Real Catholic Blog

Bishop Walker Nickless of the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, writes in a recently released pastoral letter, Ecclesia Semper Reformanda (The Church is Always in Need of Renewal) that the “spirit of Vatican II” is “a ghost or demon that must be exorcised.”

The letter, which is subtitled “A Pastoral Letter on the Future of the Church in the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa,” comes on the heels of Pope Benedict’s re-examination of Vatican II (which I will write about in a later post, but for a detailed look, read “Letter #33, And So It Begins” at The Moynihan Report Blog, here). Bishop Nickless was elevated nearly four years ago when he was Archbishop Charles Chaput’s Vicar General in the Archdiocese of Denver, so there’s no mistaking from which perspective he comes.

Despite the attention grabbing headlines his letter has made already (and more are sure to come from all sides), Bishop Nickless carefully examines the reasons for the split in the interpretation of Vatican II, and rightfully exposes a convenient and false understanding some have made to reconsider the (and their) Faith. But he plainly states, Vatican II did not — and could not have — changed the Faith. Our Faith stems from Jesus, not a contrived philosophy based on an certain and recent period of Church history.

He encourages aspects of worship, such as Adoration and Marian devotion, as well as regular confession, that were more widely practiced before the “reforms” of Vatican II. It is certainly a profound read. An excerpt is below, and more coverage is here at CatholicCulture.org. For the entire letter, see the link above on the letter’s title.

On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the “hermeneutic of reform,” of renewal in the continuity of the one subject – Church – which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council …

It is crucial that we all grasp that the hermeneutic or interpretation of discontinuity or rupture, which many think is the settled and even official position, is not the true meaning of the Council. This interpretation sees the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church almost as two different churches. It sees the Second Vatican Council as a radical break with the past. There can be no split, however, between the Church and her faith before and after the Council. We must stop speaking of the “Pre-Vatican II” and “Post-Vatican II” Church, and stop seeing various characteristics of the Church as “pre” and “post” Vatican II. Instead, we must evaluate them according to their intrinsic value and pastoral effectiveness in this day and age …

The so-called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord’s work.

I went to what I thought would be the daily 5:30 p.m. Mass at Saint Benedict Church in Richmond. I was in for a little surprise. Saint Benedict was in the last night of a parish mission by Father Tony Stephens, C.P.M., of the Fathers of Mercy and the parish celebrated with a full-fledged Mass of the Feast of Saint Teresa of Jesus (of Avila) (see Catholic Encyclopedia).

So, instead, the Mass started at 6:00. I had a mild disappointment, to be honest. I could’ve worked longer and the longer and later starting Mass would push my evening back further — including writing here!

But how can one be disappointed at celebrating the Mass? Father Stephens’ homily made sure of that! He spoke about our great Catholic tradition of honoring the Blessed Mother and that devotion to her is Biblically based, despite protestant criticism. He thoughtfully, phrase by phrase, explained the Biblical and theological underpinnings of the Hail Mary. Then he elaborated on the Rosary and the mercy of Our Lady.

The Rosary is one of the oldest and most thorough prayers in the Church. The repetitive nature of the prayers along the decades is Mary leading us to her son, Jesus Christ. He encouraged us to pray the Rosary every day. Even if you have young children, pray it with them, and make it a part of their lives. Sure, very young ones may not be able to keep up with it, so pray one decade with them and put them to bed and continue on. A family that prays together, stays together, so make the Rosary a privilege of getting older: Let the older (and/or well-behaved) children stay up and go further along the decades with you. What a great idea to spur devotion!

A Rosary takes about 17-20 minutes to say. If necessary, pray what you can in the morning and finish upon return from work. When Jesus gave Mary to John at Calvary, He gave her to us all. That’s why, in turn, Mary gives us to Jesus. She is a great intercessor and wants to lead us to her son — exemplified in the path of the Rosary. Because Jesus did give Mary to all of us at the foot of the Cross, she, like any mom, knows her children and wants great things for us. Nothing is greater than His mercy and she is willing to help us, which is why she intercedes for us. 

One final thought: As a seminarian, Father Stephens was a bit confused when Pope John Paul II created the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. How can he do that? he thought to himself. This is a centuries old prayer, steeped in Church teaching and the Bible. Then he learned why John Paul is considered The Great: None of the first four mysteries were about Jesus’ ministry. The fifth is devoted to Jesus the Priest. How wonderful! How inspirational! Especially in this Year of the Priest, we should all rededicate ourselves to Jesus the Priest through the Rosary, especially the Mystery of Light.

Short biographies of the five saints canonized Sunday (from Catholic News Agency):

Archbishop Zygmunt Szczesny Feliński was the founder of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. He was the Archbishop of Warsaw and was committed to evangelization and support for the poor and defended the oppressed during the Russian occupation of Poland. For that, he was sentenced to 20 years in exile in Jaroslaw on the Volga. Pope Benedict said:

His gift of himself to God and man (was) full of confidence and love . . . (and) becomes a shining example for the entire Church.

Rafael Arnaiz Baron came from a wealthy family and was a bit “of a dreamer.” A Cistercian oblate, he died when he was 27 years old, and is considered one of the greatest mystics of the twentieth century. Pope Benedict held him up to the young of today who “are not satisfied with what they have.”

Father Francisco Coll y Guitard, a Dominican, founded the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of the Annunciation Blessed Virgin Mary. Through his preaching, the saint spread his love of the Word of God and the Sacrament of Reconciliation among all people, especially the young.

Father Damian of Molokai was the apostle to the lepers. He left Flanders, Belgium at the age of 23 to go on a mission to modern day Hawaii. Pope Benedict said:

Not without fear and loathing, Father Damian made the choice to go on the island of Molokai in the service of lepers who were there, abandoned by all. So he exposed himself to the disease of which they suffered. With them he felt at home. The servant of the Word became a suffering servant, leper with the lepers, during the last four years of his life.

To follow Christ, Father Damian not only left his homeland, but has also staked his health so he, as the word of Jesus announced in today’s Gospel tells us, received eternal life.

(He) teaches us to choose the good fight not those that lead to division, but those that gather us together in unity.

Sister Jeanne Jugan, St. Mary of the Cross was a French nun who founded the Little Sisters of the Poor. The order thrives today, taking care of the elderly all over the world. The Holy Father said that her ideals are

still valid today, given that many elderly people suffer from multiple poverty and loneliness, sometimes even being abandoned by their families.

Most significantly, Pope Benedict invited the faithful 

to allow themselves to be attracted by the shining example of these saints, to be guided by their teachings so that our entire lives become a hymn of praise to God’s love.

The Holy Father’s homily yesterday at the canonization of the five saints starts out strong and only gets better — a must read! These are just the first two paragraphs, but you can read it in its entirety, here, courtesy of ZENIT. It’s about 2,000 words.

His emphasis is the example of the saints. “Come, follow me!” They followed Jesus, unlike the rich man in the Gospel. They put themselves aside to serve Jesus, rejected the temptation of a life of self, and rejected cultures that rejected God. It is hard, no question, and requires great humility. But isn’t anything worthwhile hard? Aren’t the greatest reward realized after hard work? Is there a greater reward than Heavenly salvation? 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” This is the question that opens the brief dialogue we heard in the Gospel, between a man, identified elsewhere as the rich young man, and Jesus (cf Mk 10:17-30). We do not have very many details about this nameless character: all the same from the little we do have we are able to perceive his sincere desire to attain eternal life by living an honest and virtuous existence on earth. In fact he knows the commandments and has obeyed them since childhood. And yet all of this, while important, is not sufficient — says Jesus — there is one thing missing, but it is an essential thing. Seeing then that he is willing, the Divine Master looks at him with love and proposes the qualitative leap, he calls him to the heroism of sanctity, he asks him to abandon everything and follow him: “Sell what you own and give the money to the poor . . . then come, follow me!” (V. 21).

“Then come, follow me!” This is the Christian vocation that flows from a proposal of love by the Lord, and that can be realized only thanks to our loving reply. Jesus invites his disciples to the total giving of their lives, without calculation or personal gain, with unfailing trust in God. The saints welcome this demanding invitation and set about following the crucified and risen Christ with humble docility. Their perfection, in the logic of a faith that is humanly incomprehensible at times, consists in no longer placing themselves at the center, but choosing to go against the flow and live according to the Gospel. This is what was done by the five saints who today, with great joy, are being put forward for veneration by the universal Church: Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Francisco Coll y Guitart, Jozef Damiaan de Veuster, Rafael Arnáiz Barón, Marie de la Croix (Jeanne) Jugan. In them we can contemplate the realization of the words of the Apostle Peter: “Look, we have left everything and followed you” (V. 28) and the consoling reassurance of Jesus: “There is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times as much…and persecutions too, now in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life” (VV. 29-30)

Today, at Saint Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints (see CNS), including a Belgian priest who lived among and treated lepers in Hawaii and a French nun, Jeanne Jugan, who founded the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order which cares for the elderly.

The latter is particularly touching to me. One Sunday a year, a nun from the Little Sisters order in Richmond, Va., where I live, speaks at all six Masses at my parish, in a second collection appeal for the Saint Joseph’s Nursing Home it so ably runs. It used to be an elderly Irish nun, who was sharp as a newly minted knife. Her appeal was the same every year, but so well delivered. It was quite charming to hear it each year.

In her presentation, she never failed to mention the Blessed Jeanne Jugan, the order’s founder, “who we hope will be cannonized a saint one day soon.” I always found that to be particularly charming — they never give up hope, I would think. What faith! But how likely is it to happen? These nuns truly love this woman.

When I heard the news a couple weeks ago, I was stunned. But happily so. I hope the news of this canonization brings more recognition to such a wonderfully devoted order. They deserve it.

Pope Benedict: The perfection of the saints is “in choosing to go against the trend, in living according to the Gospel.” Jesus, even today, invites us all to the total gift of our lives, “without calculation and human self-interest. A demanding call, therefore, which the saints generously welcome, humbly dedicating themselves to obediently follow the crucified and risen Christ.”

Washington, D.C., Catholics in the legal profession celebrated the annual Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle last Sunday and heard a staunch defense of the unborn and a call for their protection from America’s newest cardinal, Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. Attending were six members of the U.S. Supreme Court, including new Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (Six members of the court are Catholic, but one, Justice Clarence Thomas, was away. The other five and Justice Steven Breyer, who is Jewish, attended.)

In speaking about the unborn, Cardinal DiNardo said in his homily (read its entirety, here):

A person can forget that the basis of that knowledge is something much more natural in the human condition, that the law and lawyers are around because justice among human beings is always an issue.

There are always smoldering wicks and bruised reeds needing our human attention, an attention that cries out and says that even sophisticated knowledgeable ‘human’ lawyers need reminding, need a purifying divine fire from the Lord, both in their personal lives and in their profession itself. It is that reality that brings us to praise, reflection, and prayer this day.

They are poor and wealthy, confused and lucid, polite and impolited. In some cases, the clients are voiceless, for they lack influence; in others they are literally voiceless, not yet with tongues and even without names, and require our most careful attention and radical support.

If the homily did not get the message across, those attending received a less subtle message. Randal Terry, one of America’s most vociferous pro-life advocates, and a convert to the Faith, led a rally outside the cathedral, in full earshot of those attending the Mass.

The name “Red Mass” is honor of the flame of the Holy Spirit and has been celebrated to bring blessings upon the Supreme Court and other legal officials in the U.S. since 1953. However, it has origins as far back as 13th century France.

For more on the Mass, read this article from Randy Sly, Associate Editor of Catholic Online. He is a former Archbishop himself — of the Charismatic Episcopal Church. He resigned that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

Last night I watched some of Father Corapi on EWTN, a good way to wind down the night after a hectic weekend (which included harrasment by pro-abortionists at a prayer vigil in front of an abortion center). At Mass that morning, the celebrant gave an uncompromising homily on life, the unborn and marriage. Refreshing stuff for the soul and Father Corapi was a great bookend to the day.

At one point in his homily, he offered a well known quote by G.K. Chesterton (see The American Chesterton), the great and prolific English writer who converted to Catholicism in the early 20th century. It deserves repeating in this age of rationalization and the dictatorship of relativism. It’s something that would stupify the pro-abortionists who mocked those at the pray vigil. 

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

As with most things worthy of a life well lived, of giving more than receiving, of a live above self, it is not easy. That’s why, as a deacon told me recently, we have a narrow gate. Others may have a wide gate. Who wants to find where Jesus taught the path to Heavenly Salvation was one traversed with ease and without care?

As Chesterton wrote in “Why I Am A Catholic:”

In short, I would say chiefly of the Catholic Church that it is catholic. I would rather try to suggest that it is not only larger than me, but larger than anything in the world; that it is indeed larger than the world. But since in this short space I can only take a section, I will consider it in its capacity of a guardian of the truth. …

There is no end to the dissolution of ideas, the destruction of all tests of truth, that has become possible since men abandoned the attempt to keep a central and civilized Truth, to contain all truths and trace out and refute all errors. Since then, each group has taken one truth at a time and spent the time in turning it into a falsehood. We have had nothing but movements; or in other words, monomanias. But the Church is not a movement but a meeting-place; the trysting-place of all the truths in the world.

View this new video from CatholicVoteAction.org, the new sister organization of CatholicVote.org, which is known for its world class videos and television ads on important public policy issues and how they affect Catholic teaching. I’ll have more comment this week on the two organizations.

Government run health care as good as all the other great things government gives us — and just as efficient, too!

Continuing with the emphasis of reverence in preparation to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in the Blessed Sacrament —prompted by Cardinal Cipriani — here is another prayer to say and upon which to meditate in the minutes prior to receiving Holy Communion.

Perhaps say it before Mass to help you prepare your mind for the Holy significance of the Eucharist and the meaning of our celebration at Mass. It was written by Saint Francis de Sales (biography, here, at Catholic Online). A good essay on the Holy Spirit is linked to Catholic Online within the prayer.

Your Sacred Table: A Prayer before Communion  

Divine Saviour,
we come to Your sacred table
to nourish ourselves,
not with bread but with Yourself,
true Bread of eternal life.
Help us daily to make a good and perfect meal
of this divine food.
Let us be continually refreshed
by the perfume of Your kindness and goodness.
May the Holy Spirit fill us with His Love.
Meanwhile, let us prepare a place
for this holy food by emptying our hearts.

Amen.

To further your appreciation of the significance of what it means to receive the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, here is a link to an index of Communion Prayers at Catholic Online. Please make reverence at Holy Communion a point of emphasis within your family, friends and fellow parishioners.