Looking back over the posts I’ve done this year, I think I made some hits and misses in reporting on the biggest stories of the 2009 in regard to events in the Catholic Church. But I think I got the top six. In order:
5. Pope Benedict’s new social encyclicalCaritas in Veritate creates discussion about world events to secure social justice — and more ludicrous misunderstanding than you can imagine.
Other stories I covered: Pope Benedict’s trip to the Holy Land and the controversy over the film of Dan Brown’sAngels and Demons. And this may be “hometown” news for me, but it does have a great impact on the Church in the U.S. as a whole: New York got a New Archbishop, Timothy Dolan.
Others - controversy over the death of Ted Kennedy and this pro-abortion Catholic’s highly public funeral Mass, the new priestly sex abuse crisis in Ireland — I sort of missed. I certainly followed them while they were happening, but didn’t have time to blog about them.
The news came today, though it’s been rumored for some time. Pope Benedict released today a list of approvals of miracles approved for beatifications — and also decrees of the heroic virtue of Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius XII, together with that of Solidarity’s priest-martyr, Jerzy Popieluzsko.
The decree of Venerable for John Paul II comes less than five years after his death (on April 2, 2005). He might well be beatified next fall, if the miracle attributed to him is approved.
Something that passed almost unnoticed in these hectic days before Thanksgiving – for me and for many others – is the talk Pope Benedict XVI gave on November 21 to a group of over 260 artists in the Sistine Chapel. He wanted, among other things, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of John Paul II’s Letter to Artists (published on April 4, 1999) , and the occasion 45 years ago in 1964, when Pope Paul VI greeted artists in the same Sistine Chapel. After recalling those anniversaries, and reminding his listeners that they were in a place filled with some of the most famous works of art in the world, he said:
Dear friends, let us allow these frescoes to speak to us today, drawing us towards the ultimate goal of human history. The Last Judgement, which you see behind me, reminds us that human history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always transcends the present moment even as the two coincide. Yet the dramatic scene portrayed in this fresco also places before our eyes the risk of man’s definitive fall, a risk that threatens to engulf him whenever he allows himself to be led astray by the forces of evil. So the fresco issues a strong prophetic cry against evil, against every form of injustice. For believers, though, the Risen Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For his faithful followers, he is the Door through which we are brought to that “face-to-face” vision of God from which limitless, full and definitive happiness flows. Thus Michelangelo presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of history, and he invites us to walk the path of life with joy, courage and hope. The dramatic beauty of Michelangelo’s painting, its colours and forms, becomes a proclamation of hope, an invitation to raise our gaze to the ultimate horizon. The profound bond between beauty and hope was the essential content of the evocative Message that Paul VI addressed to artists at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: “To all of you,” he proclaimed solemnly, “the Church of the Council declares through our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!” And he added: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands… Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.”
The whole of Pope Benedict’s talk in English, with links to the others, can be found here.
For anyone in the arts, including writers (like me), whether they are poets, playwrights, novelists or even screenwriters, for painters, sculptors, and those in the performing arts, these texts are a rich feast for meditation.
Could anyone express better than John Paul II (who was a practicing poet and playwright) the relation between an artist’s work and the contemplation of God?
6. Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one’s own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it can only stammer in reply? True artists above all are ready to acknowledge their limits and to make their own the words of the Apostle Paul, according to whom “God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands” so that “we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a representation by human art and imagination” (Acts 17:24, 29). If the intimate reality of things is always “beyond” the powers of human perception, how much more so is God in the depths of his unfathomable mystery!
John Paul also said that Christ too was an artist on earth: “Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God.” (Both quotes from the Letter to Artists)
I posted here one of his predecessor John Paul I’s writings as a bishop on artists, though he never got to write a letter to artists as Pope. For him, a saint like Fra Claudio Granzotto, OFM Cap., had a similar idea:
Frau Claudio first remained in contemplation, he first heated his heart in the furnace of divine love, then, when he was well heated and had truly contemplated, only the did he set his hand to his masterpiece, and when his masterpiece was finished, he returned to contemplate and tried to bring what he had sculpted to life again.
The one art that Albino Luciani could lay any claim to practicing was that of a writer. And how did this insight work out in his life? One of his students at the seminary in Belluno, Don Aldo Belli, recalled that Luciani one day said to the class: “I don’t know what the prophet Isaiah did to find such clear and expressive images.” Aldo had the impression that Luciani wanted to learn his secret so as to imitate him. (Humilitas, Italian edition, November 1988, p. 15). That is, he saw the sacred writer first as a human writer, with the same difficulties in inspiration as all others. And he saw himself the same way.
I don’t know if the words Luciani wrote came from a vision like those of Isaiah, or, as I think much more likely from his own constant contemplation of the Word of God, which no doubt Isaiah did too. And though Luciani was capable of writing, and quite well, in a more elevated and poetic style, the result of his contemplation of the Gospels was something very like the Gospel simplicity of Jesus himself. What writer could ask for more?
I haven’t done any blogging for quite a while, due to working overtime on editing video, but this is too good not to share. A great little time waster called “Find Your Name’s best Anagram.” You go to the web site, enter a name or word and click on the button. The letters are re-arranged: instant anagram!
When you get tired of trying permutations of your own name, you can go on to the real fun: finding out the truth behind the names of famous people. Here’s some the gang on Mark Shea’s blog (me included) came up with:
Albert Einstein: TEN ELITE BRAINS
Sherlock Holmes: HEH! SMELLS CROOK
Arthur Conan Doyle: CARRY ON, HOUND TALE
Ralph Waldo Emerson: PERSON WHOM ALL READ
Dwight D. Eisenhower: NOW WRITE: HIGH DEEDS
George Washington: WAR ON: HE GETS GOING
Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll’s real name): SCHOLAR GODSEND
G. K. Chesterton: THE GENT ROCKS
William Jefferson Clinton: HE JILTS NICE WOMEN. IN FOR FALL
George W Bush: HE GREW BOGUS
Lyndon Baines Johnson: NO NINNY, SO HANDLES JOB
Lee Harvey Oswald: REVEALED: WHO SLAY (I came up with this one)
Osama bin Laden: A DAMN ALIEN S.O.B. (I came up with this one too)
Saddam Hussein: UN’S SAID HE’S MAD (also mine)
Saint Peter: NEAT PRIEST
Mark Twain: AM RANK WIT
Pope John Paul the Second: HAPPEN-SO: THE JOCUND POLE
Richard Dawkins: DISHRACK DARWIN
Harry Potter: TRY HERO PART (I came up with this one)
United States of America”: DINE OUT, TASTE A MAC, FRIES
“Great Britain”: BATTERING IRA
“Los Angeles, California”: SO IF ALL CLEAN AIR’S GONE
And of course:
Dan Brown: NOW BRAND!
I’m laughing so hard I can barely type this. You can join the fun here:
Update: around 11 p. m.
This one is priceless:
United States Supreme Court: SMUTTIER, UP-TO-DATE CENSURES
A couple more that I tried came up with great results:
George Walker Bush: BLUSH, WAR GEEK OGRE! That says it all, I guess.
President Obama: ENTOMB PARADISE
Pope John Paul the First: JESTFUL, HAPPIER PHOTON (a photon is the basic ‘unit’ of light).
While I was looking around for information about blogging bishops, I came across this gem on YouTube. Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, who lived in the Vatican with Pope Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, tells what it was like to work with them. He has a great story about John Paul I at 3:18 (I already knew this story from a print interview with the cardinal, but never knew it was on tape). Rather fitting to put this up, for it was just a year ago today, the feast of St. Peter and Paul, if I remember right, that I began putting up my posts about John Paul I.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child — I will not forget you — I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible — but even if she could forget — I will not forget you. And today the greatest means — the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in her Nobel Prize acceptance Speech, 1979
