at the request of King
Charles VII, directly by permission from the Pope and the heads of the
Inquisition itself--preparing a retrial for her, nearly twenty years after her
death. After five centuries, they stand there in the pure light of day, in
their breathing bodies, and we hear their voices raised in their natural
speech: "When Joan left her father's house, I saw her pass before the
house with her uncle, Durand Laxart. Joan said to her father then, 'Good-bye, I
am going to Vaucouleurs.' . . ." She was on horseback, wearing the
customary farm woman's dress of coarse red wool. We do not know how tall she
was, nor how she looked, but every one of her witnesses who spoke of the matter
at all had one word for her: she was beautiful. Joan's uncle was taking her to
Lord Robert de Baudricourt, where she was going to ask to be taken to the King,
or rather as she called him properly, the Dauphin, whom she was to cause to
become King Charles VII of France. She had promised her uncle that she would
help his wife in her coming childbirth if he would escort her to Lord Robert.
This gentleman, on first sight of her, began her career, and the most
tremendous event in French history, by advising her uncle to give her a good
slapping and take her home. After talking with her, he gave her a safe-conduct
to the Duke of Lorraine. And she was on her splendid way to Orleans, to Rheims,
to Compiègne, to the stake at Rouen.



All attempts to account rationally for Joan of Arc's life end no better than
those that try to shape it to fit some fantastic theory. She is unique, and a
mystery, and as you read about her and think about her life, you are led up to
a threshold beyond which she eludes you, you cannot cross it. Madame Régine
Pernoud has the reassuring ground of firm Catholic belief in the practical
efficacy of divine inspiration, and as you follow her attentively through her
remarkably clear, detailed tracing of this history told by living tongues,
netting the testimonies together with her learned, perfectly placed notes, you
begin to share with her the experience of those men who were making the
investigation little by little, one step at a time, one bit of evidence added
to another, or compared, they were arriving at Truth beyond the truth they had
hoped to find; her method, so direct and knowledgeable, so dedicated to the
discovery and presentation of the mystical truth that inheres in the accumulated,
eagerly honest, spoken and recorded testimony, simply leads the way to that
truth. Of all the books I have read on this subject, this is my choice, and the
last, profoundly satisfying word for me, for any time to come.



-- Katherine Anne Porter






























Preface to The Retrial of Joan of Arc | Régine Pernoud




In 1839, that learned scholar Vallet de Viriville assessed the number of works
devoted to Joan of Arc at five hundred; fifty years later the figure had
increased fivefold. Yet the interest she aroused in the nineteenth century is
as nothing compared with the interest she has aroused since then. In France,
her day has become both a religious and a national festival, Church and state
finding themselves at one in raising her likeness on the altar and in the
public square. More important, Joan has assumed for our age a living reality
unimaginable a hundred years ago.



This being so, it is strange that a document of cardinal importance in Joan's
story has been neglected. The detailed record of the trial in which Joan was
condemned has been several times published and translated and is familiar in
outline even to the general public; one cannot say the same of the record of
the proceedings that led to her rehabilitation. This record is well known to
specialists and has been much drawn upon by historians--generally at second
hand--but the only edition today available is a transcription of the Latin
version prepared by Jules Quicherat. It is an admirable work, but it has been
unprocurable for many years, not only in the bookshops but also in the majority
of libraries. As for translations, there is only the very fragmentary one made
by Eugene O'Reilly [1] and used by Joseph Fabre, dating from 1868 and 1888
respectively; [2] and it is, moreover, stiff reading.



That is all that we have of the only great document--except the account of her
trial and condemnation--that throws on Joan, her personality, and her times the
direct light of living men's evidence, reflected by no distorting mirror of
chronicle or tale. What is more, the account of her condemnation, though it
gives the drama at Rouen, leaves the details of Joan's life in shadow, whereas
the record of her rehabilitation presents all the stages and essential
episodes, one by one, from her baptism in the parish church of Domremy to her
burning. (It also shows the impression she made on the crowds.) And it is her
childhood friends, her comrades in arms, her former judges, who come, one after
another, to evoke her memory; those same persons who had been the actors, or at
least the supernumeraries, in the drama of which she was the heroine.



What is more, this rehabilitation suit, staged a bare twenty years after Joan's
execution, in itself forms a strange enough page in history; it dealt with
events still recent and tinged with the miraculous, events of which men were
then free to measure the repercussions. For if we are in a better position than
her contemporaries to analyze their effect on the structure of Europe, there
was not, on the other hand, a single peasant or townsman in France whose life
would not have been changed, to a greater or lesser extent, by the outcome of
those battles that decided whether France should remain attached to England or
be free. Finally, the case that was being argued was a singularly moving one: a
victim, a woman, a mere girl had been burnt alive by judicial decree, and the
question was whether that victim was a heroine or a simple visionary--that is
to say, a dangerous heretic.



The majority of historians have, inexplicably, failed to recognize the
importance of the case. Many, looking through entirely modern spectacles, have
been unable to see what it revealed to contemporaries. They have assumed the
knowledge at that time of certain truths that, in fact, could not have come to
light but for the suit for Joan's rehabilitation. It is, however, indisputable
that the details, both of her career and her condemnation, were unknown to the
great majority: the details of her heroism to people who had lived in the
occupied zone, the details of her trial to the former inhabitants of free
France. Facts that are absolutely familiar to us--the falsification or omission
of certain documents in her trial--were totally unknown to those very men who
undertook her rehabilitation. Finally, it is beyond doubt that public opinion,
whether for or against Joan, was only inaccurately informed about her story,
and that it was the suit that brought the truth to light. Some historians have
even thought it possible to regard the whole rehabilitation suit as a cleverly
staged play, put on either by the Church or the King. But if one takes the
trouble to follow the stages of this affair, the development of which took no
less than seven years and called together people from every district of France
and from all social classes, it is clear that a piece of mummery on such a
scale would have been difficult to carry through.



It will be up to the reader, in any case, to judge the facts from the documents
of the case, which we intend to put before him in a translation as close as
possible to the original text. There could be no question of publishing the
complete record of the trial. With the account of each hearing and such legal
documents as writs and summonses, it fills no less than octavo pages in
Quicherat's edition--and even so he omitted the majority of the preliminary
reports (nineteen in all) drawn up in preparation for the case, and likewise
the Recollectio, or general résumé of
the whole proceedings made by Jean Bréhal (the Inquisitor entrusted with its
conduct), which alone takes up a whole volume. We have extracted only the parts
that are to us most alive and most valuable--that is to say, the statements of
the witnesses- suppressing only repetitions that would have made the book
bulkier without adding anything new. We have, in addition, put back into the
first person those statements that the scribe had transposed into the third on
translating them into Latin--"The witness says that ... , etc."--in
which he followed the habitual procedure in ecclesiastical courts.



-- Régine Pernoud



ENDNOTES:




[1] This was, of course, a translation into French.



[2] For these works, see the Bibliography.







Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:




• Urban II: The Pope of the First Crusade | Régine Pernoud


• The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin


• Crusade Myths | Thomas F. Madden


• Mistakes, Yes. Conspiracies, No. | Vince Ryan


• Saint Martin
and the Search for Holiness | Régine Pernoud








Régine Pernoud, a renowned French archivist and historian,
is among the greatest medievalists of recent times, and the success of her
books has helped to bring the Middle Ages closer to modern readers. Among
her numerous works are Those
Terrible Middle Ages! , Martin
of Tours, and Women in the Days of the Cathedrals.

The "Acid Test" of a Bishop

The "Acid Test" of a Bishop | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | CWR Blog

“The consequence of the love of the Lord is to give
everything—exactly everything, even one’s own life—for Him: This is that which
ought to distinguish our pastoral ministry. It is the ‘acid-test’ that bespeaks
the profundity that we have embraced, the gift we have received. By responding
to the call of Jesus, we show how much we are bound to the persons and the
communities that have been entrusted to us.”

— Pope Francis, Profession
of Faith at the Italian Bishops’ Conference, May 23, 2013

I.

At one point in his homily during the Episcopal Ordination
of Michael Barber, S. J. to the See of Oakland, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone
of San Francisco, himself Barber’s predecessor in Oakland, told him that, at
times, he would seem to be alone with huge problems on his shoulders. But he
must remember that he is part of an episcopal college, men bound together in
the same faith and love. He will not be alone. These words reminded me of those
that I came across in Pope Francis’ reflections with the Italian bishops, his “Cari
Fratelli nell’Episcopato.”

Pope Francis likes to reflect out-loud, as it were, with
fellow bishops. He prefers to call himself “the bishop of Rome.” The bishops
had evidently just heard the famous passage of the Lord’s asking Peter thrice
whether he loved Him, words that upset Peter at the time. “Such words,” the
pope said, “have caused me to reflect very much.” He wanted to share his
“meditation” with the these bishops.

The pope said that it was particularly appropriate that his
first meeting with the Italian bishops should be at the tomb of Peter. Here we
can also remember Peter’s “testimony of faith, his service to truth, and his
giving himself even to martyrdom for the Gospel and the Church.” Essential to
the reality of the Church is its memory of what it is, of what happened to its
members, where and why.

This Altar of Confession, where they all were gathered,
could be taken for the image of the Lake of Tiberius, the Pope said. It was
here that Peter received his commission to “feed my sheep.” On the banks of
this lake, the amazing dialogue of Peter and Christ took place. Christ directed
His questions to Peter, but they should resound in the heart of every bishop.

Pope Brogoglio then slowly repeated the question three
times: “Peter, do you love Me?” In fact, this love is the one essential
question whereby alone a bishop can take care of his flock. “Every ministry is
founded on this intimacy with the Lord.” This love is the “measure” of
ecclesial service which is expressed by our “disponibility” to obedience, to
our total giving of our selves. We are to be bound to the “persons and the
communities entrusted to us.” This is the “acid-test” of our service. 

II.

The pope then tells us what bishops are not, or ought not to
be. “We are not the expression of a structure or an organizational necessity.”
Even in the service of our authority, we are called to be signs of the
“presence and action of the risen Lord.” Hence we are to erect the community in
“fraternal charity.” We assume here, of course, that bishops are not to run
shoddy or inefficient organizations in the necessary administration that they
have to do.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

An Argument for Arguing Well

An Argument for Arguing
Well | Mark Shea | Catholic World Report

The case against ad
hominem arguments,
the first of three very popular argumentative blunders

As humans made in the image
and likeness of God, we have a built-in desire to know what’s really going on
and to trace all the little discoveries of what is really going on right back
to the source, who is Truth Himself. 
We all live out Augustine’s reality in that God has made us for himself
and our hearts are restless till they rest in him.

The problem is, as sinners,
we also have a very powerful urge to do what Adam and Eve did: hide from Truth
when he starts calling our name, since Truth—for fallen creatures—involves
death by crucifixion. We know this because when Truth was made flesh and dwelt
among us, that is what we did to him. 
Our tendency to be leery of Truth in that weird love/hate way is what the
Church calls “concupiscence”, a three dollar word that refers to the weakened
will, disordered appetites and, most especially, a darkened intellect that
afflict us.  It’s that last point
that concerns us here, because it means that sin makes us stupid.

Sin makes us stupid in two
ways.  It does so passively, by
immersing us in lies and age-old “structures of sin” that cause us to take a
ridiculously long time to figure out obvious moral intuitions and do something
about them.  Take slavery. It’s
easy for us today to say, “Slavery is bad.”  But for approximately the first, oh, forever of human
existence on Planet Earth it was not at all obvious that slavery was that bad. It took two thousand years of
kneading Christianity and its vision of the dignity of the human person into
Western culture before slavery could become unthinkable and seen as the obvious
evil it always was.  Why so
long?  Because our darkened
intellects make us stupid and we take a long time to figure things out even
when the mission of Moses is all about leading slaves out of bondage, and
Isaiah praises the work of the Messiah as one of striking off chains and
freeing slaves, and Jesus speaks of the truth setting us free and Paul says
that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Sin makes us slow on the uptake.  So we had to argue (and fight) it out before the obvious
evil of slavery could be (precariously) driven from western civilization.

This brings us to our second
point: sin also makes us fight the light as well. 

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Expanding the Culture of Death in Vermont

Expanding the Culture of Death in Vermont | Anne Hendershott | Catholic World Report



Why Vermont is low-hanging fruit for the abortion and assisted suicide lobbies


In a strongly worded statement
decrying the legalization of assisted suicide in Vermont on May 20, 2013, the
Most Reverend Salvatore R. Matano, the bishop of Burlington, called his home state
“one of the few Death States, where it is legal for life to be terminated both
at its beginning and end stages.” While noting that the state “so rightly
opposes the death penalty and the tragedies of war,” Bishop Matano accused
Vermont’s legislators of sending a “confusing and conflicting message that
undermines its stand for life.”

Bishop Matano’s statement pointed
directly to the role that the Vermont state legislature played in bypassing the
voters to enact the assisted suicide law. What Bishop Matano did not mention,
however, was that Vermont’s lawmakers and courts began to create a culture of
death in the state more than four decades ago. In 1972, a full year before the
US Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, the Vermont Supreme Court
invalidated Vermont’s abortion statute in Beecham
v. Leahy, finding it unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable.

The new “End-of-Life Choices”
law, which allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for
self-administration by “terminally ill” patients, is just the latest in a long
line of laws designed to remove protections for the most vulnerable—including
the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly. And, although physician-assisted
suicide has been legalized in Oregon, Washington, and Montana, Vermont is the
first state to have such a law passed by the legislature without the input of
voters or the courts.

Most of Vermont’s politicians appear
to take pride in being the first state legislature to pass what they have defined
as progressive laws.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

An Ignatian Bishop of Rome

An Ignatian Bishop of Rome | Gregory Vall | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Like Bergoglio’s choice of the name Francis—after the Poverello of Assisi rather than the Jesuit Francis Xavier—the phrase “presides in charity” and its evocation of “the other Ignatius” may turn out to be interpretive keys to the unpretentious Argentinian’s pontificate.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S. J., stepped out onto the central
loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on March 13, 2013, and spoke for the
first time as Pope Francis, he borrowed a phrase from St. Ignatius. That
should hardly surprise anyone, since the new pope has been a member of
the Society of Jesus for over half a century—except that it was not St.
Ignatius of Loyola whom Francis quoted. In saying that the
Church of Rome “presides in charity” over all other Churches, he echoed
the salutation of an early second-century letter addressed to the
Christians of the Eternal City by St. Ignatius of Antioch. 1
This quotation and its source are worth pausing over. Like Bergoglio’s
choice of the name Francis—after the Poverello of Assisi rather than the
Jesuit Francis Xavier—the phrase “presides in charity” and its
evocation of “the other Ignatius” may turn out to be interpretive keys
to the unpretentious Argentinian’s pontificate.

Presiding in Charity

Ignatius of Antioch (died circa AD 113) is an important figure in the
early unfolding of the Church’s self-understanding. He is the first
Christian author to speak of the “Catholic Church” and the first to use
the adjective “apostolic.” 2
He is likewise the first to give explicit teaching about the
monarchical episcopacy—the office and authority of the bishop as
teacher, sanctifier, and ruler of the local Church—and about the
three-tiered hierarchy of orders: episcopal, presbyteral, and diaconal.
The fact that Ignatius of Antioch’s seven surviving letters are cited
over a dozen times in the text and footnotes of Lumen Gentium
is but one indication of the significant role they have played in more
recent developments in ecclesiology as well. In particular, the Latin
phrase praesidens caritati (rendering Ignatius’ Greek phrase, prokathēmenē tēs agapēs,
which is usually translated “presiding in charity”) has come to serve
as a kind of code name for modern reflection on the relationship between
Roman primacy and episcopal collegiality.

Continue reading on the HPR site.

"The Invisible Boy": Anthony Esolen on the Boy Scouts

The Invisible Boy | Anthony Esolen | Catholic World Report

We must now pretend that boys are not boys, just some
neutered youth

The press
release of the Boy Scouts of America, announcing that they will admit boys who
declare themselves to be homosexual:

"For 103 years, the Boy Scouts of America has been a
part of the fabric of this nation, with a focus on working together to deliver
the nation's foremost youth program of character development and values-based
leadership training.

"Based on growing input from within the Scouting
family, the BSA leadership chose to conduct an additional review of the
organization's long-standing membership policy and its impact on Scouting's
mission. This review created an outpouring of feedback from the Scouting family
and the American public, from both those who agree with the current policy and
those who support a change.

"Today, following this review, the most comprehensive
listening exercise in Scouting's history, the approximately 1,400 voting
members of the Boy Scouts of America's National Council approved a resolution
to remove the restriction denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual
orientation alone. The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth
program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth
of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting (emphasis mine).  A change to the current
membership policy for adult leaders was not under consideration; thus, the
policy for adults remains in place. The BSA thanks all the national voting
members who participated in this process and vote.

"This policy change is effective Jan. 1, 2014, allowing
the Boy Scouts of America the transition time needed to communicate and
implement this policy to its approximately 116,000 Scouting units.

"The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its
mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to
be consumed by a single, divisive, and unresolved societal issue. As the
National Executive Committee just completed a lengthy review process, there are
no plans for further review on this matter.

"While people have different opinions about this
policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting.
Going forward, our Scouting family will continue to focus on reaching and
serving youth in order to help them grow into good, strong citizens. America's
youth need Scouting, and by focusing on the goals that unite us, we can
continue to accomplish incredible things for young people and the communities
we serve."

What underlies all this puffery?  Everything is vague,
like the speech of a foolish politician who struts and frets his season before
the teleprompter, and then, alas, is elected, so that we must hear him for
years to come.  What are the “goals that unite us”?  What are “the
virtues of Scouting”?  What is “values-based leadership training”? 
Who is to be leading whom?  What is to be valued, and why?  What
“incredible things” are to be accomplished?  Building a fire? 
Pitching a tent?  Learning to write a single rational sentence to be
understood by rational people?

The Boy Scouts of America have long ceased to speak the
language of Christian or Jewish or solid old Roman virtue.  They, like the
schools, have veered away from any of the specifics of expertise, like teaching boys how to shoot a rifle
or how to find edible plants in the woods, or, from my March 1, 1911 issue of Boys’
Life, the first issue ever printed, how to
drive cattle across the outback of Australia.  There was only one reality
that kept them reasonably sane when all the world around them had gone quite
mad, and that was the boy.  And
now that one reality has been forgotten.

There’s one word in that official statement that is
conspicuous by its absence. 

Continue reading on the CWR blog.