Discouraging News About Priests? Here’s How to REALLY Help

February 2, 2013 By 7 Comments

Prayer Warriors, you are needed.

This week has brought stark reminders of the vulnerability and the vincibility of priests:  From the disclosure of Cardinal Mahony’s inaction in the 1980s, when he failed to remove abusive priests from positions of responsibility, to the reports of a priest in Springfield, Illnois, donning an orange jumpsuit, handcuffs and a bondage hood, then calling 911 for assistance—we’ve seen too well that clergy are only human.

I’ve been a little out of sorts, unwilling to fuel the furnace of fury that’s gripped the blogosphere over these and other failures of Church leaders.  I’d like to say SOMETHING—but how to bring light, not heat, to the discussion?

Monsignor Richard Soseman, official with the Congregation for the Clergy–my friend from Rome

Then this morning, the answer came in a chat box.

Monsignor Richard Soseman, an official with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, sent me a note regarding an English-language release of a book they published, encouraging the faithful to pray for priests.  Eucharistic Adoration for the Sanctification of Priests and Spiritual Maternity was published in Spanish and Italian in 2008, and finally in English in 2011.  With this new English-language edition, released in January 2013, the Congregation for the Clergy hopes it will sell over a million copies.

His Eminence Mauro Cardinal Piacenza, head of the Congregation for the Clergy

In the slim 52-page booklet Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Congregation for the Clergy and the book’s author, shares stories of people who have offered their lives for priests or prayed for them.  He describes a sharp increase of vocations in the small Italian village of Lu where, between 1881 and the 1940s, one third of the inhabitants (323 out of less than 1,000) became priests or nuns.

Monsignor Soseman explained further that the book “encourages spiritual maternity, which means a person ‘adopts’ a specific priest that they will pray for.”  And there are some specific suggestions on how to pray for a priest and some recommended prayers, such as the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and an hour of Eucharistic devotion.

Pope Benedict XVI has recently made some changes in the Roman Curia, giving responsibility for seminaries and priestly vocations to the Congregation for the Clergy.  This little book from the Congregation will, Monsignor Soseman hopes, “inspire more people to pray for priests because the history of the Church shows us how challenging the life of a priest can be.”

This, of course, is what the Church needs, what our priests need, today.

I do not mean that priests who have committed the dastardly crime of child sexual abuse should be met with applause and approbation; of course, they must be accountable under the law, just like the rest of us.

And I don’t mean that the legal authorities or Church authorities should overlook the missteps and the sins of bishops (most recently, of course, the gross negligence of Cardinal Mahony and Bishop Curry in shielding priests from prosecution).

What I am saying, though, is that the wretched impugnment of priests and bishops that has come out of the mouths of the atheistic, anti-Catholic left (and some apparently sinless Catholics) is unbecoming for any human.  For those of us who know Christ, those who have experienced His healing love and mercy in our own lives, the rancid name-calling and vilification that has characterized the blogosphere is a sin in itself, a shocking failure to mirror Christ to the world.

Let us leave the prosecution to our officials and let us, strengthened in our faith by the Holy Spirit, be a people of prayer and humble penitence.  Let us pray for our priests—for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and for strength, wisdom and holiness for those who have accepted the call to give their lives in service to Christ and to His Church.

If you are inspired to join with me in prayer for our priests and bishops, you can order the book at booksforcatholics.com.  The publisher is making it available at an attractive price of just $2 for orders of two or more.

 

Filed Under: Books, Catholic, Priesthood Tagged With: , , 7 Comments

C.S. Lewis Goes to War

January 29, 2013 By 1 Comment

One imaginative moment seems now to matter more than the realities that followed.  It was the first bullet I heard—so far from me that it “whined” like a journalist’s or a peacetime poet’s bullet.  At that moment there was something not exactly like fear, much less than indifference; a little quavering signal that said, “This is War. This is what Homer wrote about.”

–C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis in 1917 (left) with friend Ernest Moore during World War I. Moore would later be killed, as were many of Lewis’ friends. (wilsonstation.com)

I was delighted to see in The Blaze an article featuring some never-before-seen photos from World War I.  Of particular interest was a photo of British author, broadcaster and philosopher C.S. Lewis as a young soldier in 1917. 

Lewis rarely spoke about the war, but he did talk about his experiences in his autobiography Surprised By Joy.  Speaking of the difficulties of war, he wrote:

Through the winter, weariness and water were our chief enemies.  I have gone to sleep marching and woken again and found myself marching still.  One walked in the trenches in thigh gum boots with water above the knee; one remembers the icy stream welling up inside the boot when you punctured it on concealed barbed wire.  Familiarity both with the very old and the very recent dead confirmed that view of corpses which had been formed the moment I saw my dead mother.  I came to know and pity and reverence the ordinary man:  particularly dear Sergeant Ayres, who was (I suppose) killed by the same shell that wounded me.  I was a futile officer (they gave commissions too easily then), a puppet moved about by him, and he turned this ridiculous and painful relation into something beautiful, became to me almost like a father.  But for the rest, the war—the frights, the cold, the smell of H.E., the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing corpses, the landscape of sheer earth without a blade of grass, the boots worn day and night until they seemed to grow to your feet—all this shows rarely and faintly in memory. 

But beyond these sobering memories, Lewis’ reflections touch on the humorous:

The rest of my war experiences have little to do with this story.  How I “took” about sixty prisoners—that is, discovered to my great relief that the crowd of field-gray figure who suddenly appeared from nowhere, all had their hands up—is not worth telling, save as a joke.

He reflects on having been wounded:

…the moment, just after I had been hit, when I found (or thought I found) that I was not breathing and concluded that this was death.  I felt no fear and certainly no courage.  It did not seem to be an occasion for either.  The proposition “Here is a man dying” stood before my mind as dry, as factual, as unemotional as something in a textbook.  It was not even interesting.

And through it all, what emerges is the transformation of a man of letters.  During his recuperation from a wartime infection and during his convalescence after being wounded, he read and studied, considering life through the works of Bergson and Goethe, Titian, Christopher Wren, and the Psalms.

If you haven’t read Surprised By Joy, may I recommend that you put it on your wish list and read it soon?

And take a look at The Blaze to see the other newly published photos from the War.

 

 

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Angels in Paris: A Love Song

January 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In Angels of Paris, author Rosemary Flannery reveals a cityscape filled with angels:  angels peeking out of dark corners, peering down from pillars and flagpoles, hanging effortlessly from the long wall of a government building.  I counted 170 of them but there may have been more, hidden in the folds of a young woman’s skirt, bowing before the duchess, flashing shy smiles from door knockers, park benches and flower pots.

Flannery, in her new book Angels of Paris:  An Architectural Tour Through the History of Paris, has explored the romantic streets of gay Paree with a unique goal:  to find and catalog angels in concrete and marble and bronze, her camera revealing their hiding places.
So enjoy the book, if you will, for the architectural photos.  Indeed, one can’t help but grin at the creative ways in which French artists have imagined the angels, conscripting them to tell a story, to celebrate a victory, to mourn a loss.  But equally notable is Flannery’s command of language, as she wields her dual crafts of writing and photography to unlock the secrets of her adopted city.

The Lighthouse Angel, spanning three stories of a bourgeois apartment residence erected in 1860

See what I mean.  Flannery writes:

In French civic architecture, angels take on different names:  renommées if celebrating the renown of a person or a group; angelots for baby angels, a version of the Italian putti or little boy cherubs; and génies or amours if found on buildings other than churches.

The Angels of the Latin Quarter grace a medallion on a cast iron door grille. This one holds a key–to knowledge, perhaps? The other angel, not visible in this photo, holds his finger to his lips, signifying silence.

Most fascinating of all, the angels of Paris reflect l’esprit du temps, the spirit of their times.  Some blow trumpets to celebrate a king’s victories, or carry a laurel wreath to honor the emperor; others mourn victims of the Commune or were once hacked off churches during the Revolution.  They all tell the story of the city during peace, revolution, turmoil, and triumph.

Rosemary Flannery is well qualified to teach us about the Parisians’ love of angels.  A graduate of Columbia University with a degree in French language and literature, Flannery has lived in France since 1989 and enjoys dual French-American citizenship.  She studied Méthodologie de l’Architecture with Professor Claude Mignot, an authority on Parisian building façades, at the Sorbonne.  While at Columbia she co-produced and hosted French Encounters, a public-access television program on French culture produced in conjunction with the French Embassy.  She has produced a weekly cultural magazine for Paris Live Radio, and she offers tours of Paris, especially of museums and of architecture.

Now, though, you can bring her delightful stories home in this, her first book.  Flannery’s mission has been to share the beautiful things she’s seen and the things she’s learned along the way, and to give praise to those who made it happen.  She writes:

Angels of Paris is a hymn to all of the angels, both real and in art, and to the sculptors and the architects that made Paris the beautiful city that it is today.  This book is my love song to Paris, a song of gratitude and appreciation to my adopted city.

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