St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: Patroness of Europe

9th August is the feast of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). It has the rank of Feast in the dioceses of Europe, since St Teresa is one of the patron saints of Europe. The UK and Ireland edition of Magnificat includes proper prayers and readings for the feast day - I suspect that only the most alert of parish clergy will realise to use them. The reading from the Book of Esther is particularly significant for the way in which St Teresa understood her own vocation. The "Meditation of the Day" is from Edith Stein's own writings on women and women's education:

The more clearly and distinctly the student understands the relation of the Creator and the creted, the facts concerning the fall of man and redemption, the deep mysteries of the divine inner life of the Trinity, the nature of Christ, the essence and the exalted calling of the Mother of God, the deeper will her union with divinity, the Redeemer, and the Queen of heaven.

One can see clearly in the lives of the saints that their advancement in personal sanctity and in a more profound insight into the truths of faith postulate and promote each other reciprocally. This is also precisely true of those saints without a scholarly education.

A good account of Edith Stein's life, and its meaning, can be found on the website of the Holy See, from the page devoted to beatifications and canonisations. The August 2011 issue of Bible Alive also has an article about Edith Stein, which reads her life alongside that of Cardinal John Henry Newman, beatified during Pope Benedict's visit to the UK last year. This article also draws on the account that Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Edith's closest friend, Godmother and philosophical colleague, gives of her life.

According to Hedwig Conrad-Martius, the essence of Edith Stein can be found in the beauty of a three-fold obedience to the real: that of the saint (the interior receptivity of the soul to the life of the Holy Spirit), that which she lived in a spirit of child-likeness (openness of personality), and that which she lived as a philosopher dedicated to the truth of things as they presented themselves to her (phenomenology). That is, obedience to the truth of things, the truth of persons and to the truth of God. This is the meaning of her life for us today.

Valle Adurni: 500 (a-g)

I had my own attempt to understand events in Ireland, prompted initially by reading Cardinal Danielou, and then by reflecting on the place of Christianity in a culture and on Christianity as politics. I don't think it was a particularly effective attempt. My own experience of Irish Catholicism is very (and I mean very) limited. My reflection on Mass at Knock during a visit a couple of years ago may, however, not be as far off the mark as I might have thought:

Mass struck me as expressing Irish Catholicism at its best - a very strong devotion on the part of the faithful - and at its worst - a complete lack of any real sense on the part of the clergy that this was Liturgy and was due some objective sense of honour.

My previous visit to Ireland was during the first August after the canonisation of Edith Stein, and I made the effort to get to Mass for her feast day (9th August). On a weekday, a good number of the laity prayed the Rosary before Mass, and then ... of course, the prayers for Edith Stein were not in the Missal, and the feast may not have been included in the Diocesan Ordo, though I recall she had by that time been proclaimed a patron saint of Europe and therefore her feast day had the Liturgical rank of Feast in Ireland and its celebration was compulsory according to Liturgical law ... as fast as an express train, the Mass of the feria. Again, the strength and the weakness of Irish Catholicism on display.

Valle Adurni has undertaken a much longer and better informed account of Irish Catholicism. I encountered part (g) before reading any of the other parts, and it seems to validate the impression that I gained from these two encounters.

The 500, by the way, refers to the membership of the Irish Association of Catholic Priests. If there is one post of the series to read in addition to part (g) it is this part (a). It gives a very useful insight into the situation of the priest in Ireland, and perhaps indicates the flawed presence of the Church in the culture.

Most Holy Trinity, I adore You profoundly

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He Himself is offended. And, through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners.

The prayer of the Angel who appeared to the children at Fatima is appropriate to the Feast of the Transfiguration, when the Church celebrates the glory of God made manifest to Peter, James and John on the mountain top.

The prayer reminds us of the doctrine of the Trinity, and it reminds us of the fundamental calling of the Christian to an attitude of adoration. It is also Eucharistic in character - as was the apparition of the Angel during which the prayer was revealed - and it calls us to pray for the conversion of sinners.

An interesting aspect of the apparitions of the Angel is the part played in them by the posture of prayer - kneeling, and more precisely, prostration with the forehead touching the ground as the children pray as taught by the Angel. One contemporay apostolate for Eucharistic Adoration with children encourages this posture in prayer - the Children of Hope apostolate of the Community of St John.

For the first year of preparation for the centenary of the apparitions, the shrine at Fatima invite pilgrims to follow a "way" that is based on the apparitions of the Angel. The notes to accompany the Pilgrim Itinerary include an account of the apparitions given by Sr Lucia and directions for prayer and meditation. During a visit to Fatima at the end of May, we were able to follow this "way" on one of the days.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

At the start of Night Prayer, the rubric says that "here an examination of conscience is commended. In a common celebration this may be inserted in a penitential act using the formulas given in the Missal". A few days ago, I thought it might be a good idea to start using the new English translation of the "I confess" at this point.

In the "previous" translation, the phrase "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" does not really exist - it is conflated into an earlier phrase and appears only as "... I have sinned through my own fault". The principle behind this, I guess, was that of removing unnecessary repetition, though it probably was not even a particularly good implementation of that principle.

In the new translation, it appears accompanied by the rubric "striking their breast, they say" as:

through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault

The effect of this when it is prayed within the context of Night Prayer, and immediately following an examination of conscience, is interesting. It expresses, and therefore at the same time communicates to the person praying it, a real sense of the wrongness of what they have just considered in their examination of conscience. That has been my own experience, at any rate.

For many people, this enhanced awareness of a sense of sin will be a pastoral advantage of the new translation when compared to the previous translation and has the potential to provide a positive impetus towards conversion of life. However, particularly in a situation where someone repeatedly commits a sin which is addictive in nature, or where someone's life situation means that they suffer for reasons that are not their own fault, it might lead to an exaggeration in the sense of sin, a sense of "guilt" in the unhealthy meaning of that word.

What one hopes, from a pastoral point of view, is that a greater awareness of the reality of sin will also mean that there is a greater awareness of just how great is God's mercy. In catechesis, one can point out that "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" is followed by the prayer of the priest which asks for God's mercy, His forgiveness of our sins and that He will lead us to eternal life. The reality of sin is more than matched by the reality of Divine Mercy.

In this context, Fr Boyle's remarks about the prayer of commendation after absolution seem very helpful. This is a prayer that could also be used as part of catechesis about the penitential rite.

From a parish newsletter: comment on the new English translation of the Mass

The following is taken from a parish newsletter for the 18th Sunday of the Year. It provides first a reflection on how the new English translation of the Roman Missal better expresses the gestures of Jesus as he instituted the Eucharist. It also makes a point that many of those criticising the new translation prefer to disregard, namely, that there has been an extensive and long period of consultation and discussion with many in the Church during the course of preparing the new translation. Are the series of twelve newsletter inserts referred to part of a national initiative here in England and Wales or are they an initiative specific to this particular parish?

We hear St Matthew's account of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes this Sunday. This is not only a demonstration of divine mercy but also a prefiguring of the Holy Eucharist. The liturgy of the Mass recalls the gestures of Our Lord when he raised His eyes to Heaven, gave thanks and said the blessing. One of the lovely aspects of the new translation of the Roman Missal (which we shall begin using partially at Sunday Mass in September and fully by Advent) is that the nobility of these actions is better expressed: On the day He was to suffer, He took bread in His holy and venerable hands, with eyes raised to Heaven....In a similar way, when supper was ended he took this chalice in His holy and venerable hands, and once more giving you thanks He said the blessing and gave the chalice to his disciples....

When the Missal was first produced in English in 1970, the translation of the Latin text was necessarily hurried and without much precision and sometimes lack of faithfulness to the original. I am very much looking forward to using these texts in full (I have already begun using some them at weekday Masses), as they are the fruit of many years of study and consultation between literally thousands of Bishops, Priests and Faithful throughout the English-speaking world. They are more scriptural, theological and properly liturgical in the way they express the truths of our Faith in worship. From September there will be a series of inserts in the Newsletter, for twelve weeks, each providing us with a thorough explanation and catechesis of these new translations of the Missal. It is the desire of all of us involved with the celebration of Catholic worship, that this new Missal will assist us ever more towards an authentic offering of, and participation in, the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Christianity as politics?

In yesterday's post I suggested that Cardinal Danielou had a fundamentally correct insight in arguing that we ought not to be shy of a circumstance where a Christian culture (though the example countries to which he referred were in fact historically Catholic countries) provides a matrix that encourages the practice of Christianity by its people. At the end of that post, I pointed out that the implicit question that Cardinal Danielou did not address in his writing was that of whether or not the presence of a Christian culture should also comprise an exercise of political power by the Church.

In the example countries that the Cardinal cited - countries like Spain, Italy and the Catholic countries of South America - there has been a historic perception that the Catholic Church in those countries has at times and in certain ways been allied to former governments. My knowledge of history is not good enough to really understand how far this should be seen as an exercise of political power by the Church. The other recent chapter in the story is that of the Christian Democrat parties in countries such as Germany and Italy.

The contemporary model for how the Catholic Church sees its relationship to the exercise of political power is that of Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict speaks of an "appropriate" or a "healthy" secularity, by which he wishes to recognise the rightful autonomy of the exercise of political and legislative power from the provisions of any one particular religion. At the same time, he does not allow that this secularity should constitute a hostility towards religion and insists that it should allow all citizens to live according to their religious beliefs in the public sphere as well as in their own private lives. The ethical element of Pope Benedict's model was expressed in his address in Westminster Hall (my emphases added):

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.

It is very easy to indicate a distinction in principle between the Christian culture of a nation, and the exercise of political power by the Church in that nation, and to say that the legitimate existence of the former is not dependent on the latter. Events on the ground might well blur the distinction. Perhaps the situation in Ireland, for example, does demand a stronger sense of "appropriate secularity" or separation of Church from State. Archbishop Martin of Dublin recognised something of this in his homily for 17th July 2011 (worth reading in full):

Great damage has been done to the credibility of the Church in Ireland. Credibility will only be regained by the Church being more truly what the Church is. Renewal will not be the work of sleek public relations moves. Irish religious culture has radically changed and has changed irreversibly. There will be no true renewal in the Church until that fact is recognised.

The Church cannot continue to be present in society as it was in the past.

How far a flawed political/cultural presence of the Catholic Church in Irish society has contributed to the poor response to allegations of the abuse of minors is difficult to tell without a much closer knowledge of the actual events themselves than I have. As Archbishop Martin recognises, though, it is a question for reflection.

Christianity in culture?

This post could have been titled "Christianity and Culture", but as you will realise that title would both accurately portray the question being addressed - that of the appropriate relation between the Christian life of believers and the culture of the society in which they live - and at the same time miss the essential point being made.

Part of my holiday reading was Cardinal Jean Danielou's book Why the Church? The book was written in French in 1972, and its English translation dates from 1974. My interest in reading the book was to look at how it analyses the situation of the Church of those times. In the first chapter, there are four pages or so devoted to a discussion of the relationship between Christian life and its surrounding culture.

One of the aspects of the present crisis is that we are witnessing the turning point for one form of the embodiment of Christianity in western culture, the form of Christianity which began with Constantine and was the reality in the Occident until the nineteenth century. During that time Christianity was the inspiration for the whole of the literary, philosophical and artistic culture of the Occident. Therefore, there was an expression of Christianity on the very level of civilisation. Now this Christianity is not only in crisis, but, more profoundly, its very validity is being contested.

Cardinal Danielou contrasts the challenging of this cultural form of Christian faith in the west with the recognition that, in mission territories, it is when Christianity becomes an embedded part of the local culture that it is able to evangelise effectively. He contrasts two views. The first view is that of those who would argue that a Christianity that is separated from its cultural embodiment will be better since those who adhere to it will have a real personal faith in Christ and not just a superficial faith that is just lived in a merely social way. The second view is that which favours a situation where a whole nation can be said to be "Christian" and where the embodiment of Christianity in the national culture provides a major impetus towards Christian life for the ordinary person.

The conclusion that Cardinal Danielou draws from this discussion is, I think, most interesting in the light of, for example, events in Ireland, where an embodied Catholic culture would appear to have gone very sadly awry in regard to the abuse of minors and responding appropriately to eradicate that abuse. I do think that Cardinal Danielou has a fundamentally correct insight - that where circumstances mean it exists we should not be shy of the idea of a "Catholic country" which therefore favours Catholic practice - but "events", as one might say, have shown that where the embodiment of Christian life itself in the cultural milieu  is seriously flawed the outcomes are going to be quite devastating. The challenge to be faced by the Church in Ireland is perhaps less one of successfully withdrawing Catholicism from the public culture in order to purify it than one of correcting the manner of its presence within that culture through a process of purification. This latter appears to me to be the import of the practical proposals of Pope Benedict's letter to the Catholics of Ireland.

That is why, on this point which seems to me to be of greatest importance, I think that its absolutely impossible to separate the proclamation of God's word, which is our mission as such, from the necessity of acting upon civilisation and culture in order to impregnate them with Christian values, for only this makes it possible for all men to be Christian still and prevents Christianity from becoming in the future a clique, a little esoteric group. It must remain this great people of God, into which all men are called, and to which we have the hope that those who are still strangers can yet belong. That is why, where we still have the good fortune "that the race is evangelised", according to the words of Peguy, as is the case in certain western countries such as France, Spain or Italy, as is the case for the immense Catholic continent of South America, as is the case for Canada and a part of the United States of America, where there is still the opportunity to have a Christian people, I say that this is something essential that we must not lose.... Certainly it is important that the Christianity of every Christian be directed more and more toward a personal type of commitment, but we must consider it a tremendous thing when a whole nation is a race of baptised people, when baptism is an integral part of the very tradition of the race..

It would be interesting to know whether, if he were alive today, Cardinal Danielou would still describe France, Spain and Italy as "evangelised nations" in the way the he did writing in 1972. The emergence of the notion of a "new evangelisation" suggests an acceptance that these countries should no longer be considered as "baptised peoples" in Cardinal Danielou's sense.

[There is an aspect to the cultural embodiment of Christianity to which Cardinal Danielou refers that he only hints at and does not pursue in an explicit way. This is the extent to which a cultural embodiment of Christian life is also a political embodiment of that Christian life, and whether such a political embodiment is essential to achieving the cultural embodiment that Cardinal Danielou so highly values, or whether the cultural embodiment can be achieved without a political embodiment. I hope to post on this aspect of the question in the next day or two.]