Guadalupe to Toledo

 

First, business: The Absence of War is now available on Kindle again. I had pulled it because I entered in a competition which, not surprisingly, I did not win, so here it is again for you – lending is enabled, so if you like it, you can pass it on. And while you’re at it, check out Son #2’s new book, coming in a week or so: Crystal Embers.  Preview here. 

All right, now for travel things. Monday, we traveled from Caceres to Guadalupe, the site of the famed Royal Monastery of Guadalupe. History:

There is a legend of the origins of the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The legend says that St. Luke was the person who created the statue in the first century AD. When he died in Asia Minor, he was buried with the statue. In the 4th century, his remains were transferred to Constantinople in the 4th century. In 590 Gregorio Magno was elected Pope and he had a devotion to this Virgin and exhibited the statue in his chapel. One day the Pope was having a solemn procession with the Virgin in Rome and asked the Virgin to intercede to stop an epidemic in the city. An angel appeared to the Pope and the epidemic stopped.

Pope Gregorio Magno sent the statue to Seville to St. Leandro, who was the archbishop of the city, through his brother Isidoro, who was in Rome. During the boat trip, a sudden storm overtook the boat, but Isidoro prayed to the Virgin and the storm stopped suddenly. The Virgin was enthroned in Seville in the principal church at that time until the Moorish invasion in 714. Many priests in Seville fled the city during the invasion and went north with the statue of the Virgin and other reliquaries of the saints. They hid the statue near the river in Guadalupe.

At the end of the 13th century, a cow herder called Gil Cordero had a vision from the Virgin Mary beside the river. She indicated to him where her statue could be found. She told him to tell the priests where the statue was and for them to build a church in that place. The priests of Caceres then build a hermitage in that place and dedicated it to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pilgrimages started to the hermitage and later in 1389 the monks of the Order of St. Jeronimo arrived and took over the hermitage. Many of the Spanish kings, especially the Catholic Kings, favored the monastery and many additions were made to it and many treasures were given to it too. The Catholic Kings made a pilgrimage to the monastery after their conquest of Granada.

The statue of the Virgin has been examined by experts several times. The statue was carved in cedar and polychromed at the end of the 12th century. Its style is Romanesque and today her image looks black, from the passage of time. The Virgin is seated and has the Child Jesus in her arms. The image measures 59 cm. Today the Virgin is venerated and on Sept.8 there is a celebration on her feast day. After Santiago de Compostela, the number of pilgrimages to Guadalupe is the most numerous in Spain.

On July 29, 1496, Columbus brought two Indians named Cristobal and Pedro to the monastery to have them baptized, when he met the Catholic Kings here. This was the first baptism of Indians from America. They returned to Mexico and many hermitages and churches in the Americas were dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Columbus named one of the islands he discovered Guadalupe, after the Virgin. Today there is a great devotion to this Virgin in all of the Americas and around the world, especially in Mexico.

Images of the baptism are everywhere and the font that was used is the center of a fountain in front of the monastery.

I was a little surprised by how the monastery was situated. The place has a mini-Lourdes-like vibe, not surprising, if you read the note above about its long-time popularity as a pilgrimage site. So it’s not exactly a peaceful place, with the monastery being literally right up against the little town – the steps a couple hundred feet from the plaza-side cafes. It’s kind of strange, but because the town structures around the monastery retain their medieval look (except, you know, for the Mahou ads and such), it fits.

There are two aspects to visiting the monastery complex: Visiting the monastery itself, which requires participation in a tour, and then visiting the basilica, which is of course, open. The tours just kind of…happen, it seems to me. Enough people gather, and they start a tour. So, thinking that we might do this tour on Tuesday, we showed up Monday around 4:30, having checked in our cute little hostel (2 rooms for $70 total), and people were sitting around in the gathering area, so..you know…why not?

The tour is in Spanish, and takes you in the cloister, adjoining rooms which have been made into museum rooms of choir books and religious artifacts, the magnificent sacristy which features paintings by Zubaran, and then the upper…chapel, I guess. A layman takes you through most of the tour, and then in that upper chapel, a Franciscan takes over. We were, I gathered, about to see Guadalupe herself. He talked for a while, then opened another door – there was a panel with all sorts of painted images on it which he turned…and there she was! He lead a Hail Mary in front of it, then offered us a disk attached to the statue with a rope for us to venerate. Most in the group did, some held back. There was a pregnant woman in the group to whom he gave the privilege of turning the statue back the other way. (When you go in the basilica, the statue is up high from your vantage point – so where you’ve been on the tour is up behind it.)

At one point one of my sons asked me, “What is he saying?” of the lay tour guide and I quickly explained that he was telling us we were in the former refectory and this is where the tables where and up there was the niche in which the reader stood during meals. He stared at me and said, “But you don’t speak Spanish.” “But I speak Catholic,” I said – and continued explaining that if I know the context of the speech and if I’m familiar with the topic, I can follow the general gist of what someone is saying in French, Spanish or Italian. Context is everything, though. So here, once I picked up the word for refectory, I was set.

The tour was a little rushed, but I guess you could also say it was efficient, right? The basilica was…a basilica. There was not much distinctive about it, so I’m glad we got all that done when we arrived – the advantages of the late-living Spanish lifestyle!

No photos were allowed in the monastery, but you can easily find images of that online.

Monday evening, we wandered, took in views, and prepped for the next stage. Tuesday morning, we got up and I thought we might do some walks around Guadalupe, but as we drove out, I couldn’t figure out stopping points or parking places or trail beginnings, so we just sped on. It would be an hour and a half to the next stop, so might as well….

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Free Book!

I mentioned it in the Quick Takes post, but it might have gotten lost for you: In honor of the Feast of the Visitation and the end of May, Mary’s month –  Mary and the Christian Life is free today and tomorrow – up until midnight Saturday.

Backstory, for those of you unfamiliar with the book – Mary and the Christian Life is a simple book introducing the reader to Mary: what Scripture reveals about her, what Tradition teaches, and how all of that relates to our lives as disciples of Jesus. I pull in devotions, prayers and even plants.The book was published by Word Among Us in 2008, and is now out of print. When a book goes out of print, rights revert to the author, and we can do what we like with it – and what I like to do is make my out-of-print books available to you at low or no cost – why let all that work go to waste?!

 

Really – it’s the kind of thing where, if you have someone you know who doesn’t get Catholics and Mary, is uncomfortable with Marian doctrines and devotion or is just curious – what a perfect opportunity, right? “Here’s a free book to read about it!” 

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Mother’s Day at Mass

Mother’s Day is still over a week away, but I thought I’d toss this out there, especially for any priests who might wander by. It’s a repeat of an old post, but still, I think, worth considering:

My mother & a friend in Nogales, 1950’s.

The question of how to “recognize” mothers at a Mother’s Day Mass is a fraught one.

There is, of course, the view (mine) that everything that happens at Mass should relate only to the liturgical year. Stop doing all the other stupid things, thanks. As a community, we’re free to celebrate whatever in whatever way we choose outside of Mass, but when it comes to Very Special Mass in Honor of Very Special Groups of any sort – scouts, moms, dads, youth, ‘Muricans….I’m against it.

But of course, over the years, American sentimental pop culture creeps into the peripheries of liturgical observance, and quite often, here we are at Mass on the second Sunday of May, with the expectation that the Moms present must be honored.

I mean…I went to the trouble to go to Mass for the first time in four months to make her happy…you’d better honor her….

This is problematic, however, and it’s also one of those situations in which the celebrant often feels that he just can’t win. No matter what he does, someone will be angry with him, be hurt, or feel excluded.

Because behind the flowers and sentiment, Mother’s Day is very hard for a lot of people – perhaps it’s the most difficult holiday out there for people in pain.

So when Father invites all the moms present to stand for their blessing at the end of Mass and the congregation applauds….who is hurting?

• Infertile couples
• Post-abortive women
• Post-miscarriage women
• Women whose children have died
• People who have been abused by their mothers
• People with terrible mothers, even short of outright abuse
• Women have placed children for adoption
• People who’ve recently lost their mothers. Or not so recently.
• Women who are not now and might never be biological or adoptive mothers and who wonder about that and are not sure about how they feel about it.

And then there are those of us who value our role as mothers, but who really think Mother’s Day is lame and would just really prefer that you TRY TO GET ALONG FOR ONE STUPID DAY instead of giving me some flowers and politely clapping at Mass.

So awkward.

Nope. Making Mothers stand up, be blessed and applauding them (the worst) at Mass is a bad idea for a lot of reasons.

It’s not that people should expect to be sheltered from the consequences of their choices and all that life has handed them when the enter the church doorway.

The Catholic way is the opposite of that – after all, the fundamental question every one of us carries is that of death, and every time we enter a Catholic church we are hit with that truth, sometimes more than life-sized.

No, the question is more: Catholic life and tradition has a lot to say and do when it comes to parenthood – in ways, if you think about it, that aren’t sentimental and take into account the limitations of human parenthood and root us, no matter how messed-up our families are or how distant we feel from contemporary ideals of motherhood – in the parenthood of God. Live in that hope, share it, and be formed by that, not by commercially-driven American pop culture.

So here’s a good idea. It happened at my parish a couple of years ago, and is the standard way of recognizing the day.

Because we’re not walled off from the broader culture. People enter into that sacred space carrying everything with them, and Christ seeks to redeem all of it.  So knowing that Mother’s Day permeates the culture, accepting it, but also accepting that motherhood and parenthood in general is far more complex than the greeting cards and commercials let on, and that people come bearing, not only motherhood-related joy, but motherhood-related pain as well – the Body of Christ embraces and takes it all in.

So, quite simply, at the end of Mass as we were standing for the final blessing, the celebrant mentioned that it was Mother’s Day (it hadn’t been mentioned before this), and said that as such, it was an appropriate day to pray for our mothers, living and deceased, and to ask our Blessed Mother for her intercession for them and for us. Hail Mary…

Done.

And done in a way that, just in its focus, implicitly acknowledges and respects the diversity of experiences of motherhood that will be present in any congregation, and, without sentiment or awkward overreach, does that Catholic thing, rooted in tradition  – offers the whole mess up, in trust.

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Wednesday

Only one substantive thing today, related to reading. Not surprisingly, this took me down a rabbit trail that ended up being quite absorbing and, in several strange turns, pertinent to the present day.

But first: Writing: Still working on an essay, which I hope to finish today, then on to the talk for Saturday. From the past – since it’s the feast of the Queenship of Mary – don’t forget that you can get my e-book Mary and the Christian Life – for .99 here. 

Reading: The only pieces of substance that I read were journal articles –  two available through “open access” at the Journal of Ecclesiastical History: “The ‘Affair of the Photographs:’ Controlling the Image of a Nineteenth-Century Stigmatic.” The abstract:

The article focuses on an episode concerning the photographs of the famous Belgian stigmatic, Louise Lateau. Examining the events leading up to the bishop’s decision to restrict the circulation of her portrait, it becomes clear that the ‘affair’ of 1877 was as much about creating her public saintly image as it was about controlling it. Studying the ecclesiastical response to grassroots initiatives adds a more religious perspective to the young field of celebrity studies and offers a more complex view on sanctity, and the role of the media and modern techniques in its creation, use and misuse.

.

This, somehow, lead me to another journal article (also with open access) on a very specific topic – as journal articles tend to be – on the use of houses and memorabilia collections in canonization campaigns: 

In this article, I argue that the houses and memorabilia collections associated with venerated personages played an important role in campaigns to elevate popular, unofficial, saintly figures to the level of the blessed or even canonised saints. Two practices converged in these campaigns: the Catholic tradition of sacralising specific sites and endowing material remnants with special meaning, and the ‘museumification’ of memorial houses and collections. The focus here is on the use of material culture in the beatification campaigns for modern stigmatics (who carried the wounds of Christ). Of the hundreds of cases that were reported, only a few were beatified and canonised. The article concentrates primarily on one success story: the evolution of the German stigmatic Anne Catherine Emmerick (1774–1824) from a ‘living saint’ to her being officially blessed (2004) and the role that her houses and possessions played in the promotion of her cult following and image construction.

Whether you are interested in these particular areas or not, hopefully, even scanning these abstracts might remind you of something important: Our sense of the past (and present, for that matter) tends to be flattened into a series of inevitable narratives that fit neatly into whatever our contemporary ideological narrative is – that is just not the way it was or is. Digging into particular elements of history even from weirdly specific angles (like museum studies) sheds light on the past – and present – in valuable ways. In other words: things just don’t happen. People make them happen. 

By the way, a side road unrelated to canonization that popped out of these articles was the very bizarre case of the Bishop of Tournai, one Edmond Dumont. Bear with me and read along. You won’t regret it.

This is a translated version of the French Wiki page. Born in 1828, apparently brilliant, studied in Rome, ordained, and the volunteered for North American missions (inspired by DeSmet)  where he served in Michigan for six years before returning to Belgium because of health issues. Appointed to the see of Tournai, he was a vocal supporter of the papacy and of a more “conservative” angle to Catholicism among more “liberal” voices in the Belgian church. (And a supporter of stigmatist Louise Lateau.)

He generated hostility among his clergy, and an apostolic administrator was appointed by Rome. At this point, he became even more vocal, and, in the words of this biography of Leo XIII: “…influenced by the enemies of religion, with his mental troubles growing worse, he began to protest, ever more and more violently, by word of mouth, and in the Press, against the Papal decree. Having become a rock of scandal, acting in concert with writers most hostile to the Catholic Church, he almost daily poured out insult and outrage through the newspapers, exciting the faithful to the same insolence, insulting men clad in the highest dignities of the Church….”

The pope convened a commission to study the situation, and the recommendation was to depose Dumont – so he was. Deposed of any episcopal jurisdiction and stripped of his title.

But wait!

There’s more!

From something called Appleton’s  – a very detailed annual almanac of world events (here, 1883), we learn the following:

In Belgium, there was property associated with clerical offices, property which was passed on to successors. After Dumont’s power was diminished by the appointment of an apostolic administrator (but before he was deposed), the diocesan administrator decided it would be wise to protect that property, so he put them under the charge of one Canon Bernard.

“Although Tournai is the smallest and poorest of the six Belgian sees, yet the portable funds in the treasury amounted to more than 5 million francs. Canon Bernard, after first consulting [a member of the Belgian cabinet] ran away with the securities and accounts to America and deposited most of them in safety-vaults in New York and Boston. About 1,700,000 francs of the private funds of Monseigneur  Dumont were sent back to Belgium in charge of a Montreal attorney, named Goodhue, who was arrested on his arrival. The Belgian government applied for his [I think “he” here is Bernard] extradition and he was arrested at Havana and sent back to Belgium on charges of embezzlement.”

Bernard was tried and acquitted since his actions were under obedience to church authorities.

More detail here. 

Crazy. 

(I will say that there are a lot of pieces missing to the English-speaker here. Perhaps somewhere in Belgium archives there is a complete telling of this story, but there are so many gaps and questions – how did this ultramontane bishop turn into a rabble-rouser against papal authority? Was he really mentally unstable, or was that a story told by his opponents?)

Now, let’s look at that rabbit trail.

Regular readers are probably tired of me advocating for reading history as a remedy for despair in the present – but do you see why? Saying that corruption and sin have always been a part of Church life is not in any way a diminishing of current troubles, scandals and sins. But it does, I hope, moderate our temptation to despair and – this is important – see how the Church has dealt with corruption in the past – which it has, in varied ways, in varied circumstances, with varied results, including  – yes – removing and deposing bishops.

 

 

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Our Lady of Guadalupe

 

The shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe is in the outskirts of Mexico City. I suppose it is a suburb? I don’t know. Rather than even attempt public transportation, we went the Uber route, getting up and out earlier than usual  – 9:30 – which meant we arrived at the Basilica a bit after 10.

I admit I was startled. We’re riding through this typical busy Mexican business area, the driver stops, I look to the left, and there’s the basilica right across the road!

I was startled a second time, when we actually went in. The basilica complex is, indeed, in the middle of the town, but large, with many different areas and buildings, including Tepayac hill where Our Lady appeared. All I knew about it ahead of time was: the new basilica has a negative reputation because it’s modern and secondly, you view the tilma via a moving walkway. I had envisioned that this moving walkway was in the midst of a vast space and that there was some buildup to the approach. Well, not the way we got in!

The driver dropped us off across from a bottom entrance to the basilica. We walked in, followed the crowd, and boom there we were on this maybe 30-foot moving walkway and, well, look up right now because there she is!

What I didn’t understand, but do now, is that the tilma is, of course, actually hanging in the church, so that you can see it while you are within that space, and also from underneath, where the moving walkway runs.

(If you want to see video, go to Instagram.)

You are also free to go back and forth on the moving walkway as much as you want. There’s no guard forcing crowd movement. It wasn’t super mobbed today, so we felt very comfortable going back on a the walkway a couple of times before we ascended to the church.

Where there was Mass going on. It was offertory – Mass with about 15 concelebrants a deacon, a slew of servers and a male choir (boys and men). The sign outside that I later read indicated this was the Chrism Mass – but is this a diocesan Cathedral, too? It isn’t, is it? Can non-Cathedrals do a Chrism Mass? Anyway, we got there too late to see any Chrism-related activity anyway. The core of the Mass congregation filled maybe half the church, with the rest of the space filled with people drifting in and out.

After Mass, we toured the site. Some notes:

The old basilica has been damaged in earthquakes, and you can really tell. The whole place is crooked – I tried to capture it in photos, but I am not sure if I was successful –  from the floor to the columns to the baldacchino. It’s a very strange feeling walking around. I can’t see how one more Big One isn’t going to do the place in.

 

I didn’t hate the new church. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, and I’ll just go ahead and say that I didn’t think it was bad at all. I think what it is that the ceiling swoops so low (it’s supposed to evoke Mary’s mantle taking everyone into her care) that it obscures the lack of wall décor – you really don’t notice it, partly because of that low beamed ceiling and partly because most of your attention is on the tilma.

The place was fairly busy, but not crowded. The feeling was relaxed, grateful reverence. I saw one woman approaching the tilma on her knees. Priests were hearing confessions in the church after Mass, and there were long lines.

There are a lot of vendors on site – I was a little surprised that they sold refreshments on top of the hill around the chapels are out there, but, why not?

Third favorite personage after the Blessed Mother and St. Juan Diego? St. Pope John Paul, hands down. He was everywhere.

I’m very glad we went – one more layer added to This is Mexico.

 

Before we leave the shrine – take a look at these ex votos.  I have seen all different sorts of ex votos left in churches around the world: imitation body parts, crutches, plaques, blue and pink ribbons (in gratitude for babies), photographs – but never anything like this: small paintings relating the specific story of the answered prayer. They are fascinating and lovely. They help make it all very real.

Our Uber driver back into the city spoke more English than any we’ve had before, so we had a chance to talk – an interesting story of a graduate student looking to emigrate to Canada in order to teach.

I had him drop him off at the Zocalo, where we ate a quick lunch at a Mexican fast food place, then wandered a bit back and forth until we ended up, first at the Cathedral – where we heard some choir and organ practice, but didn’t have a chance to see much more – it was closed off for Triduum preparations. A disappointment but one I probably should have expected. Back outside.

When you’re in this area, one of the things that is impossible to avoid is a constantly beating drum – it’s “Aztec” dancers right outside the Cathedral. I think they are there all the time, drumming, burning herbs and dancing. I didn’t hang around and watch because I think they’re annoying, and I don’t know the motivation for them being there – is it just because it’s a convenient place to snag a lot of tourist attention? Is it a protest against Christianity? Is it more than a protest? I don’t know. It may be nothing but opportunism, but it’s still aggravating. So we moved on to the very interesting site right next to the Cathedral – the Templo Mayor. You can read more about it here, but the short story is that it’s a fairly recently (1970’s – on) excavated site of a major Aztec (Mexica) temple. There’s a large outdoor section that shows the various stages of construction and a few artifacts and elements they have left in situ, and a museum – larger than I’d expected – that exhibited many more artifacts, including the huge stones depicting various gods that have been found.

Layers upon layers, both in the landscape and in the culture.

 

My next goal was to see the Diego Rivera murals in the National Palace, but alas, it was not to be. The place was closed up, tight as a drum, which I should have expected – late in the afternoon on the Wednesday of Holy Week. Closed, probably for the rest of the week. Oh well….next time.

A bit more wandering (one stop for a fresh pineapple drink), then caught an Uber back to the apartment. A few doors down from the apartment, a small crowd was gathered outside an office building and a mariachi band was playing. A man explained to us that a woman was retiring – it was her last day in the office – and this was her sendoff.

Time for some rest, and then dinner at a place I’d seen a day ago and pegged as a good spot for us – large busy, with roast chicken and other meats in evidence, as well as tortillas being made. It was good, although I’m still stumped by about 50% of the menu – my percentages are going down, so that’s progress. I had a fantastic Caldo de Gallina (basically…soup) with chicken. J had something that was not called flautas, but ended up being basically flautas, and M had a big plate of steak, cheese, peppers and onions all cooked together – sort of fajita-like, except, as I said, cooked together. There was a lot, so I helped. It was very tasty.

The atmosphere in the restaurant was fun to experience: all locals, every table, it seems, marked by large bottles of Victoria beer – nothing else was being consumed except liter after liter of Victoria beer. The jukebox was going and tables of women were singing along. A cat wandered through. Price? A little more than usual because I had a beer (not a liter of Victoria – a small bottle of Negra Modela. I think the tab was 268 pesos: about $15 for the three of us.

Tomorrow: a bit more Mexico City and then…the bus to Puebla.

As usual – head to Instagram for videos. I also have a real camera with me and am taking actual photographs with it, but I also left the doohicky that I need to transfer the photos from a SD card to the computer at home. 

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May, Mary and Books

May, of course, is Mary’s month.  It’s a good time to read a free book on the Blessed Virgin – mine, originally published by Word Among Us, now out of print and available in a pdf version here.

This May is also the centenary of the first Fatima apparition – May 13, 1917. Plenty of books are being published to celebrate, and I want to draw your attention to one in particular that is the work, in part, of my friend and frequent collaborator Ann Kissane Engelhart:

Written by Donna Marie Cooper O’Boyle and published by Sophia, Ann was brought in to do the illustrations, so let’s give her due credit, shall we? Isn’t that a nice cover? I don’t have a copy of the book, nor can I access illustrated pages online, so I don’t know how the interior illustrations were actually used, but here are some samples Ann sent me:

Blurbs for the book have specifically mentioned the illustrations as worthy of note. So if this appears on your radar, remember that the very talented artist involved has other books:

Another recent work to which Ann contributed is this:

Written by Nancy Carpentier Brown, it’s a fictional account of a friendship between G.K. and Frances Chesterton and another family. 

Ann and I aren’t working on anything specific at the moment, but we are tossing around ideas – it’s challenging to find a Catholic publisher willing to invest in quality illustrated children’s books, but we’re trying!

(If you would like a sneak peak at my newest, forthcoming book, check out Instagram Stories – you can only access the “stories” part via the app on a phone, by clicking on my photo.)

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Well, we started with four…and now there are two.

Big trees in the yard, that is.

The two remaining are solid, though, so I’m not worried.

This one, though, was due. I admit that I knew it, too, and at least once a day, I pondered its form, which seem to lean just a bit more every day, and I thought, I really should call someone.

And so I did…at 12:30 am Wednesday morning.

I was sitting here (#nightowl) when the silence was broken by a strong and earth-shaking THUD.

I peeked in the boys’ rooms, even though it really had not sounded like someone had tumbled out of bed or knocked over a lamp in their sleep. All was well. So I peered out the window in the front door, and what a strange, disorienting feeling to see emptiness where you’ve been trained to see a hulking mass of branches twisting up to the sky.

I had never been too worried about it, because I was 99% sure that if and when it did fall, it was angled so it wouldn’t hit anything…and it didn’t. Just the driveway, which it blocked, fully and effectively.

(It was a calm night – no winds or rain. So why did it fall? I suppose because after over two months of drought, the rains had come. Quite a bit of rain over the past week, as a matter of fact. It was not in good shape anyway, and I suppose whatever was left of its roots just slipped out of that soaked earth.)

So the first thing to do was to text my carpool partner with the news and the hope that she could take everyone in the morning because I was blocked in. Second was to call the tree service that promised 24/7 reponse…to get a voicemail. It was fine. I didn’t want anyone to come out right at that moment, but I did want to be first in line for the morning…which I was.

By noon it was all gone and smoothed over.

— 2 —

It was an old, rotting, gnarly tree, but we have each commented that we miss it. It was the only climbable tree in the yard, and it was a home and resting place for all sorts of life.  It really did seem as if the birds that were around that afternoon were confused. It was full of bird-home holes, it had spaces for pools of water to collect which satiated birds and squirrels, and the hummingbirds used it as a Launchpad for dive-bombing the feeder.

— 3—

In case you missed it, I was in Living Faith earlier this week – on the 4^th and 5^th.  And, as I pointed out yesterday on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, you can get my Mary book free here.

Speaking of the Immaculate Conception, nothing like hearing a homily at your IC Mass that is in essence: 1) You know, no one even thought of this thing until the 12^th century.  2) Smart people like Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux were against it.  3) A Pope went ahead and made it dogmatic in 1854. Whatever, it’s a nice metaphor, guys, so feel free to believe..something.

Dude was old and has probably helped more people in his life than I would in ten lifetimes. But seriously.

— 4 —

Perhaps some of you remember the 1990’s PBS series, Wishbone. My older kids grew up with it, and I confess, I loved it. The conceit? A dog daydreams about being a character in various works of literature. It was kind of crazy, but it actually worked.

And believe it or not, the show actually dramatized a religious narrative in Viva, Wishbone! – which involved Our Lady of Guadalupe, in which our friend Wishbone portrays, yes, Juan Diego.

(Why do I bring this up? It’s his feast today)

Now, the story deviates. I just watched a bit of the climax, and the whole roses/tilma thing is not presented as the traditional narrative would have it. So you might not want to use it as a catechetical tool. But take a look on YouTube, and just remember a time – not so long ago – when even PBS portrayed religion as something other than the Opium of Particularly Stupid Bigots.

Access parts 2 & 3 via this link.

 

Also…St. Juan Diego in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints. Under “Saints are People Who See Beyond the Everyday.”

— 5 —.

Aside from Silence and other Endo and Endo-related work, this week I read A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin. I think it was less than two bucks on Kindle or something for a couple of days, so I picked it up.  Levin was a screenwriter and author of several high-concept novels which contributed both new words to the language and almost folkloric images: The Stepford Wives, Rosemary’s Baby and the Somebody-Cloned-Hitler Boys from Brazil.

A Kiss Before Dying was his first novel, written in his mid-20’s. It’s been adapted for film twice: first in 1956, starring Robert Wagner, and then in 1991, starring Matt Dillon. The trailer for the ’56 version is just so…over the top. Or over the roof. What have you.

Anyway, the first 2/3 of the novel were good and fairly absorbing, with some twisty-elements that made you pause, go back and re-read. The twists weren’t so much with the plot itself, but with the narrative framework, which trips you up. But there’s none of that in the last third – just a more routine cat-and-mouse trajectory which I skimmed pretty quickly. Those twists, being formal, are impossible to convey on film – let’s put it this way: even though it’s not the same “twist” – the situation would be like trying to convey the twist at the end of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd on film in a way that hits you the same way it does while reading. I don’t think it can be done. So, as the risible 1956 trailer makes clear, without that interest, you don’t have a lot left.

So sure, that’s what I do. You play video games or watch HGTV. I read odd mid-century novels that strike my fancy and are free, or at least cheap.

— 6—

I don’t think I have mentioned this article in the Atlantic by Deb Fallows. It’s about our downtown Birmingham Public Library. I have written – or at least Instagrammed – about this building before. The murals are quite something, and unfortunately nothing that anyone would ever to decorate a public building with today. Fallows writes about the murals, but more importantly, the research department, which holds some treasures, including a jail log book with Martin Luther King Jr’s signature for that time he spent…in a Birmingham jail.

— 7 —

 

Speaking of such things, it was great to hear that the feds are giving a chunk of our downtown National Historic Monument designation (not quite National Park…but good anyway).  If you are ever here in town, it’s an area you should go visit – the 16^th Street Baptist Church, Linn Park, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. I’ve been to most of the Civil Rights-centered museums in the Southeast, and I’m not going to hesitate to say that I think that BCRI is the best. It’s a very good museum.  This article in our local alt-weekly tells the story of this area and how and why the new status was obtained.

“This is the place. This place is me,” Herbert Simms said, as he walked along the slick, leaf-covered sidewalk. He stopped and hunched over a puddle near a statue of a young boy being violently handled by a police officer and his dog. “They beat me here. That statue right there, for I all I know, that’s me too.” Simms, now 75, spoke quietly as he reflected on his role in this place, Kelly Ingram Park, and how it has shaped his life and the world he’s come to know.

He wondered why it took so long for this particular spot he’s known to be designated as a national historic monument. “This place is all of us…all of us. We changed the world here,” Simms said.

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Free Book on St. Mary Magdalene

Given a little push by the Vatican’s move to elevate  MM’s day from memorial to feast, I finally obtained a pdf text of my 2006 book De-Coding Mary Magdalene: Truth, Legend and Lies, and have tossed it up here for you to download and share.

It’s still got all the pre-publication markings on it, and if I knew how to remove them, I would, but I don’t, so there they are.

UPDATE!  Many thanks to Steven McEvoy of Book Reviews and More for voluntarily, without being asked, coming forward and removing the markings! Thanks so much, Steven!

Add it to the collection, then. Other free pdf downloads of our out-of-print books (all in pdf format):

 

The Power of the Cross (free e-book)

Mary and the Christian Life (free e-book)

Come Meet Jesus – An Invitation from Pope Benedict XVI (free e-book)

Enjoy and share!

 

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Hermannus Contractus

A “minor” saint on the calendar today, but one of my favorites.   In the chapter on the Salve Regina in The Words We Pray, I wrote about him:

You should be able to read more here, at the Google Books link. 

I have to say that this chapter is one of my favorites of anything I’ve ever written over the years.  

The Salve Regina is mentioned in the introduction as well.

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Holy Name of Mary…and looking to St. Francis

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, from Germany in 2006. The homily mentions the feast at the end:

Today we celebrate the feast of the “Most Holy Name of Mary”. To all those women who bear that name – my own mother and my sister were among them, as the Bishop mentioned – I offer my heartfelt good wishes for their feast day. Mary, the Mother of the Lord, has received from the faithful the title of Advocate: she is our advocate before God. And this is how we see her, from the wedding-feast of Cana onwards: as a woman who is kindly, filled with maternal concern and love, a woman who is attentive to the needs of others and, out of desire to help them, brings those needs before the Lord. In today’s Gospel we have heard how the Lord gave Mary as a Mother to the beloved disciple and, in him, to all of us. In every age, Christians have received with gratitude this legacy of Jesus, and, in their recourse to his Mother, they have always found the security and confident hope which gives them joy in God and makes us joyful in our faith in him. May we too receive Mary as the lodestar guiding our lives, introducing us into the great family of God! Truly, those who believe are never alone. Amen!

John Paul II was in the Slovak Republic on 12/12 in 2003:

1. “My heart rejoices in the Lord” (Resp. psalm).  It is with deep joy and profound gratitude to God that I join you in this square, dear Brothers and Sisters, to celebrate today the memorial of the Holy Name of Mary.

The place where we are assembled is especially meaningful in the history of your city. It calls to mind the respect and devotion of your Ancestors towards Almighty God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the same time it recalls the attempt to profane this precious inheritance, perpetrated by a bleak regime of not so many years ago. To all of this the column of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a silent witness……

…..4. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).  Mary believes and therefore she says “yes”.  Her faith becomes life; it becomes a commitment to God, who fills her with himself through her divine motherhood.  It becomes a commitment to her neighbour, who awaits her help in the person of her cousin Elisabeth (cf. Lk 1:39-56).  Mary abandons herself freely and consciously to God’s initiative, which will achieve in her his “marvellous things”: mirabilia Dei.

With the Virgin Mary’s example before us, we are invited to reflect: God has a project for each of us, he “calls” everyone.  What is important is knowing how to recognise this call, how to accept it and how to be faithful to it. 

5. My dear Brothers and Sisters, let us make room for God!  In the variety and richness of diverse vocations, each one is called, like Mary, to accept God into one’s own life and to travel along the paths of the world with him, proclaiming his Gospel and bearing witness to his love.

May this be the resolution that we all make together today and that we place confidently in Mary’s maternal hands.  May her intercession obtain for us the gift of a strong faith that makes clear the scope of our life and enlightens our mind, our spirit and our heart. 

There are actually a lot of Marian feasts in September, aren’t there? Nativity of Mary (9/8), Our Lady of Sorrows (9/15) and today – Holy Name of Mary.  More on September with Mary here.

So…why not pray the rosary?

A bit more information here.

And then there’s a free book…

Go here for more information and to download.

Also…the feastday of St. Francis of Assisi is on its way..considering ordering Adventures in Assisi as a way to deepen your child’s understanding of St. Francis beyond the legends, helping them understand his core message of poverty and humility and what that actually means..

More here

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