This Is The End, My Beautiful Friend, The End

Father John Allan Loftus, S.J. the Director of the Jesuit Urban Center at the Boston Church of the Immaculate Conception recommending a “Brokeback Lent.” In his homily for Ash Wednesday, March 1, Loftus urged congregants to watch the film.

“I suspect many in this community have already seen Brokeback Mountain,” he said. “If not see it; if you have, see it again and reflect on the consequences of not being interiorly free, the consequences of not knowing who you really are and want to become, the tragic consequences and subsequent devastation that comes from only living in a ‘pretend’ world.”

Immaculate Conception closes in the South End

By Patrick E. O’Connor Pilot Correspondent
Posted: 8/10/2007

SOUTH END -- It was a full house July 29 at the closing Mass of the landmark Immaculate Conception Church, known in recent years as the Jesuit Urban Center.

In April, the Jesuits announced the closing of the church, ending a 146-year presence in the South End. The financial cost of operating the JUC, declining Mass attendance and revenue as well as some serious maintenance problems with the building were cited as reasons for closing the church.

In 1841, Bishop John B. Fitzpatrick invited the Jesuits to come to a growing Archdiocese of Boston. Father John McElroy, SJ, founder of Boston College toured the city looking for a suitable site to erect a church, high school and college. After encountering resistance from city authorities, he settled on a site in the fashionable South End.

Ground was broken for Immaculate Conception Church in 1858. The cornerstone was laid in 1859. The beautiful edifice, built entirely of New Hampshire granite, was dedicated on Oct. 14, 1861 by Bishop Fitzpatrick. With appropriate ceremonies, the church was solemnly consecrated by Archbishop John J. Williams on Aug. 15, 1875.

Immaculate Conception Church was designed by Patrick C. Keely, a prominent Catholic architect of the time whose work also included the nearby Holy Cross Cathedral. Architectural historians who have researched the history of the church believe that the interior was probably influenced by another Boston architect of the time, Arthur Gilman. One of the church’s most attractive features is the 30-foot high windows with light-gray etched glass that fill the church with natural light.

In 1863, Boston College was established at the site and was based on a seven-year program combining high school and college. Father McElroy lived to see his great church go hand-in-hand with a Catholic college educating Irish immigrants during a time of racial and religious intolerance in the city. He died on Oct. 3, 1864. For 50 years, the college and high school shared the same site, twice enlarged and inseparable. In 1913, the college left the South End for a new site at Chestnut Hill in Newton, beginning a new era for Boston College. Boston College High remained. The two institutions were legally separated in 1927. In 1950, Boston College High, having outgrown the South End site, moved to a new location on Columbia Point.

During the time of Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, Immaculate Conception -- never a parish church -- continued to draw immense crowds impressed with its beautiful interior, fine music and fine preaching and retreats conducted by the Jesuits. The centennial of the dedication was commemorated by a Mass of Thanksgiving led by Cardinal Cushing on Dec. 10, 1961. A banquet followed at the Catholic Alumni Sodality Hall.

Urban renewal in the 1960s had an effect on Immaculate Conception Church in an over-churched South End. By the 1980s, the upper church was rarely used. In 1986, the Jesuits began a renovation of the church that offended preservationists and art scholars. A 1987 Boston Landmarks Commission designation of the interior as a city landmark was ruled invalid by a superior court ruling in 1989. In the 1990s the Jesuit Urban Center, as the church came to be called, came alive again with a well-attended Mass on Sunday mornings attracting Catholics from throughout the area. The interior, while not as spectacular as in earlier times, was redesigned with individual chairs arranged around a new sanctuary area.

A steering committee formed this year to investigate a new worshipping site for the Immaculate Conception congregation has recommended that they attend Mass at St. Cecilia Church in the Back Bay. Father John Unni, pastor of St. Cecilia’s addressed the congregation at the closing Mass and encouraged all to join St. Cecilia’s.

Now that Jesuit Urban Center is closed, divine Providence may have a better end to the sad story at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.

Original article (here)
Unfortunate further articles on the same subject (here) (here) and (here)

French Jesuit Pere Guillaume de Jerphanion, Turkish Explorer

Burrowing through Cappadocia caves
David Bowden KUALA LUMPUR 12-Aug-07 from The Brunei Times

THEY were not a people to tangle with as they had a habit of pouring hot oil over their enemies. For many centuries, troglodytes living in caves around Cappadocia in central Turkey took refuge from their enemies in holes they carved into the soft volcanic rock and poured boiling substances from concealed holes all over those who pursued them. They covered the openings to the tunnels they burrowed into the rock by rolling giant "rock wheels" behind them.

Today, many people residing on the dry plains of Anatolia still live inside their rocky enclaves as it provides insulation from the extremes of temperature experienced here between summer and winter. The whole area has been recognised by Unesco as a World Heritage Site

Visitors to the region can stay in conventional and comfortable hotels like the Dinler Hotel in the tourist town of Urgup or something more in line with the accommodation favoured by the subterranean locals, such as the nearby Alpina Hotel which has been carved into the rock face.

It's possible to inspect one of 100 or so underground villages like Ozkanak Underground Village for a small fee. Be warned though, the passageways are confined and narrow and it can get quite stuffy inside.

Back on the surface, centuries of wind, water and seasonal temperature fluctuations have sculpted a somewhat surrealistic landscape from the soft volcanic ash called tuff. Harder outcrops of basalt rock cap the softer cone-like tuff to create a moonscape of "fairy chimneys", minarets, cones, spires and pinnacles of various earthy tones.

Ancient inhabitants of Cappadocia hollowed out the soft rocky cones and cliff faces to create their unique troglodyte dwellings. Many of these are still inhabited today while new excavations to establish restaurants, hotels and tourist cultural dance venues are ongoing.

Central Turkey lies on a one of the major trade routes that linked Asia with Europe and Cappadocia has been home to many different civilisations.

It formed part of the ancient Silk Road and was thus a very strategic commercial centre. As such, the region became a complex web of historical and cultural influences. Different philosophies and faiths merged and influenced one another.

Christians escaping Roman persecution arrived in the 4th century and set about carving domed churches with vaulted ceilings from the friable rock. They also adorned the rocky ceilings with intricate and colourful frescoes painted from natural ochres. Some of the simple frescoes date back to the 8th century, but it is the ornate Byzantine frescoes of the 10th to 13th centuries that are the most noteworthy.

While the forces of erosion and some vandalism have taken their toll, there are still many cave sites in the region that are home to these valuable paintings and historical records.

With an estimated 1,000 rock churches in the area visitors don't have to travel far to appreciate the unique site of a place of worship carved into the rock. Goreme is the best, but most crowded place to inspect both the churches and frescoes.

The Goreme Open Air Museum contains several churches that date back to the 9th to 11th centuries. There are even more houses to be seen and the local inhabitants are usually open to polite requests to see inside.

With the arrival of Islam in the 14th century, Anatolia became the home of several famous Muslim scholars and philosophers.

Many of the region's cave owners have a loom inside where the women weave fine Turkish carpets to supplement the household income mostly derived from growing agricultural crops. Tourist towns like Urgup have many retail outlets selling the carpets and other products from the district like pottery.

Firca in Avanos is another place to visit to appreciate the craft of making ancient Turkish ceramics. Turkish ceramics date back to Hittite times and have developed an enviable reputation for their intricate and colourful glazes.

The Firca family has been make ceramics from their current site for the past 250 years. Visitors to their showroom can see how the ceramics are turned, hand-engraved, glazed and fired. There is a well-stocked showroom for those looking for a uniquely Turkish gift.

Amazingly it was not until 1907 when the rock churches of Anatolia were "discovered" and introduced to inquisitive travellers. Pere Guillaume de Jerphanion was a French Jesuit scholar who came across the religious structures while on a horseback tour of Anatolia.

Contemporary travellers don't have to endure similar hardships these days as there are several flights a day from Istanbul to Nevsehir in Cappadocia on Turkish Airlines. They also offer the best connection from South East Asia to Turkey with four flights to and from Singapore to Istanbul per week.

Choosing the appropriate time to visit Cappadocia is important as there is a vast range in temperature extremes from summer to winter. Get it wrong and you could either be sizzling or freezing on the Anatolian plains. The best times are from April to June and September to October for the best weather and least number of tourists. The highest peak in the region, Mount Erciyes (3,916m) is covered in snow in winter and is one of Turkey's most popular ski resorts. The Brunei Times


Original article (here)

The Japanese and the Jesuits

Home of the faithful
Embracing World Heritage By Makoto Miyazaki Daily Yomiuri Photographer

With about 130 churches and home to about 15 percent of Christians in the country, Nagasaki Prefecture is viewed by many as the center of Catholicism in Japan.

The churches are a combination of Western architectural styles introduced by foreign priests and traditional Japanese techniques developed by such skilled carpenters as Yosuke Tetsukawa (1879-1976). The materials used to construct the churches include timber, brick, stone and reinforced concrete, and there are a wide range of designs.

Churches are an important part of the daily lives of Christians living on the Goto Islands, a chain of about 140 islands located about 100 kilometers west of Nagasaki city, but still part of the prefecture.

"If the churches become World Heritage sites, I wouldn't want them to become tourist attractions," said Yoshiaki Yamamoto, a photographer living in Nagasaki who has visited many churches in Japan and other countries. "I hope tourists visiting them will be respectful because these churches are for the local people."Not only are the churches places where the faithful can worship, but also places where people can meet and children can play. The churches I visited were clean and comfortable, although they had a somewhat formal air.

Most of the churches in Japan built before World War II are located in Nagasaki Prefecture, and serve as a reminder of the history of Christianity in this country. This history began with the arrival of Christianity in the 16th century, followed by periods of persecution, and finally a revival of the faith.

St. Francis Xavier, cofounder of the Society of Jesus, landed in Kagoshima in 1549. At that time, Nagasaki was open for trade between Japan and Portugal and it eventually became an important base for spreading Christianity to the rest of Japan. The Society of Jesus establishing a headquarters in the city.

In 1587, however, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), the warlord who was in the process of unifying Japan, issued a decree banning Christianity. Ten years later, Hideyoshi ordered the deaths of 26 Catholics in Nagasaki in what became known as the Martyrdom of the 26 Saints.

The oppression grew worse in the Edo period (1603-1867) under the Tokugawa shogunate, with believers forced to renounce their faith, sent into exile or killed. Eventually, it was believed Christianity, a religion that claimed 750,000 followers in the early Edo period, had been eradicated in Japan.

However, one of the most significant episodes in this country's religious history occurred in Nagasaki in 1865, when several Japanese visited the Oura Cathedral, built the year before for foreign residents, and revealed that they were Christians. The episode is known as the revelation of believers, and served to prove that despite the persecutions Christianity had not died out in Japan.

original article (here)

Former Jesuit, Carl Pfiefer

Carl Pfeifer, 78; co-wrote series of Catholic textbooks
By Matt Schudel, Washington Post
August 11, 2007


Carl Pfeifer, who resigned from the Roman Catholic priesthood to marry his coauthor, with whom he wrote a series of influential textbooks on Catholic education, died of Alzheimer's disease July 12 at Stonehill Care Center in Dubuque, Iowa. He was 78.

In 1968, Pfeifer was a Jesuit priest working at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., when he and a Franciscan nun published the first in a series of textbooks for elementary students on Catholic education and catechism. The series, called "Life, Love, Joy," represented a dramatic change in the way Catholic schoolchildren learned about their faith.

Over the next 30 years, Pfeifer and Janaan Manternach revised their textbooks, wrote widely and traveled across the world to lead seminars on Catholic education. Their books and other classroom materials, published most recently under the title "This Is Our Faith," were used in Catholic schools in all 50 states. They replaced the old Baltimore catechism, a system of learning by rote, with a dynamic storytelling approach drawing on examples from everyday life.

"What Carl and I did, which was seen as a real change, was we introduced life experience to catechetical education," Manternach said last week. "If we're going to find God, we're going to find God in life."

After collaborating for 10 years, Manternach and Pfeifer felt a growing attraction that went beyond their shared work and faith. In their 40s, they went through the formal process of resigning from their religious orders. He had been a member of the Jesuits for 29 years; she had been a nun for 27.

Only then did they go on their first date. They had never so much as held hands before.

"We absolutely were in love with each other, there's no question, before that first date," Manternach said.

They were married Nov. 20, 1976, surrounded by hundreds of supporters, but their decision to marry was not warmly received by all.

One priest wrote a letter branding their actions "evil." Manternach's sister refused to attend the wedding, and a nun who had been a close friend said Manternach was now "dead" to her.

"Before that, I had a community," Manternach said. "Now, I had a community of one."

With little money and uncertain job prospects, the newlyweds settled in Arlington, Va., and returned to their mission of Catholic education. When the archbishop of Baltimore invited Pfeifer to speak at a conference on Catholic liturgy, they knew they had found official acceptance.

Pfeifer and Manternach revised their "Life, Love, Joy" series, wrote for magazines and published books for teachers. They taught courses on Catholic education and doctrine to seminarians and, from 1967 to 1992, appeared as panelists on the weekly "Bauman Bible Telecasts," a nationally televised college religion course based in Washington.

They answered questions from religion teachers in a monthly newsletter from 1987 to 1998 and collected their columns in a book, "How to Be a Better Catechist."

From 1970 to 1979, Pfeifer wrote a weekly syndicated column, "Know Your Faith," for the National Catholic News Service.

Carl Jacob Pfeifer was born June 22, 1929, in St. Louis. He graduated from St. Louis University and received a master's degree in philosophy from the university in 1954.

He taught Latin and Greek at his alma mater's Jesuit high school for several years and became an ordained priest in 1961. He received a doctorate in ministry from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore in 1985.

While teaching a course on the Psalms at Catholic University in the early 1960s, Pfeifer met Manternach, who had taught in Iowa and Chicago for 11 years.

Invited to work on a new model of religious training, they became assistant directors of the National Center for the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine at Catholic University and began their lifelong collaboration.

To commemorate the textbook series that brought them together and formed their life's work, Pfeifer and Manternach had their wedding rings engraved with three words: "Life, Love, Joy."

Original article (here)

Rare copies of "The Spiritual Exercises" On Display In New Orleans

History of Jesuits in La. on display
Saturday, August 11, 2007
By John Pope
Staff writer of the Times Picuyne

A panoply of documents, photographs and artifacts tracking the history of the Jesuits in Louisiana is on display in Loyola University's Monroe Library to mark the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus.

The display on the library's third floor, in the Special Collections and Archives, is open to the public throughout the 2007-08 academic year. Among the pieces on display are the document creating the province, photographs of Jesuit priests who were in New Orleans in 1907, silver pieces from local churches and two rare copies of "The Spiritual Exercises" by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the order's founder. The book constitutes the Society of Jesus' spiritual foundation, said Joan Gaulene, a spokeswoman for the exhibit.

A province is the order's organizational unit. The Society of Jesus, the religious order that runs Loyola, has been active in Louisiana since the colonial period. Of the 10 Jesuit provinces in the United States, the New Orleans province, which contains 10 states and stretches across the South from New Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, is the biggest, Gaulene said.

The library is on Calhoun Street between Cromwell Place and Loyola Street. Its hours are listed at library.loyno.edu/hours/monroe.htm.

Original article (here)

Jesuits Reconsecrate Catholic Church in 1686, In Pecs Hungary

City of Pecs has wineries, ceramics, multi-religious history
By Pablo Gorondi, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Inside Bay Area
Article Last Updated:08/08/2007 01:25:43 PM PDT

PECS, Hungary
A CHURCH WITHOUT a steeple; a near-Mediterranean climate far from the Mediterranean Sea; winemaking traditions in the region dating from the Roman Empire. The southern Hungarian city of Pecs, in brief.

In 2010 — along with Essen, Germany, and Istanbul, Turkey — Pecs will also be a European Capital of Culture. Located 125 miles south of Budapest, it's a comfortable three-hour train ride from Hungary's capital.

Pecs — or Sopiane, as it was called by the Romans — has more than 2,000 years of its history on display. Besides its Hungarian traditions, the city has remnants of the Roman times, dating to around 350-400, and the even more visible Muslim structures left behind by the Turks, who occupied the city for more than 140 years from 1543.

The Inner City Parish Church may not have an impressive name, but it is one of the most beautiful places of worship you'll ever see.

Standing atop Szechenyi Square in the city center, the church has undergone numerous transformations since the Middle Ages and you'd be forgiven for not recognizing it — because it looks like a mosque.

Actually, the stones of the Gothic Church of St. Bartholomew were used by the Turks to build the mosque of Pasha Gazi Kassim. After the Turks were expelled from Pecs in 1686, the mosque was taken over by the Jesuits, restoring it to its Christian use.

The mosque's minaret survived until 1753 and for a time the Baroque church had its own steeple. But thesteeple and many of the additions to the mosque were removed during later restoration works.

As a compromise solution, a metallic tower some 20 feet tall mechanically rises another 30 feet or so each time its three bells are rung.

Fragments of epigraphs with quotations from the Quran can still be seen on the walls and the dome rises more than 72 feet above ground level of what is considered the largest monument of Turkish architecture in the country.

From Roman times, the most notable remains are the early Christian burial chambers, the earliest dating to the fourth century.

While archeologists have been exploring them for centuries, the addition of the cemetery to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites in 2000 gave the dig a fresh boost.

The remains of the Cella Septichora — an early Christian chapel from the fourth century with seven apses (vaulted recesses) first explored in the early 1900s — are now included in a new visitors' center which opened to the public just a few months ago.

Thanks to a labyrinthine set of hallways and walkways, the burial chambers can be seen from practically every angle: some from the top, others from the bottom, others through a door or window. In each case, the best view depends on the chamber's features, which include frescos and other decorations.

Other attractions in Pecs include the Modern Hungarian Picture Gallery, the neo-Romanesque Cathedral on Dom ter, the Mosque of Pasha Yakovali Hassan, also beautifully reconstructed, and the Zsolnay Museum, dedicated to the famous Art Nouveau ceramics, tile and porcelain makers. The museum is set to re-open in mid-September after renovations, but the city is also home to the Zsolnay factory and a shop next door where you can buy Zsolnay designs.

About 22 miles southeast of Pecs are the Villany Hills, whose southern slopes and valley are shielded from the cold north winds and offer a home to one of Hungary's best-known wine regions.

Villany is also a town that is the unofficial capital of the local vineyards, which spread along a series of small villages where it seems every family has its own little winery.

The Villany-Siklos Wine Route, which winds through 11 localities, can be a methodic way to explore the wine cellars, although how methodic you will still be after the second or third wine-tasting is hard to guess.

For a more intimate experience with no loss in wine quality, you can try the wine cellars of Istvan Kovacs.

Kovacs, 63, was a young boy in Budapest when he heard a weather report on the radio that determined his future. It was a bitterly cold February day in Budapest but the announcer said the first spring blooms could already be seen near Villany.

Decades later, by then a jazz pianist performing everywhere from cruise ships to Las Vegas and Kuwait City, Kovacs remembered his childhood dreams of warmth and bought a small plot in Kisjakabfalva, a village with 300 inhabitants next door to Villany, but off the traditional Wine Route.

The Kovacs-Gressly Cellar produced its first wine here in 2001 and since has won numerous prizes for some of its vintages.

As if striving to stretch the boundaries of the sub-Mediterranean climate, Kovacs also keeps a blooming garden which includes vegetation usually seen far from Hungary, such as palm trees, banana trees, bamboo and laurel shrubs.

His cellar produces about 35,000 bottles a year of red and rose wines — Portugieser, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvingnon, Zweigelt Siller, Kekfrankos. If you prefer white wines, head to neighboring Siklos and its famous Rieslings an Chardonnays.

His guest house has room for six to 15 people — depending on how comfortably you want to sleep — and besides the exquisite wines, two grand pianos on the estate give Kovacs the opportunity to play jazz, classical favorites and seemingly everything in between for visitors.

The best way to sample Kovacs' wine is straight from the barrel, down in one of the cool cellars carved out of the Villany Hills.

French King Louis XIV once described the wines from Tokaj, in northeast Hungary, as "the wine of kings, the king of wines," and Kovacs proudly refers to his own product as "the queen of wines."

Kovacs would like to spread his Mediterranean garden idea to the entire village of Kisjakabfalva and challenge Villany's supremacy as the area's synonym for wine.

"This project is not a short-term plan, it's for a lifetime," Kovacs said while using a long glass tube — a "thief" — to sample the contents of some of the oak barrels. "But at least this wine is already selling like candy."


Original article (here)

Fordham Grad Francis Beckwith Living Out His Faith

Jimmy Akin shows the buffoon that Dr. James White is (here)

Francis Beckwith's interview regarding his reversion to the Catholic Church on a Protestant radio show (here)

Catholic's living out their faith is a powerful force in the world.

Loyala Chicago Anthropologist Philip Arnold, On Mexican Witchcraft

Read these links for a spiritual workout before you read this post, (here), (here) and (here)


Catholic Church wages campaign against witchcraft in Mexican town

By Jonathan Roeder
8/7/2007
Catholic News Service

CATEMACO, Mexico (CNS) – From across the nation and beyond, visitors come to this picturesque, lagoonside town in southern Mexico, seeking money, love, health and revenge.

To make these wishes come true, they seek out the area's famous "brujos," as they are called in Spanish. For a fee, these shamans and healers perform rituals and call on spirits from the netherworld to influence their clients' fate.

Thanks to this bustling trade in mysticism, Catemaco is Mexico's unofficial capital of all things occult. It also presents a unique challenge for and competition to the Catholic Church.

For decades, the church has waged a campaign against "brujeria," or witchcraft, in Veracruz, a state along the Gulf of Mexico. In recent years the church has issued declarations and even put a cross on the top of The Wild Hunt Blog: A modern Pagan perspective">White Monkey Peak, a nearby hilltop used by shamans as a ceremonial center.

"People want to resolve their problems with the snap of a finger," said Father Tomas Alonso Martinez of St. John the Baptist Parish in Catemaco. The witches "use psychology with the power of suggestion, which they use very well, to make their clients feel good for a little bit."

The results, he added, are clients who believe they are cured but eventually succumb to illnesses that go untreated. Other people, he said, end up as the victims of extortion scams from shamans and their helpers who extract personal information during their rituals.

He recalled one young local couple that hired a shaman to cast a spell that would boost their business. Later, the shaman demanded more money, claiming the couple's child would drop dead on a specific date if they did not pay.

Despite these scams, the tradition of witchcraft, which predates Catholicism in Mexico, persists. This lush, marshy area of the country, known as the Tuxtla region, was reportedly an important place for magic well before the Spanish conquered Mexico in the 1500s. Today, while tourists are the main customers, many residents still go to shamans for routine cleansings and good-luck amulets.

An even greater challenge is economics: Brujeria means big bucks. The Veracruz government dubbed the region "the Land of Witches" in a recent tourism campaign, and a massive, festive "black mass" is held each first Friday of March. The state governor often attends.

"It's our way of life; there are no companies here," said Norberto Baxin Mantilla, known to customers as "the Black Unicorn." "There are hundreds of witches and shamans. It's a source of income." Baxin's work space, located in his house, is adorned with posters of skeletons and statues of "La Santa Muerte," the incarnation of death, a skeletal figure that has spawned a growing cult in Mexico in recent years. The hood of his silver Camaro also bears the grim-reaperlike image of Santa Muerte.

For a routine cleansing, Baxin donned silvery robes while a client stood in the middle of a five-pointed star painted on the floor. In the dark and amid flames and smoking incense, Baxin waved garlands of pungent herbs and an egg over the client's body.

"I believe in Santa Muerte and God, no one else," Baxin said. "Thanks to my faith, (Santa Muerte) has helped me solve a lot of problems. ... I cure all types of negative energy."

But for many observers, including locals and scholars, most of the witchcraft is all show and no substance.

"The ancient traditions have been lost," said Salvador Herrera, a local columnist and historian. "All that's left is the reputation, and that's what is now exploited."
He added that today's witchcraft combines traces of ancient local customs with rituals imported from Haiti, Africa and Brazil, along with a recent infusion of Santa Muerte for good measure.

But no matter how much traditions have morphed, certain elements, such as the cleansing concept, remain. They are evident even in local Catholic ceremonies. While shamans ward off evil spirits and bad vibes in spooky, candlelit rooms, Catholic cleansings are also regularly carried out in the town's brightly painted cathedral, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Carmen.

On one recent afternoon, a man brushed pungent wreaths of basil over visitors who knelt before a statue of Mary. The pilgrims left amulets and locks of hair next to the statue, along with letters asking for special requests -- offerings much like those left to the ancient gods on the hillsides and grottoes outside town.

For Philip Arnold, an anthropologist and archaeologist with Jesuit-run Loyola University in Chicago who has been visiting the region for 25 years, the parallels are clear.

"In many ways the Catholic Church is in competition with the brujos," he said. "Here you're supposed to go to the church to get cleansed (and) have yours sins pardoned, whereas with the brujos you're going to them to get cleansed. So there's a little bit of natural tension that's going to occur."

While Father Alonso acknowledges that pre-Hispanic and Catholic beliefs are intertwined in the area, Arnold suggests the phenomenon is just a continuation of the Spanish conquest that began centuries ago.

"It's in some ways an uncomfortable juxtaposition, and that juxtaposition has been simply played out since the Spaniards arrived," he said. "And as much as people like to think, 'Oh, that's all gone away,' in fact it's contemporary. It's right now right here, it's today and it's tomorrow."

With two belief systems so deeply ingrained in the culture, many locals prefer to follow both, even if they would appear to be at odds.

"I'm Catholic but I think that if God exists, then so does the devil," said Rafael Cruz, who sells religious articles at a street stand outside the cathedral. "There are a lot of people who can hurt you in the world. ... There are a lot of envious people, and if they see you doing well, they'll try to stop you from getting ahead."

Shamans and scholars alike explain that envy is a central part of the equation – and perhaps the motor of the witching economy.

"Somebody sees you and is envious and that envy is translated to you," said Arnold. "Envy is a big part of the pre-Hispanic belief system in Mexico. You want to avoid being envious and you want to avoid doing anything that makes you stand out, because that attracts envy." Another driving force in witchcraft's prevalence is the fear of being the target of bad magic, said Hector Betaza Dominguez, a brujo known to his clients as "the Crow."

"Many people don't understand our magic, because our priests tell us to believe in God and to pray, but they never tell us, 'You know what, we've got to protect ourselves,'" he said. "There are people who die because of it; they visit doctors, but they're never cured."

Original article (here)

Chasing Unicorn's Costs Money At Jesuit University

Amid fears about global warming, U.S. Catholic campuses go ‘green’

By Kaitlynn Riely
8/8/2007
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Amid fears about global warming, going "green" has achieved new popularity. However, for many Catholic colleges and universities, developing a sustainable campus has always been a goal – one that is now easier to achieve with new technologies.

At Georgetown University in Washington, for instance, solar panels were installed on the roof of a building in the early 1980s. Almost 30 years later, the panel design is the longest running such project of its scale still operational in the United States.

Today, the Jesuit university has an energy management team that monitors and fine-tunes energy use in campus buildings throughout the day.

For another Jesuit school, Boston College, the impetus to reduce energy consumption and become a sustainable campus comes from its Catholic mission, said Jack Dunn, the director of public affairs at the college.

Boston College saved more than a million dollars last year after it launched a campaign to reduce energy consumption. Managing Boston College's effect on the environment, Dunn said, is an effort students have joined.

"Students at Catholic colleges realize that they are being called upon to develop their God-given talents and use them in the service of others," he said in a telephone interview. "And one of the greatest challenges that we face in our future is protecting the earth."

Students at the college are familiar with the words of the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola, who said, "Go set the world aflame." The school used this familiar phrase, Dunn said, in its campaign to cut down on energy consumption. Posters around campus instruct students to "Go set the world aflame, but before you do, don't forget to turn off the lights."

In Chicago, St. Xavier University, run by the Sisters of Mercy, has been investing money in its own green initiatives. One of the core values of St. Xavier University is respect, said Paul J. Matthews, the assistant vice president for facilities management – and respect for the environment falls under that value.

"If you look at stewardship, and also taking care of mankind and the human element, sustainability falls in line with many of these Catholic teachings," Matthews said.

Last fall, St. Xavier unveiled a green building. Arthur Rubloff Hall, an 88-person residence hall that also houses the Residence Life Office, became the first building at a university or college in Illinois to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, gold designation from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The council is a nonprofit organization that developed the LEED system as a way to rate the performance and sustainability of buildings. Gold is the second-highest designation.

The building has carpeting made from recycled plastics, a green roof covered with small plants to filter and purify rainwater and a carbon dioxide detection system that can tell if a room is occupied, and then adjust the airflow accordingly. Matthews said the school is happy with the building after its first year.

But this new technology didn't come cheap. Rubloff Hall cost approximately $9 million to build, about $290,000 more than a conventional building would have cost.

"Yeah, it was a little more expensive," Matthews told CNS. "But in the long term, it's going to pay back in the energy savings we are making."

A conventional building would cost about $90,000 a year in heating and cooling. Rubloff Hall should cost the university less than $60,000 a year, meaning the school will break even in a little more than eight years.

Another plus, Matthews said, is that the school is emitting fewer gases into the environment.

Reducing gas expenditure is a challenge Mayor Michael Bloomberg has presented to the city of New York – and its top colleges and universities in particular.

Jesuit-run Fordham University accepted the challenge, and in the next 10 years will attempt to reduce its carbon dioxide footprint by 30 percent. But Fordham had already been taking steps to reduce its affect on the environment, said Joseph Muriana, the associate vice president of government relations and urban affairs at the university.

Buildings at the university are computer-controlled for energy efficiency and have environmentally-friendly lighting, so the campuses have already had significant energy usage reductions in past years. The school also runs shuttle buses back and forth between its two campuses. These buses – eight an hour – move more than 80,000 people a year, Muriana said.

Bloomberg's initiative, Muriana said, "is an opportunity to do more."

The university is currently doing calculations to figure out what its 2005-06 carbon dioxide footprint was, so those figures can be used as a base.

"We are committed to the challenge," Muriana said. "We are committed to reaching that."

Original article (here)

Christopher Wolfe Quits Marquette University To Start A Real University

Professor quits to start dream university
MILWAUKEE, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Christopher Wolfe is leaving his job as a professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee to pursue a risky venture -- he wants to start his own university.

Wolfe's vision -- a university with a unified and orderly curriculum based on the teachings of 12th-century theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Most universities offer students an incoherent smattering of facts and teach that all ideas are equal, Wolfe told the newspaper. At his university, students would be taught that there is one truth to be discovered, as Aquinas argued.

The professor is well-regarded by his students at Marquette -- a Catholic institution run by the Jesuit order of priests -- but founding a university will be a difficult challenge, the Journal Sentinel said. Wolfe must recruit donors, professors and students to help him realize his dream.


Original article (here)

Spock.com, St. Ignatius

Spock.com is truely unique, see why (here)

The Marquette Stone Is Really Cooper

By Paul Peterson, For The Mining Gazette
SKANEE — It’s a story with all the ingredients of a good mystery novel.There’s a famous Jesuit priest. Hostilities between warringIndian tribes. A noted author. And a slab of copper that could be worth a large sum of money, or at the very least, an important historical find.That’s the tale of the Marquette Stone, a saga that has evoked the interest of historians and treasure hunters alike for nearly a century.It all started in the year 1672 when famed missionary Father Jacques Marquette was on a journey between his mission at Ashland, Wis. and his home base in St. Ignace. Father Marquette, one of the first Jesuits to travel in the upper Midwest, often visited in the L’Anse area to spread the gospel to the Ojibwa Indians living there. He was traveling through the area at the time. On this particular summer day, Marquette and his party were warned by local Indians of the presence of a war party of Sioux in the area.
The Ojibwas were often at war with the Sioux, who were located in Minnesota at the time. In fact, the two tribes met in several large battles, including one at the mouth of the Ontonagon River. The story has it that the Marquette party reportedly stopped near what is now known as Chink’s Creek for a short rest. What the party left there would be the grist of a legend that remains to this day. The story fast forwards to the summer of 1921 when a 16-year-old trapper by the name of Ed Koski is setting his traps in the headwaters of the Huron River. In a tape-recorded interview many years later, Koski told of traveling up a small creek on a very hot day and finding a large copper slab with writing inscribed on it. Wiping away the moss and dirt that had accumulated on it, he saw three French names written on the slab, including Marquette’s. Koski assumed the slab, which measured approximately three feet in length and was nearly two feet wide, marked the burial spot of Marquette. He recalled other writing on the stone, but thought it was in Latin. If his estimates were correct, the slab would have weighed more than 120 pounds. It was propped up as if to indicate a grave marker.
Koski’s theory of a grave proved to be incorrect because Father Marquette died in 1675 and was buried near St. Ignace. The story is taken up in 1922 when a local logger by the name of James Leatherby offered to take author James Oliver Curwood to the site of the copper slab. Whether Leatherby learned of the stone’s location from Koski is not known Curwood, the author of the Kazan series and other adventures stories, owned a cabin in the Huron Mountains that had been built by Leatherby. On this day, he was on a picnic with his two daughters, Leatherby and a young Skanee man by the name of Rex Erickson. The party was near a local landmark called the Hog’s Back. Erickson would later say that he volunteered to stay with the two girls because he had a crush on Curwood’s oldest daughter.
“Leatherby told Curwood it would be a tough journey over rugged terrain, so he didn’t mind me staying back,” Erickson said in a 1973 interview. “It was a decision I would regret long afterwards.” He recalled Leatherby and Curwood being gone for nearly two hours and saying little after returning from their trip. Within a few years, the two men would take the secret of the copper slab’s location to their graves. Curwood, a physical fitness buff, died in 1927 at the age of 49. Leatherby died in 1936 at the age of 86. And a later effort to bring Ed Koski back to search for it would turn disastrous. Father Jacques Marquette was one of the more famous Jesuit priests in early America. He and fellow explorer Louis Jolliet were the first white men to discover the Mississippi River. A county and city in Michigan and a university in Wisconsin bear his name today.
But Marquette may also have left behind a mysterious copper slab during a journey across the Upper Peninsula in the summer of 1672. The most obvious question regarding the location of the so-called Marquette Stone is why Ed Koski never returned to it. Koski was a 16-year old trapper when he stumbled across the copper slab in 1921. But he was a logger for most of his life, according to noted U.P. historian Fred Rydholm in his book, “Superior Heartland.”
Heavy drinking and an auto accident in 1950 had left Koski in bad physical shape. By the time he returned to the area in 1964 to see if he could locate the stone, the area had changed drastically. The area contained virgin forests when Koski first saw the stone in 1921. But heavy logging in the area had removed many of the landmarks.
Rydholm, who has made several trips in an effort to locate the copper slab, believed Koski’s story. “In my estimation, the copper slab story was just too good to be made up,” Rydholm wrote. “Ed knew little or nothing of Marquette’s life.” On the 1964 trip to the area with Rydholm, Koski suffered some kind of heart attack, with severe chest pains and shortness of breath. Unable to get much help from the ailing Koski, the trip proved fruitless. Koski recovered from the bout and accompanied Rydholm on another trip to the area in 1965. But the expedition again turned up nothing. Rydholm went on to write that he believed the copper slab was likely located on a larger stream than Chink’s Creek, and that a beaver dam may have been built over where it had been located. Brian Jentoft of L’Anse, whose late father Alf often searched for the stone, doesn’t disagree with that theory.“There are three or four creeks up there where it might have been,” he said. “And beaver dams have been built on some of those streams.”
Koski died in 1985 at a nursing home in Iron River. The late Rex Erickson, who passed up the chance to go with James Leatherby and author James Oliver Curwood to the site in 1922, also attempted to find the location. “I looked for it on a couple of occasions, but the logging operations had changed the landscape so much,” said Erickson in a 1973 interview. Alf Jentoft made three trips in an effort to find the copper slab. Brian Jentoft has also made two expeditions to the area. He believes the copper slab is still there. “Everything in the story he (Koski) told made sense,” he said. “It was documented that Marquette was in the area during the time when the message was inscribed.” In addition to the Rydholm and Jentoft search efforts, the August Rautiola family of Ontonagon reportedly has been there on at least two occasions searching for the elusive artifact. Marquette often visited the area to spread the word of the gospel to the Ojibwa Indians living in the area. In the summer of 1672, he reportedly was on his way back to St. Ignace from Ashland, Wis. when news of the presence of a Sioux war party in the area was relayed to him.
It has been speculated by historians that the party stopped for a short rest near the headwaters of the Big Huron River. It was at that time the message was inscribed on the stone. “My Dad believed that one of the members of the Marquette party had died and that a memorial was put up in his honor,” said Jentoft. “It would have had to have been a very prominent member of the party, but not Marquette.” The value of the copper slab, which probably weighed in excess of 120 pounds, can’t be assessed. Historically, it might be invaluable. “To find something like that would be of great interest to many historical institutions,” Jentoft said. “I don’t know if you could really put a price tag on it.” Like Marquette, whose final resting place is a matter of much conjecture, the copper slab remains one of the enduring mysteries of the upper Midwest.

Original Articles (here) and (here)

Jesuits Subject Of New BBC Series Called, "Apparitions"

Martin Shaw Stars In New Supernatural Drama
7 August 2007

Lime Pictures has been commissioned by BBC One to produce a two-part supernatural drama called Apparitions starring Martin Shaw. Martin Shaw (Judge John Deed, George Gently) will head the cast of this riveting and multi-layered drama about an exorcist battling demons in what he discovers to be the beginning of the End of Days.

Martin will play a Jesuit priest who works for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to investigate miraculous happenings and to promote candidates to sainthood.

He is drawn into the world of exorcisms when a ten-year-old girl approaches him convinced that her father is possessed by a demon.

Written and directed by Joe Ahearne (Ultraviolet, Doctor Who, This Life) and created by Joe Ahearne and Nick Collins (Murder In Suburbia), Apparitions will start filming later this year and is expected to be screened on BBC One in early 2008.

Tony Wood, Creative Director at Lime Pictures, says: "Joe Ahearne has created a gripping story of intrigue and mystery which raises as many questions as it answers."

"Martin Shaw is the perfect choice to play the lead role and I am delighted to be working with the BBC on this project which I hope will become a long-standing relationship."
Anne Mensah, BBC Head of Drama, Scotland, adds: "We are delighted to be working with Lime Pictures on their first drama commission for BBC One. Apparitions is an incredibly bold piece which examines the eternal battle between good and evil."

"Father Jacob is a new iconic character for television: a force for good and yet a very modern mixture of humanity, belief and integrity. It's fantastic to have an actor as great as Martin Shaw in this role."

Apparitions will be shown on BBC One next year.

Original article (here)

Fr. Thomas Reese S.J. "Hinduism Is OK!"

Hindu American Foundation, in a release by its Executive Director Ishani Chowdhury, said, "Shri Rajan Zed's prayer recitation shared with our fellow Americans the Hindu belief in a transcendental, immanent God and the eternal Hindu search for enlightenment and universal peace. Our foundation joins all Hindu Americans in congratulating the U.S. Senate for demonstrating its commitment to the American ideal of pluralism, and for respecting the religious diversity of our great country.

Reverend Thomas J. Reese, Senior Fellow of Woodstock Theological Center, Jesuit priest, and expert on Catholic issues, said, "One does not have to agree with everyone's religion, but as Christians and Americans we have an obligation to respect the beliefs and religious practices of others. Disrupting prayer is bad manners and unchristian. There are other forums in which to protest and debate theology."

St. Francis Xavier (here)
Mother Theresa (here)
Catholic Bishops' meet to discuss conversions of Hindu's in India (here)

Original article (here)

Of St. Francis Xavier's Arm

From Time Magazine 1931

In Goa. Guns boomed, bells pealed, fireworks flared in Goa, Portuguese India last week as 10,000 persons milled through the Bom Jesus Church to kiss the feet of St. Francis Xavier, whose coffin was opened for public veneration for the 13th time since his death in 1552. The corpse was officially reported to be "in good condition." During the next month a million pilgrims are expected to view it. St. Francis Xavier, one of St. Ignatius Loyola's associates in founding the Society of Jesus, is regarded by his church as the greatest missionary since the time of the Apostles. The church in Goa was made a shrine to his memory, but the Society of Jesus secured his right arm in 1614, placed it in the Jesuit mother church, Rome's Gesu.

Original article (here)

Catholic Christianty In India Is Two Thousand Years Old

Review of Jesuit Priests new book
CHANGING GODS: RETHINKING CONVERSION IN INDIA by Fr. Rudolf C. Heredia, S.J.


CHANGING GODS: RETHINKING CONVERSION IN INDIA
by Rudolf C. Heredia
Penguin
Pages: 386; Rs: 350
Even in today’s secular societies, there are few transformations that cause more grief than the decision of individuals or communities to abandon their religion and embrace a new God. Equated by some with secession, such conversions have divided families and communities, created social tension and triggered violence. The right to preach and propagate religion is in the Constitution but has been contested and circumscribed at the social and political levels.

Opposition has come from Hindu organisations that believe non-proselytising faiths stand in danger of being assaulted by the numbers game. Many states have passed anti-conversion laws to prevent mass conversions through coercion or inducements. The issue has become politicised and linked to questions of national identity.
Harvesting souls for Christ has been a central feature of Christianity. Naturally, organised Christianity is troubled by the growing resistance to what it regards as its religious obligation and civil rights. "If I find," argues the author in this study of conversion (as distinct from proselytisation), "that changing my religion promotes my economic opportunities and my democratic rights...should I be prevented by the state or other citizens?"

Although Christianity in India is many centuries old, only after Independence has an Indian Christian perspective haltingly emerged.

This book’s value lies in its attempt to grapple with the prevailing concerns both from a Christian—Heredia is a Jesuit priest—and social science perspective. The results are intriguing.
On the positive side, Heredia upholds the crucial distinction between atmaparivartan
and dharmantar. The first, an aspect of individual self-realisation and metamorphosis, happens all the time sans any fuss. Dharmantar is more divisive and problematic, especially when the transition crosses national traditions. Swami Vivekananda, for example, dubbed those leaving the Hindu fold as "one enemy more". Gandhi charged converts to Christianity of being "ashamed of their birth" and "chang(ing) nationality."
Heredia admits that Christianity in India carries this burden of history. Simultaneously, he argues that religious traditions in India have undergone constant change—even before the advent of Islam.

Without overtly saying so, Heredia’s selective survey of Indian history and politics (he misses out the Inquisition in Goa and the iconoclasm of Muslim rulers) leads him to the Left-liberal conclusion that Brahminical Hinduism is at the root of all evil. The resistance to conversions, he feels, is just a ruse to maintain Brahminical hegemony over subalterns.

The core conflict, it seems to me, involves faiths of Indian and non-Indian origin. The evolution of a uniquely Indian Islam has, for example, floundered in the face of a Wahabi Islamism that ends up Arabising local Muslims. Likewise, the Roman Catholic Church has made its antipathy to Eastern spirituality quite open. The absence of a national theology agitated individual Muslims like Dara Shikoh and many upper-caste Indian Christians. It led to experiments with "Hindu Christianity" and calls to abandon conversions altogether. Though it doesn’t excite our radical Jesuit author, it would bolster Indian nationhood if local churches imbibed the experiences of the likes of Pandita Ramabai. A national approach to faith may be an Indian solution to dharmantaran.

Original article (here)

Jesuits Should Not Wear Bowties!

Check out this picture of the BOWTIE, notice the similarities of the hysteria over the Passion of the Christ movie and The current hub bub regarding the Motu.

Guelph Ontario Jesuits Build Old Growth Forest From Scratch

The Jesuit community is working to start an old-growth, native forest on part of its property at the edge of the city, east of Highway 6 near Woodlawn Road. The plan is to create a sanctuary for people, animals and plants, said Jim Profit, director of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre.

"It's to do something concrete for the future in the midst of the ecological problem that is happening," he said. The Jesuits will plant native species, and work to keep out non-native ones, because that's what birds, animals and butterflies have evolved to feed on. They also want to preserve the native gene pool.

"These trees don't grow elsewhere, and if we don't protect them here, they won't be protected anywhere," he said.

Original article (here)

Priest's Battery, Father Edmundo Almeida, Spanish Jesuit

Priest's Battery

Father Edmundo Almeida, Spanish Jesuit priest, has invented a new type electric storage battery. U. S. students who had heard him lecture on his battery at Cadiz, Seville and San Sebastian, Spain, during the spring, last week said that it was more efficient than the common acid battery or the Edison alkaline battery. The Argentine magazine Estudios gave details.

Electric Battery. An electric battery is a collection of electrolytic cells. The action of such cells depends upon the fact that different metals and their salts have different electric potentialities. When pieces of different metals or of a metal and its salt are touched together, there is a momentary passage of electricity between them. When the pieces are in a suitable electrolytic solution the current is continuous.

Acid Cell. The usual type of storage cell contains sheets of spongy lead separated from sheets of spongy lead peroxide in a weak solution of sulphuric acid. During discharge, the acid forms sulphate of lead on both plates; during charge, lead and lead perioxide are again formed on their respective plates

See the original 1927 TIME article (here)

Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo

Teilhard in this piece is basically called a ________(you fill in the verb).

There are indeed a number of interesting parallels between Aurobindo's and Teilhard's teachings. Not only are they quite similiar as far as their respective cosmologies go, but both men developed their philosophies at the same time. M. Andrè Monostier observes that:

"during the First World War, while the corporal stretcher-bearer Teilhard de Chardin was composing inside the trenches of his regient the broad outlines of Le Phénomène humain and Le Milieu divin, 10,000 kilometres away the Indian revolutionary leader Sri Aurobindo was developing in the same way in the pages of the monthly review Arya the essential ideas of his magnum opus, The Life Divine (10th ed.), ." ["Teilhard de Chardin: His Spiritual-Scientific Thought and its Meeting-Point with Sri Aurobindo", Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture (Pondicherry), March 1966]
Yet there is still a very real difference of consciousness between the two men, although the Indian writer K.D. Sethna is perhaps being too harsh when he states:

"Sri Aurobindo had already attained the direct spiritual experience of the fundamental realities he was expounding intellectually in his journal....Teilhard, even in his maturity, was not putting into intellectual language the results of any comparable inner compassing of hidden truths. All that he had to go upon was a number of vivid intuitions and intense feelings in boyhood and a vibrant spiritual sense in subsequent years. Surely, these...are of great value.....But they are still worlds apart from the realisation of a master of the via mystica, a supreme Yogi."

[K. D. Sethna, Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo - a Focus of Fundamentals, p.100, (Bharatiya Vidya Prakasan, Varanasi, 1973)] Teilhard's writings show through and through a deep mystical awareness, as the following passage shows:

"Christ invests himself organically with the very majesty of his creation. And it is in no way metaphorical to say that man finds himself capable of experiencing and discovering his God in the whole length, breadth and depth of the world in movement. To be able to say literally to God that one loves him, not only with all one's body, all one's heart and all one's soul, but with every fibre of the unifying universe--that is a prayer than can only be made in space-time." (The Phenomenon of Man, 1955, p. 297)
If this is not a mystical utterance (albeit with a strong and pantheistic slant), I don't know what is.

The more significant point is that Teilhard, working within the framework of the dualistic Christian religion, had conceptual restrictions placed upon him that Aurobindo, who was coming from the much more ecumenical Indian spiritual culture, was blessedly free of. This difference in religious mileu led to very real doctrinal differences in the teachings of these two great Visionaries, despite the obvious and striking similarities that are there.

An important difference, Sethna points out, between the Aurobindonian and the Teilhardian conceptions of the divine culmination of evolution is that unlike Aurobindo, Teilhard "...puts the realm of perfection still beyond the earth" in a transcendent Omega-Christ principle, and thus "stops short of what the evolution or unfoldment of the Divine hidden in matter should logically reach - a new ceation here which would correspond in all essential terms to the epiphany that already exists in the Divine beyond." This would seem to be due to his religious conservatism, so that even in his magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard tried to make his vision compatable with Roman Catholicism, and in some other works this tendency is more pronunced. "A somewhat elastic Roman Catholicism which would not exclude his mystico-scientific weltanschauung of evolution...would wholly satisfy him. He wants to retain the old form as much as possible for his novel substance; otherwise he could not remain a devout Jesuit in spite of the Church's suspician of his philosophy." [K. D. Sethna, Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo - a Focus of Fundamentals, pp.36-7,

Original article (here)

Just A Reminder, Teilhard de Chardin Is Still A Rogue Theologian

Teilhard de Chardin: Rogue Theologian

Introduction

The French Jesuit Pere Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was one of the most well-known theologians of the 20th century. However, his writings were condemned several times by the Holy See. In this essay I shall give a list of the various admonitions received by this author, whose books still enjoy wide circulation.

De Chardin, who attempted to create a fusion of Christianity and evolutionary theory, taught not so much Catholicism as New Age Hinduism, as his teachings were to all in intents and purposes, pantheism (the belief that God is everything). De Chardin was a New Ager, possibly one of the first Catholic clerics to fall into this error, and certainly the most influential. Clearly this view is in no way compatible with Catholic doctrine, and the history of his disputes with Rome bears this out.

Here is an example of the nonsense de Chardin pumped out:


"What we call inorganic matter is certainly animate in its own way . . . Atoms, electrons, elementary particles . . . must have a spark of spirit." (Science and Christ, written 1920s, published in English in 1968)
His belief is that matter is in fact conscious is to be found elsewhere in his writings as well:

"It is the very nature of Matter, when raised corpuscularly to a very high degree of complexity, to become centred and interiorized - that is to say, to endow itself with consciousness," (The Future of Mankind, p.226; cited in Wolfgang Smith, "Teilhardism and the New Religion" p. 49) "We are logically forced to assume the existence in rudimenary form of some sort of psyche in every corpuscle, even in those whose complexity is of such a low or modest order as to render it imperceptible." (The Phenomenon of Man, p. 301-2, cited in Smith, op. cit.p. 49).

Teilhard goes even further off base when he denies the immutability of God:

"As a direct consequence of the unitive process by which God is revealed to us, he in some way 'transforms himself' as he incorporates us." (The Heart of Matter, p. 52-3; in Smith, op. cit.p. 104)
"I see in the World a mysterious product of completion and fulfillment for the Absolute Being himself" ( The Heart of Matter, p. 54; in Smith, op. cit.p. 104)

But God IS; He is not "becoming" as many verses in Scripture will verify (e.g John 8:58). Teilhard's theology is based on evolution as a superdogma under which all religious dogmas must be subsumed. Elsewhere he wrote: 'Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is the general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.' (Human Energy, p. 96)

A rejection of the truth of unchanging dogma, such as Original Sin, the doctrine of grace, and the meaning of Redemption, which constitute the very foundation of Christianity, is exactly what Teilhard envisions. For him no dogma is unchangeable, and hence his teachings are an essential negation of Christian revelation. One cannot be a Christian and accept Teilhardism.

The reader can find a review of Wolfgang Smith's book at http://www.tcrnews2.com/Teilhard.html

List of Admonitions
De Chardin was first silenced by the Jesuit order from 1926 and this remained in effect till his death. In 1933 he was ordered by Rome to give up his teaching post in Paris, and a few years later (in 1939) Rome banned his work "L'energie humaine". Again in 1947, Rome forbade him to teach or to write on philosophical themes. A year later, de Chardin was again refused permission to publish his work "Le Phenomene Humain" (the first prohibition having been issues four years earlier). A similar prohibition of "Le Groupe Zoologique" followed in 1949. In 1957, the Holy Office (the former name for the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith) forbade the works of de Chardin to be either kept in libraries or sold in bookshops. In addition, they were not to be translated into other languages. However, just one year later, in 1958, de Chardin's writings appeared in Spanish, in defiance of Rome's orders. Also in spite of these prohibitions, after de Chardin died in 1955, his works were published posthumously by Sir Julian Huxley. 1n 1962 a monitum, or official warning, was placed on his writings by Rome. Contrary to some popular opinions, this monitum is still in place.

With a list of prohibitions as long as this, one would not expect Teilhard de Chardin's works to enjoy the popularity the subsequently did, and still, enjoy. Even noted theologian Henri Cardinal de Lubac supported some of his views. (In 1962 de Lubac was remonstrated by Pope John XXIII for his defense of Teilhard de Chardin�s less than orthodox views on the Holy Eucharist.)

The text of the 1962 monitum, or warning, is given below:


Monitum -- given at Rome from the Holy Office, June 30, 1962. Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office "Several works of Fr. Pere Teilhard de Chardin, some of which were posthumously published, are being edited and are gaining a good deal of success. Prescinding from a Judgment about those points that concern the positive sciences, it is sufficiently clear that the above mentioned works abound in such ambiguities. and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine. For this reason, the eminent and most revered Fathers of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries, as well as Superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the youth. against the dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers."
"Given at Rome, from the palace of the Holy Office, on the thirtieth day of June, 1962.
(Note: text found in Canon Law Digest, volume V, eds. T. Lincoln Bouscaren, S.J., and James I. O�Connor, S.J., The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, pp.621-622)

This did not bring an end to matters, however. A year later, in 1963, the Vicariate of Rome (a Diocese ruled in the name of the then Pope Paul VI by his Cardinal Vicar) required that Catholic booksellers in Rome should withdraw from circulation the works of de Chardin, along with any other books which supported his views.

In 1967 the Apostolic Delegation in Washington, D.C:, affirmed that the monitum was still in place. In 1981, this same affirmation was repeated, this time from the Vatican itself. The following is the text of the 1981 statement:


Communique of the Press Office of the Holy See (appeared in the English edition of L'Osservatore Romano, July 20, 1981)
"The letter sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to His Excellency Mons. Poupard on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin has been interpreted in a certain section of the press as a revision of previous stands taken by the Holy See in regard to this author, and in particular of the Monitum of the Holy Office of 30 June 1962, which pointed out that the work of the author contained ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors.
"The question has been asked whether such an interpretation is well founded."
"After having consulted the Cardinal Secretary of State and the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which, by order of the Holy Father, had been duly consulted beforehand, about the letter in question, we are in a position to reply in the negative. Far from being a revision of the previous stands of the Holy See, Cardinal Casaroli's letter expresses reservation in various passages-- and these reservations have been passed over in silence by certain newspapers-- reservations which refer precisely to the judgment given in the Monitum of June 1962 , even though this document is not explicitly mentioned." [emphasis mine].
The most recent cause of the rumours that the monitumhas been lifted was a letter sent by Cardinal Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli on May 12, 1981, to Archbishop Paul Poupard, Rector of the "Institut Catholique" of Paris, where centenary celebrations of the birth of de Chardin were being held. This letter did not revoke the monitum of 1962, and as the Vatican statement of 1981 says, in fact "expresses reservations in various passages".

Therefore it is quite safe to say the monitum of 1962 is still in effect.

Since the monitum of 1962 also warns of the works of de Chardin's followers, it might be a good idea to mention some of the other more popular New Age writers in Catholic circles, so that readers may be more aware of them. Two of the most popular are Father Anthony de Mello and the former Dominican priest Matthew Fox, both of whose writings are incompatible with Catholic doctrine. De Mello's writings received a condemnation from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1998, while Matthew Fox was prohibited from teaching. These and several others, who teach New Age doctrines instead of the Catholic Faith they have been entrusted with, are also covered by the 1962 monitum regarding the "works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers".

Original Text copyright � Sean Hyland 2000, 2006

Original article (here)

Francis Cardinal George, OMI On Fr. Arnold Damen S.J.

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

A missionary in Chicago: Fr. Arnold Damen S.J.

In my last column, I wrote about Fr. Peter John DeSmet’s work among the native peoples of the plains, a ministry that began in 1823. During Fr. DeSmet’s trips back to Europe, he gathered funds to support the Church’s work among the American Indians and he also recruited men to join him as missionaries. In 1837, Fr. DeSmet brought to America a twenty two year old Dutchman who was eager to join the Jesuits in America. His name was Arnold Damen.

During his novitiate at Florissant, Missouri, just outside St. Louis, Arnold wrote his parents about the work of the Jesuits among the various native tribes; but after his ordination in 1844, the young priest was assigned to parish work in St. Louis. His missionary impulse was directed to preaching, the giving of retreats and the conversion of non- Catholics.

In 1856, then Bishop Anthony O’Regan invited Fr. Damen and three other Jesuit priests to come to Chicago and preach missions at Holy Name Parish. Conflict among the various nationalities in the city was dividing the Church here. Whether at the urging of the Bishop or not, Fr. Damen spoke during his first sermon in Chicago about the reverence the people owed their Bishop! Whether because of this sermon or not, the Bishop asked the Jesuit Provincial Superior in St. Louis to assign Fr. Damen to Chicago. The Provincial obliged.

Fr. Damen chose as the site for the first foundation of the Society of Jesus in Chicago a location a block west of the intersection of what was then known as Twelfth Street and Hoosier Avenue, now Roosevelt Road and Blue Island Avenue. Here he began Holy Family Parish, with boundaries encompassing fifty square miles of sparsely populated prairie, nearly the whole west and southwest side of Chicago. When he began the parish in 1857, he planned also for schools, when a parish with a school was still a rarity, and a college. Despite the economic panic of 1857 and his arrival with no funds and no possibility of borrowing money from Bishop O’Regan, all the institutions he planned were completed in a dozen years. Damen had measured well the pace of growth in Chicago, and he had gauged as well the spirit of the Irish immigrants he was to gather into the largest parish in the Midwest.

While building, with his people, sixteen buildings in twenty years, Fr. Damen continued preaching the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, overseeing the spiritual lives of his parishioners, attending to the regular cycle of sacramental preparation and celebration and gathering funds to pay off his numerous creditors. Confessions were heard daily, often till midnight, and communions numbered in the thousands. He managed to do all this with a friendliness and an exuberance that attracted and united Catholics and others alike.

Fr. Damen ran Holy Family Parish like a continuous mission, with a clear intention to reach out to all people and convert them to Christ in the Church. His great gothic parish church was dedicated in 1860, and his several schools, some conducted by the Religious of the Sacred Heart and the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and others by Jesuit Brothers and some laymen, fed the college. Today Holy Family church and parish continue, in a very changed neighborhood, under the direction of Fr. Jeremiah Boland, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The eight elementary schools of Fr. Damen’s parish are succeeded by the Children of Peace School on the campus of the Medical Center of the University of Illinois. The college building is St. Ignatius High School, conducted by Fr. Brian Paulsen of the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus, and the original college has become Loyola University Chicago. In 1923, a count was made of the number of priests and religious women who were graduates of Holy Family’s institutions: 235 priests and 414 sisters.

In 1871, Fr. Damen’s church and parish survived the Great Chicago Fire. Ever since the fire, seven vigil lights have burned continuously before a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the east transept. Mary’s intercession, Fr. Damen believed, saved his newly built church. A year after the Great Fire, my father’s mother, Mary Connolly, was baptized in Holy Family church. Even as a very elderly lady, she told stories of growing up in Father Damen’s parish as the city was rebuilding and the Catholic population increasing.

Fr. Damen himself never abandoned his early desire to convert America. In his later years, while continuing as pastor in Chicago, he spent a great deal of time each year on the road, preaching parish missions all over the country and moving even into Canada. His whole mission was based on the text, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Pastoral zeal, a thirst to gather souls to Christ, remained his principal virtue and the motivating source of all he did. Most of all, whatever he did and no matter where he was, he regularly prayed, spending extended periods of time each day before the Blessed Sacrament.

Fr. Arnold Damen, S.J., died on January 1, 1890. He delivered his zealous soul to God after several months of painful illness. While living memory of his piety and his personal kindness, his organizational ability and his hard work inevitably diminish, the institutions he founded keep some sense of his personality and his activity alive among us.

Fr. Damen’s life reminds us that mission is the purpose of the Church’s existence. Otherwise lost in a plethora of activities and distractions, a busy life is organized by its over-riding purpose. For the Church as such and for all her members individually, this purpose is the conversion of the world. How would Fr. Damen organize his life and activities in Chicago today? He would have to attend to the divisions that distract the Church from her mission. He would be aware of the economic and familial difficulties of daily life for Catholics and others in the city. He would work to deepen Catholics’ grasp of the central mysteries of the faith. He would organize works of practical charity to come to the assistance of the poor and the needy. He would challenge the successful to ever-greater generosity. He would combat prejudice. He would encourage vocations to the ordained priesthood and consecrated life. He would keep in regular touch with all those whom God had given him to love and, through prayer, with God himself.

While the circumstances of doing all this have changed, these are the concerns and activities that drive our lives here today. They cover the principal dimensions of the Church’s mission. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Archbishop of Chicago


Original article (here)

Jesuit Fr. Thomas Rausch On The Latin Mass

“Hardly an expression of mutual respect”
Published: August 1, 2007 in The Tidings
Motu proprio “not motivated in the slightest by anything having to do with Catholic-Jewish relations,” rabbi

Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio permitting more widespread celebration of the Tridentine Mass is not, despite the claims of certain Jewish groups, “proof of the Pope’s evil intent toward the Jews,” wrote Rabbi David Rosen in an article published in the July 22 Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese. Despite the “problematic aspect” of the Latin liturgy, the Church, Rosen assured readers, continues to reject attempts to convert the Jews.

Several Jewish commentators have taken issue with the Tridentine Rite’s Good Friday Service because it includes a prayer that asks that God may take “the veil” from the hearts of the Jewish people “and that they may also acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.” It asks “that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness.” Pope Paul VI changed the prayer, removing references to darkness and merely asking that the Jews “arrive at the fullness of redemption.”

Rosen, however, said the pope’s permission of the Tridentine Mass, with the Good Friday prayer for the Jews, “was not motivated in the slightest by anything having to do with Catholic-Jewish relations, but rather by what is called ‘renascent traditionalism’ within the Vatican.”

But even “renascent traditionalism” is not a big problem, according to Rosen. “Few issues,” he said, unite Catholics “across internal ideological divides today as much as a positive attitude” towards Catholic-Jewish relations. Characteristic of these relations is that “the Catholic Church has rejected proselytism,” and, since Vatican II, “has abandoned any institutional ‘mission to the Jews.’” Rosen cited no Church documents that support this claim.

Rosen said, though, “that a prayer for Jews to accept the Christian faith – which we see as a betrayal of our own – is hardly an expression of mutual respect.”

Loyola-Marymount University of Los Angeles professor, Jesuit Fr. Thomas Rausch, it seems, would agree. Writing in the July 20 Tidings, he said the old Good Friday prayer, though “quoting St. Paul about the veil covering their hearts... does not reflect the Church’s current attitude toward the Jews. They are not seen as excluded from God’s grace or living in darkness.” It is “in no way the case,” said Rausch, that Benedict’s “initiative... denies that the Jews can be saved as Jews.”

The Christian doctrine “that God’s universal salvific will is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God,” assured Rausch, does not deny “the dignity of others or their religions,” nor does it “suggest that one has to become a Christian in order to be saved. God works in mysterious ways, even among those who do not know Christ or the Gospel.”

Rausch cites Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, which says God provides divine help for salvation to those outside the Catholic Church. Rausch does not mention the same document states that those who, “knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.”

The Talmud (here)
The Association of Hebrew Catholics (here)
"Salvation is from the Jews" by Roy Schoeman (here)
Original article (here)

Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen, An Arm Of The Jesuits.

When does a 17,000-square-foot house become a home?

When the Jesuit priests serving Loyola Blakefield move into it next year. Plans are under way for the construction of a 17,000-square-foot rectory at the preparatory school that serves grades six through 12 on its 60-acre campus at 500 Chestnut Ave. in Towson.

The rectory would replace the former Enten residence, which the school owns, on Chestnut Avenue adjacent to Loyola Blakefield's Hartigan Field, according to a Baltimore County Design Review Panel.

The new two-story structure with a half basement would use masonry, stucco and Butler stone to resemble the appearance of adjacent Knott Hall.

The residence would have 12 suites and two guest rooms, as well as a common kitchen, common living areas and a chapel.

Narrower than the existing Enten house, but far deeper, the rectory "will be designed to still look like a regular house from the street," explained the school's president, the Rev. Thomas Pesci.

The new structure would be hidden from southbound traffic on Chestnut by trees, but visible to northbound traffic traveling up the hill.

The developer is the Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen, an arm of the Jesuits.

Original article (here)

Fr. Marc Gervais S.J. Ingmar Bergan Expert

Marc Gervais, a leading authority on Ingmar Bergman, got quite the shock Monday evening on his return from a brief vacation in Maine. News of Bergman's death hit the airwaves Monday morning but the Montreal writer and scholar didn't learn of the passing of the iconic Swedish film auteur until he arrived home to a slew of telephone messages that night after driving home from Goose Rocks with his brother and wife.

"It was a blow, like (a death in the) family," said Gervais, on the phone Tuesday. "I felt like some of my past was dying. He was so central to my life."

Gervais, a Jesuit priest, has been obsessed with Bergman ever since he caught a double bill of Bergman's atypical romantic comedy Smiles of a Summer Night and the wild Biblical allegory The Seventh Seal while studying in Washington, D.C., in the late 1950s. He hasn't stopped analyzing, teaching and writing about the Scandinavian film master ever since.

During his four-decade tenure as a communications professor at Concordia University, Gervais has turned several generations of students on to the weighty charms of such Bergman films as Persona, Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander. In 1999, McGill-Queen's University Press published Ingmar Bergman: Magician and Prophet, Gervais's thoughtful humanist/Christian re-assessment of Bergman's oeuvre.

Gervais was one of the first non-Swedish writers to be granted a full-length interview with the famously press-shy director, and that chat in Stockholm in the late '60s - which aired on CBC Radio at the time - remains one of the highlights of Gervais's lengthy career as a film journalist.

Bergman was raised by a strict Lutheran clergyman father, and Gervais believes that dour strain of Lutheranism was central to Bergman's films. But for reasons even Gervais doesn't fully comprehend, there was, for quite some time, a number of what he calls "Bergman priests" scattered across the globe. These Catholic men of the cloth were all fascinated by the religious themes at the core of so many Bergman flicks.

"I was the official Bergman priest for Canada," Gervais said.

Original article (here)