Tuesday, February 03 2009, 4:00pm - 7:00pm
Father Fernando Cardenal from
Cardenal is now the director of the organization Fe y Alegria (Faith and Happiness.) His lecture will be delivered in Spanish with English translations to follow
Location:
Wiki (here)
There were 30 Jesuit compounds back in the day, in the Missions Districts of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The one we saw was one of the largest, it held 5000 people once upon a time. The compounds were built to protect the natives from the Portugese slave traders who would come in and kidnap the natives and take them to Europe as slaves. Or perhaps they were built to evangelize the natives. Or perhaps the Jesuit priests enslaved the natives (an unlikely theory since there were only 2 priests and 4998 natives). These are the theories.
For the first time, all four high schools in the Southern Province (soon to be Mississippi Valley Province) for the first time were represented.
I took the bus to the small town of Jesús María to visit two Jesuit Estancias (ranches) left over 
from the years of colonization. I have already made clear my love of old buildings, but have I described my love of the Jesuits? Ever since I received my Jesuit education at Seattle U, I have felt a strange tie to the Jesuits. I don't consider myself Catholic and I never even took a class from a priest, but in many ways my Jesuit education has led me to South America, and for that, I decided to pay my respects.There were also really creepy religious paintings and scary looking crucifixes, which I loved. I love the ones that show Jesus dripping with blood and gore. I love the drama of Catholicism.There were also amazingly delicate and detailed medallions, some decorated with mother of pearl. I got to stand on the balcony of the church, and it was gorgeous. Its dome and walls were painted baby blue with white accents, and it had an intricate chandelier. It seemed peaceful, the way churches are supposed to.
Sometimes, I find Latin American churches to be too gaudy and overdone, so that they distract from the purpose of going to church in the first place. But I found myself thinking, I might actually enjoy going to church in a place like this!I also highly enjoyed wandering through the halls and rooms of the estancia, imagining the items in use, a Jesuit perched on a tiny, ancient bed, 0r myself gazing out the window hundreds of years ago. Enchanting, enchanting!
An eighth-generation Chinese Catholic, Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1945. After studying several years in Europe, Father Jin returned to Shanghai in 1950, where he served as a faithful collaborator of Bishop Kung. Sensing what was about to befall the Church, Kung scrambled to prepare as many young men for the priesthood as possible.He trusted Father Jin deeply enough to make him rector of the local seminary, giving him the responsibility of forming Shanghai's clergy.
It remains one of the stranger episodes in the annals of congressional-FBI relations: In the winter of 1975, US Representative Robert F. Drinan was touring the FBI headquarters when he broke away and opened a drawer to find a set of index cards under his name.A three-month battle ensued between the Massachusetts Democrat and the federal law enforcement agency over access to the file. When Drinan finally got a redacted copy of his own record, he pronounced it garbage, filled with news clippings in which the names of people already published in the newspapers were carefully blacked out by federal officials.
Now, on the second anniversary of his death, a copy of Drinan's FBI file, obtained by the Globe through a Freedom of Information Act request, provides a bookend to the story.
The file is unlikely to reshape history's view of the only Jesuit priest to serve in Congress, but it provides a backstage look at the dispute between the congressman and the agency and a reminder of how much the FBI changed over the second half of the 20th century.
In the 1970s and before, the FBI clearly viewed the congressman as potential trouble. At one point, when Drinan was quoted by a news service denouncing Attorney General John N. Mitchell as "the most dangerous attorney general that we have ever had," an FBI official scribbled on a document, "This fellow Drinan is like McGovern + Anderson - anything to get publicity."
The document does not make clear who McGovern and Anderson are, but the references seem likely to be to Senator George S. McGovern and either US Representative John B. Anderson or Jack Anderson, a syndicated newspaper columnist.
Drinan, born in Boston in 1920, had served as a professor and dean at Boston College Law School from 1956 to 1971, when he began a decade in Congress after being elected in 1970 as an antiwar candidate. Drinan was an outspoken liberal, a critic of the Vietnam War, a forceful advocate of civil liberties, and,
to the dismay of church officials, a supporter of abortion rights.He was also the first member of Congress to call for the impeachment of President Nixon.
Drinan announced he would not seek reelection in 1981 after Pope John Paul II decreed that priests should not serve in elective office. Drinan then taught at Georgetown Law School from 1981 until his death in 2007.
The file indicates that the FBI had run its first check on Drinan in 1960, a decade before his election to Congress; upon his election, a note indicates that the bureau's files "reflect that the Reverend Drinan has been active in civil rights matters."
In 1971, a suspicious nun wrote FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, saying, "I had doubted Father Drinan's authenticity as a Catholic priest because I had read of certain views he expressed that seemed to be un-American, as well as unorthodox, from a religious standpoint. If he is someone who has been 'planted' in the church, he could do great harm."
In 1975, the FBI investigated an anonymous death threat against several public figures, including Drinan, from someone purporting to represent "antiliberal and anti-Communist groups."
But the heart of the file is the history of the dispute that began in February 1975, when Drinan took a congressional tour of the FBI and discovered 20 to 30 3-by-5 cards with his name on them in a file. Drinan demanded to know how the FBI could justify collecting information on private citizens, and said, "I assure you I shall work to prevent the FBI from further engaging in the practice of attaching a stigma to persons whose political or social views may be at variance with the temporary majority of the nation."
"I have never at any time been involved in anything related to criminal prosecution," Drinan wrote to the FBI. "Consequently I was astonished and chagrined to discover the surveillance of a political nature."
The FBI accused Drinan of having ignored instructions and "delved into a file drawer containing index cards" and refused to honor Drinan's timeline for releasing his files, saying that would amount to special treatment for a congressman.
After considerable back-and-forth and for a fee of $8.10, the FBI released a redacted version of Drinan's file three months after his tour; he quickly made it public and denounced it.
By the time the FBI next scrutinized Drinan, in 1994 with his consent, the tone had completely changed. The agency reported two minor issues: In 1975, there had been an unsubstantiated complaint that Drinan had improperly solicited disabled veterans for a campaign, and in 1985 he had been arrested for protesting apartheid in front of South Africa's embassy.
Read the full article (here) in the Boston Globe.
Fr. Phil Florio, S.J., is the new Chaplain-Director of the Penn Newman Center, succeeding Fr. Charles Zlock. Fr. Florio comes to Penn Newman with over nine years of experience in campus ministry. He has previously served as director of Campus Ministry at the University of Scranton, and more recently was Chaplain and Assistant Vice President for Student Life at Saint Joseph’s University. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, but has lived and worked in Chile, Bolivia, and Mexico. He will be the first Jesuit to take the position. Fr. Florio has a BS in political science and an MS in training and organizational development from Saint Joseph’s University, MA in philosophy from Fordham University and master’s degrees in theology and divinity from Boston College. He will complete a doctorate in ministry from the Catholic University of America next year.
Link (here)
An old photo of Belvedere College in DublinLittle is known about China in Ireland that goes beyond cuisine and kung fu movie stereotypes.
While China is not a top destination for Irish travelers, Irish Jesuits made a home for themselves there over four hundred years ago.In the 1920s they built a school, Wah Yan Jesuit College Kowloon in Hong Kong, and it is this connection which has inspired a new student exchange project between China and Ireland.
The Jesuit Belvedere College in Dublin has a healthy transition year program. Between sport, music, drama (and everything else) it can be a busy year for TY students. A new program begun this year gives those in TY the opportunity to experience Chinese language and culture. Run by the UCD Confucius Institute, the 10-week course includes modules in Chinese language, food, society, tradition, arts, film and music.
Link (here)
"And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that."Belvedere College SJ is a private Jesuit school for boys located on Great Denmark street where it meets N. Great George street. It was founded in 1832. George Augustus Rochfort (1738-1814), who became the Second Earl of Belvedere in 1774, built Belvedere House (seen in the background on this PC), a dominant building on the school's campus, and a fine example of Georgian architecture in Ireland.
Blessed Julien Maunoir
Saint-George de Reintembault, France, October 1, 1606 - Plévin, France, January 28, 1683
Patronage: Brittany
Roman Martyrology: In the village of Plévin in Brittany in France, Blessed Julien Maunoir, priest of the Society of Jesus, that both in towns and villages as in cities of this province to forty-two years he devoted himself entirely to the missions to the people.
Blessed Julien Maunoir is considered the ‘apostle of Brittany’, the historical region of France, for the extraordinary work missionary who played well for forty-two years. Born on October 1, 1606 in Saint-George de Reintembault fifth of seven children of a small trader of fabrics. The venerable Le Nobletz Michele (1577-1652), a popular missionary mysteriously learned of her birth and that in him God had prepared a help and a successor. Julien’s first teachers were his parents, usually happy to share with the poor the proceeds of their work. The favorite game of Julien was to bring together the partners, siding two by two in order of procession, and to repeat their prayers and songs learned in church. A priest of the parish, noting his attitude, uncommon in his peers, taught the him the basics of Latin and allowed him to attend a college of Rennes, the Jesuits between 1620 and 1625. Julien did not let himself be influenced by bad company and persuaded some of the companions of Mary congregation to burn the books perverse, not to attend the inns and to moderate the passion for the game. Hearing of businesses Jesuit missionary in China, Japan, America, and the thought that many souls are lost for lack of apostles, he meditated finally enter into the religious life.
During his novitiate he was noted in the exercise of brotherly love. Since the time of college life was proposed:
“I want to live as if there were not that God, always assuming his rescue: without that I know of nothing he can not … Always attentive to what God wants from me, think that he may want to prepare for a Jesuit to everything that require its services. Oh, how I love that God is infinitely good and love me as I want from him.”To that end he began to punish various ways in his flesh. After the religious profession Julien studied philosophy for three years in La Flèche, until 1630. His studies of Saint Jogues who was also martyred in North America.
He had to withdraw, cultivating purity and humility, and during one of these withdrawals confessed in his diary:
“I felt pure joy with two angels as if I had extracted the heart out of the chest and have squeezed out to make all that I was of natural affection. ”On July 15, 1628 for the whole day he felt consumed by the fire of divine love and “violently pushed to suffer for God.”
Then meditating on “two standards”, namely that of Christ the King and that of Satan, he noted: “Pativo to have so many sacrifices to be done for the Lord, and my vocation that I am destined to the salvation of souls, I became even more expensive. A voice below me repeated four or five times, with a tone of admiration: “Oh, if you knew! If you knew!. Including then that the great thing is to cooperate with Jesus to the conversion of men … To glorify my God I want suffer all the torments of hell, except for the deprivation of his love. Bramerei well the fire of purgatory: do suffer a lot, but does not prevent you from loving God. “
I had to admire excess of this young, now mystical union with the Lord, the conduct “always the same, the lovable activities without haste, the gaiety of spirits quiet, qualities which he joined in perfect obedience, a charity affable, a constant application to work so as to intellectual piety, to a recollection without contrasts and a large domain of himself. ” At the end of philosophy was intended as a professor in the College of Quimper, but he did not gave up hope of one day bringing the faith to the pagans. A brother urged him to learn the language of Brittany, but Father Maunoir replied: “Know that my mission is my school, and that I have to learn the languages Latin and Greek. If I study some other, it will be that of Canada, where I believe that God called me. “
He was again addressed the proposal to engage in missions in Brittany, but was prevented for a lack of knowledge of the language.
One day, during a pilgrimage to a Marian shrine, he had a vision of inner bishoprics of Quimper, St-Brieuc, Leon and Trétone, and came before the painting of the Madonna praying thus: “My good mother, whether you are worthy of teach Breton, the soon learn very soon and I will be able to earn the servants. ”Then returned to the college, the brothers were not a little puzzled about his project, but the province in 1631 gave him the permission and, after two days of study, the Maunoir began in the countryside of Brittany’s work catechesis and preaching. Blessed Virgin Mary had miraculously given him the gift of language.
As soon as he received fewer orders, Julien started going every Sunday in the neighboring countries to catechizing people. Such was his enthusiasm he that got sick in 1632 and then moved above it in Tours, where the forces recovered and gave the sick catechizing the hospital, the poor of the most abandoned and the prisoners. In the College of Bourges Julien authorized presbyteral prepartion and God granted him the gift of intimate union continued with him through prayer. The withdrawal of the second year of theology, companion of St. Gabriel Lallemant, also martyred in 1646 in Canada, noted: “Our Lord says below:” I have long toiled for souls, I cried, I have suffered and died for them. ” These words commossero more I do not know that and say that the ardor felt already grew to the point that, if it was necessary to die to save one soul, I would be dead with all my heart. ” During the third year of theology an arm swell over the measure and put him briefly at the end of life. Before receiving the viaticum vote was that if he were returned to health, he would have spent all his strength to serve the people of Brittany. The answer was affirmative of Heaven and just healed Julian returned to preach and to teach the catechism.
He became a priest in 1637, was intended as a professor at the College of Nevers, but soon his request was accepted and after seven years of absence was able to return to Quimper. Died on the bishop who opposed his work, Le Nobletz invited Giuliano with him in the solitude of Conquet, made him his general confession, then summoned the faithful to church and took them Maunoir as his successor. He made him a gift of his bell and his paintings are symbolic of what used to be able to better explain to the illiterate the major mysteries of the faith.
At Quimper, many priests, after some hesitation, were attracted by the Maunoir, proposing also to preach and proclaim throughout the diocese. The governor of Quimper and the Cardinal Richelieu contained their aid with the lack of material resources. Julien Maunoir began his apostolate in the port of Douarnenez putting in harmonic “the paraphrase of the most important prayers and truth of religion. Before leaving this town, healed a paralytic by touching the forehead with an object blessed by The Nobletz. The missionary, now famous for his holiness, went to evangelize the islands of Quessant, and Molenes Sein, where thousands of followers dragged also making miracles with corn oil blessed. Despite many successes, not lacking, however, the jealous that through slander tried in vain to draw him to the College of Jesuits, denied by the witness of the islanders. Even the songs he composed were indicted and prohibitions on who knew Brittany, but the Confirmation came from the islands by catechizzate Maunoir not long to make ensure the orthodoxy. In 1642 could finally be given to press and had great success, contributing greatly to the success of the processions and sacred representations of the Gospel.
Having preached in these islands, the Maunoir traveled on foot and on horseback, the entire Lower Brittany between hazards and hardships of all sorts and in less than ten years and managed to confess catechizing about half a million people. While the need for Nobletz had almost always worked alone, the Maunoir instead aroused many vocations to the priesthood, thus creating valuable aid for his apostolic labors. Everyone followed him willingly and loved ever since he had shown “humble, wise, uplifting, mortified, poor, simple, always ready to help its neighbor to give service to its enemies and to take everything to win souls to God, it being in ‘ execution of his drawings and full of confidence in that all-powerful arm holding him up.”
Every now and Julien returned to relax a little ‘between the brothers, using the time to extend the effective action by the written word with its ascetic and biographical. In 1671 he decided to engage the work of withdrawals on that mission and the attempt succeeded successfully. There were some for periods of his illness, but finally had a revelation that was about to reach his final hours. In returning to Quimper, we had to stop Plévin now prostrated by fever and a violent pain in my side. Prepared death sighed:
“Jesus is my life, and it is a gain for me to die.”A local nobleman would have wanted to carry him to his castle for better medical care, but he preferred to complete the earthly life as similar as possible to the poor. For many priests who flocked to his bedside recommended: “The greatest pleasure that I can do is to make or to renew the intention to work in the missions until your last breath. I do not know function holier and more useful.”
Julien Maunoir, received the last sacraments, finally died on January 28, 1683. On that cold winter evening in the eastern horizon is infuocò mysteriously. The bishop of Quimper he wanted to buried the mortal remains of the sainted missionary in the cathedral, but the inhabitants of Plévin strongly opposed this. At the tomb, a few days after the burial, a paralyzed boy suddenly regained health before the faithful who filled the church. Following the papal decree promulgated on March 4, 1951 by Pope Pius XII, May 20 following Julien could be raised to the glory of the altars and the status of protector of Brittany.
Author: Fabio Arduino
Source: Santi e Beati
Thank you The Black Cordelias (here)
Harry F. Magnuson's civic passion was Gonzaga University. When in the 1960s the Jesuit university found itself in dire financial straits, and banks calling in credit, Magnuson personally guaranteed the school's debts. A Gonzaga trustee for some 40 years -- and the university's first lay trustee -- Magnuson was presented with Gonzaga's highest honor, the Desmet Medal, during commencement ceremonies last year. Gonzaga President, Fr. Robert Spitzer, said of the university's benefactor that if Gonzaga had a second founder, it was Harry Magnuson. Last November, the university dedicated the Harry and Colleen Magnuson Theatre in their honor Harry Magnuson is survived by his wife, Colleen Burns Magnuson, sons James, Thomas and John, and daughters Kathleen and Mary Elizabeth. Funeral services are planned for 11 a.m. Thursday at St. Aloysius at Gonzaga University. .
I translated this post via Google translator, it comes from a Latin Mass oriented blog from Portugal called, Missa Tridentina Em Portugal. Some of the sentence structure is a little hurky jurky but I will have more links at the bottom of the post. You will be reading excerpts from Father Reus' diary and his encounters with Christ within the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Certainly the regulation 11 Insignibus et Domini vestibus indu. Victina tuis love! - Dressed the insignia and robes of the Lord. Victim of your love! In the afternoon, the visit to the Blessed, I saw my heart in the midst of a great flame. The Sacred Heart or so and asks me to do the drawing. Desire not to delude myself. But what will I do?
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X in 1969, opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, particularly its allowing of Mass to be celebrated in local languages instead of Latin.
In 1978, Lefebvre came to St. Mary's Academy and College to inspect the campus of St. Mary’s, which through 1966 the Jesuits operated as a Roman Catholic seminary. Lefebvre authorized purchase of the property, and the academy’s Web site says by 2003, the number of parishioners worshiping there was about 2,450.
In 1988 when Lefebvre ordained four bishops with Rome’s consent, he and they were excommunicated. Lefebvre died in 1991.
In a statement today, the current head of the society and one of the rehabilitated bishops, Bernard Fellay, expressed his gratitude to Benedict and said the decree would help the whole Catholic Church.
The Society believes the Church is in crisis and blames in part the doctrinal reforms of Vatican II, including its ecumenical outreach, for causing it.
“Our Society wishes to be always more able to help the pope to remedy the unprecedented crisis which presently shakes the Catholic world,” Fellay said.
Benedict made clear from the start of his pontificate that he wanted to normalize relations with the society, meeting within months of his election with Fellay and convening cardinals to discuss bringing the society back into the Vatican’s fold.
In 2007, Benedict answered one of Fellay’s key demands by relaxing restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass. In lifting the excommunication decree, he answered the society’s second condition for beginning theological discussions about normalizing relations.
However, the Vatican has its demands of the SSPX, including respect for the pope and his authority.
Link (here) to the full article
Fr. James Martin, S.J. has two posts on The Society of St. Pius X. Here are some excerpts and links to those posts.
Pope Lifts Excommunication of Lefebvrite bishops
Educated in Catholic schools by the Jesuits at the Jesuit College of La Flèche between 1606 and 1614, Rene Descartes came of age during the scientific revolution. Observation and the empirical method had tumbled old belief systems and provoked crises in faith in individual identity. Doubts pervaded every aspect of life, and it was Descartes' destiny to grapple with and resolve them. With everything in turmoil, how can people be sure they even exist? His answer, "I think, thereforeI am," has reverberated through the centuries,
President Evo Morales seemed assured of an easy victory in a referendum on Sunday over a sweeping new Constitution aimed at empowering Bolivia’s Indians. The vote capped three years of conflict-ridden efforts by Mr. Morales to overhaul a political system he had associated with centuries of indigenous subjugation. Citing preliminary vote counts, reports on national television said about 60 percent of voters had approved the new Constitution. If that margin holds or goes higher, it would strengthen Mr. Morales’s mandate, political analysts here said. In symbolic importance, said Xavier Albó, a Jesuit scholar and linguist, the new Constitution may be the equivalent of Spain’s Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors in 1492.But instead of the blood spilled in that process, Mr. Albó said, Bolivia is “advancing in a democratic process that does not exclude or subjugate anyone.” Some Bolivians who read the entire Constitution came away with other impressions. Edmundo Paz Soldán, a writer who teaches at Cornell University, said it reminded him of an essay by Jorge Luis Borges that describes a Chinese encyclopedia’s attempt to divide fauna into myriad nonsensical categories. For instance, Mr. Paz Soldán said that the Constitution recognized 36 different indigenous groups in Bolivia, some with fewer than 100 people, but that it was unclear how precisely each group would be enfranchised in a country where three main indigenous groups — the Quechua, Aymara and Guaraní — wield much larger influence. “The mind-boggling text may have the ratification of the majority,” Mr. Paz Soldán said, “but it might not be the recipe for a viable country.”
Link (here)
Photo is of Fr. Albo
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic "stimulus" package, claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government." 
THE SPIDER, which is set to film in Istanbul and Manhattan, has already managed to attract a load of talent.The iconic Malcolm McDowell has signed on to play “a Jesuit priest with a secret agenda,” says Sigl,while three-time Academy Award winner Howard Shore will take on composing duties. Furthermore, casting director John Hubbard and Oscar-nominated special FX supervisor Ian Wingrove have also agreed to take part in the film. It seems Wingrove will have his work cut out for him as the story plans to surreally move from the present into visions of the past.
“As our story takes us through modern Istanbul and at some point seamlessly back into the ancient times of Emperor Constantine the Great, who reigned from 324 until 337, the production design and the visual effects must contribute to the overall strangeness our hero feels when he enters an unusual world,”Sigl says. “In order to give the movie an almost mythical and mystical soul, the effects should be as subtle as possible to create the perfect illusion of everyday reality blending effortlessly into nightmarish visions of a former life lived some 1700 years ago.” Such sights will apparently include an Istanbul alley suddenly mutating into the site of a Byzantine funeral procession, and “a shapeshifting weaver woman literally melting into her own tapestry before she gets hacked out again by the swords of Roman soldiers,” Sigl says.
