Fr. Ulf Jonsson, S.J. On Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer,

L’Osservatore Romano has published an article in praise of Tomas Tranströmer, the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature. Father Ulf Jonsson’s tribute to Tranströmer’s work follows an assessment written by Claudio Toscani in the newspaper’s October 8 edition. Father Jonsson, a Jesuit philosophy professor, says that Tranströmer’s writings “are permeated with a sense of mystery and openness to the infiniteness of another world, shining through his metaphors taken from everyday life.” The newspaper’s tributes to Tranströmer echo its praise of the 2010 laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, and stand in contrast to its criticism of the 1997 and 1998 laureates, Dario Fo and Jose Saramago. 

Link (here) to Catholic Culture

Centuries Later The Counter Reformation Continues

The Newman Institute in Uppsala, Sweden

Stockholm (kath.net / KAP) is the weekend after centuries reopen a Catholic university in Sweden their doors. The "Newmaninstitutet" in Uppsala is in, according to the university administration, the first Catholic educational institution since the Reformation 16th his century, which receives the power to take academic exams. 1477 Pope Sixtus IV had been the last Catholic university founded in Uppsala. The Jesuit-run university is celebrating its opening on Sunday afternoon with three papers which deal, inter alia, the challenges to Christianity today.

Link (here) to the original.

Hat Tip to Tancred (here)
Link (here) to read about Swieta Lipka, the Jesuits and the Swedish Protestant invasion of Poland

Queen Christina Of Sweden And Her Jesuit Father Macedo

Three years after the election of Father Goschwin Nickel as Superior General a Portuguese Jesuit, Father Antonio Macedo, was instrumental in the conversion of Queen Christina of Sweden, who when a child had succeeded her father Gustavus Adolphus.

Father Macedo, a former missionary in Africa, was attached by John IV. of Portugal to the Portuguese embassy at Stockholm. Although he was obliged to conceal his priesthood under the employment of secretary, his real calling became known to the queen, whose mind had been favourably inclined towards the true faith by her intercourse with the famous philosopher, Descartes, a pupil of the Jesuits of La Fleche. After several conferences with Father Macedo she declared her intention to abdicate the throne, and to become a Catholic, a resolve which she executed some months later.

In spite of her violent passions and wayward undisciplined character, Christina appears to have been sincere in this the great act of her life; and through all the vicissitudes of her strange career she remained stanch to the Catholic faith. Out of gratitude to her Jesuit instructor, she besought the Pope to make him a cardinal—a dignity that Father Macedo constantly declined, and to the end of his life his favourite occupation was teaching the poor children of Lisbon, where he died in 1693.

Link (here)

Swedish Jesuit And Others On The Various Forms Of Secularism

Secularism and other Enlightenment ideals. The ideal of secularism can be briefly summarised as holding that the best course of action in politics and other civic fields is that which flows from disparate groups’ and religions’ common understanding of the “good”. By implication, Church and State should be separated, and the laws of the state should generally only cover the “common ground” of beliefs between the various religious groups that might be present — for example the prohibition of murder, etc.

From the secularists’ point of view, it was possible to distinguish between political ideas and structures that were religious and those that were not. Catholic theologians in the mainstream argued that such a distinction was not possible, that all aspects of society had to be organized with the final goal of heaven in mind.

This was a direct counter to the thread of Humanism that had been in the forefront of intellectual thought since the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. The roots of secularism they traced to those English philosophers who attempted to create a “universal religion” based on the “common denominator” of all other religions; it was largely spread through the secret societies of the Enlightenment, including the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Carbonari, and its greatest threat, in the writings of this school, was the spectre of Democracy.
Link (here)


An interesting book excerpt on the subject from Malachi Martin's,
The Jesuits (here)

In a Very Secular France, Nicolas Sarkozy Is Breaking a Taboo

By Sandro Magister
.
An excerpt.

In Sweden, Germany, and France – the most secularized areas of Europe – there would seem to be signs of “a reversal of this tendency, with growing interest in religious matters.”

These words were written in regard to Sweden by Jesuit Fr. Ulf Jonsson, professor of philosophy at the University of Uppsala, in an article published in the May 6, 2006 edition of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the authoritative Jesuit magazine printed with the prior scrutiny of the Vatican authorities.

In the article, entitled “Nuove prospettive per la religione in Svezia? [New prospects for religion in Sweden?],” Jonsson documents that “in spite of the fact that the number of participants at religious ceremonies is still very low, there is renewed attention to religion, and to Christianity in particular, in the media and public opinion: this was unthinkable in the past, when religion was relegated to the private sphere.”

Link (here)

The next time you hear that Religion caused “X” amount of violence, remind them the 20th century was the age of secularism, and the bloodiest age of human history. It was not a coincidence

Link (here)

A Jesuit victim of extremist Secularism was Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.



Secularists for love of religion

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

An excerpt.

American society was built in great part by groups that had fled from the system of state Churches in place in Europe, and had found their own religious accommodation in free communities of faith outside of the state Church.

The foundation of American society is therefore constituted by the free Churches, for which – because of their religious approach – it is essential that they not be state Churches, but founded on a free union of individuals.

In this sense, one can say that at the basis of American society there is a separation between state and Church that is determined, even demanded by religion; a separation, therefore, that is motivated and structured quite differently in comparison with the one imposed, under the banner of conflict, by the French Revolution and by the systems that followed it.

The state in America is nothing other than the free space for different religious communities; it is in its nature to recognize these communities in their particularity and in their non-statal identity, and to let them live.

It is a separation that intends to let religion be itself, that respects and protects its vital space distinguished from the state and from its ordinances, it is a separation conceived of positively.

Link (here)