St Julian of Norwich on the Church and the body of Christ

“He wills that we take ourselves with great strength to the faith of holy Church and find there our most precious mother in comfort and true understanding with the whole communion of blessed ones. For a person by himself can frequently be broken, as it seems to himself, but the whole body of holy Church was never broken and never shall be, without end. Therefore it is a sure thing, a good thing, and a gracious thing to will meekly and powerfully to be fastened and joined to our mother, holy Church - that is Christ Jesus.” 

― St. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

There is only thing in the West that is really countercultural anymore: becoming a monk or nun. Beautiful and life giving. May God give many more to his churches around the world.

Pope Francis and Islam

The pope recently released an encyclical, Gospel of Joy, and he has a few things to say about Islam in there. Jesuit father Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian by birth, takes a critical look at some of the statements in that encyclical. The whole thing is worth reading, but here is an example. He starts by quoting the encyclical, and then offering his own comments. This part is about evangelism:

The same theme is found in n. 251: "In this dialogue, ever friendly and sincere, attention must always be paid to the essential bond between dialogue and proclamation".

Sometimes, in dialogue, when it comes to proclamation, it appears to displeasure our partners, who immediately accuse us of proselytizing . Instead, it has nothing to do with proselytism. It is about love: out of love , I will proclaim the good news that frees me and gives me joy. And you too should offer me the good that you have encountered in your faith. We must rid ourselves of diatribes, of intellectual arguments and practices aimed at winning the other over, rather witness to truth with one another.

Amen! Thank your Fr Samir for this excellent writing. Read it all HERE.

Poppycock about the Papacy and Europe

What is all this trash I hear about Francis being the first bishop of Rome not from Europe since our local guy, Peter?

Absolutely false!

CNN (of all sources) has it right:

The last time someone from outside Europe led the Roman Catholic Church was the year 741. That's when Pope Gregory III, born in Syria, ended his 10-year reign.

Before him, there were popes from Bethlehem (St. Evaristus, from 97 to 105), Jerusalem (Pope Theodore I, from 642 to 649) and modern-day Libya (Saint Victor I, from 189 to 199).

And, of course, the church counts Peter, disciple of Jesus from [the Galilee], as the first pope.

Several other Syrians have also served as pontiff.

From HERE, though they are also missing two of the three African Popes: Gelasius I and Miltiades.

Pope Benedict XVI: a ground-breaking bishop and pioneer

The bishop of Rome and successor of Peter has, for all his conservatism, has broken new ground once again.

The first time was with his ability and willingness to confront Islam at Regensburg, as I wrote in Islam, the Pope, and History.

The second time was when he allowed for the establishment of ordinariates for marginalized and abused anglo-catholics in the Anglican Communion.

This third time is in resigning his episcopate, as most bishops do sooner or later. But he has done it with class, after much prayer I'm sure, and according to the laws of his Church.

I have said before, and will say again, that in my opinion Pope Benedict XVI was the only European leader head of state or head of church who actually understood Islam and had the balls to confront it.

My only beef with him is that he never responded to my open letter to him regarding Catholic witness to Muslims. But then again, he is and was a busy guy...

May God bless him and keep him, and provide another excellent pastor for the Church of Rome.

Nulla Celebrior and the Crusades

Kudos to T L Winslow who found this obscure papal document (which you can read HERE). This is the document whereby the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope, aka the Greatest Bridge-builder) announced that the Patriarch of Jerusalem was to be residential, that is, the Patriarchate was no longer simply an honorary title but a real bishopric where the Patriarch had to live in what was then the diseased cesspool that was Jerusalem. A key reason for this decision was that the Protestants had established a bishopric there a few years earlier when they sent Rabbi-Bishop Michael Solomon Alexander there.

So here is what the pope said about the Crusades, just to show you that back then the West did not hate its own history:

The eyes of Christians are focused on Palestine, particularly on the Holy Sepulcher. When the city fell into the hands of the barbarians, European princes stood up to fight for it in harsh and repeated wars so as to liberate it and to rid the faithful from the enormous difficulties and extreme injustice they were suffering. We have stated all these facts to indicate that it was only fair that the Christian people treat Jerusalem with reverence whether in the old ages or at the present age.

PS: SPecial thanks to Fr Hanna Kildani for posting that document.

Trivia: the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem

What was the name of the papal bull whereby the residential Latin patriarchate was re-established in the city of Jerusalem?

What pope issued it?

In what year was it issued?

What development in Protestant missions occasioned this event?

Answers will be posted in the comment section once I have some guesses. If anyone can actually find the text to the papal bull online (in any language), they will earn my eternal gratitude! Heaven knows I have looked...

--AD

Augustine: "To Thee [O God] there is no such thing as evil..."

Augustine on evil as lack of being:

To thee there is no such thing as evil, and even in thy whole creation taken as a whole, there is not; because there is nothing from beyond it that can burst in and destroy the order which thou hast appointed for it. But in the parts of creation, some things, because they do not harmonize with others, are considered evil. Yet those same things harmonize with others and are good, and in themselves are good. And all these things which do not harmonize with each other still harmonize with the inferior part of creation which we call the earth, having its own cloudy and windy sky of like nature with itself.

Confessions 7:13

What a fount of comfort and wisdom is this great African saint.

Ramon Llull: Muslims honor Muhammad more than Christians honor Jesus

I recently went on a one-day retreat to spend some time in prayer and reflection, and during that time I read (most of) Ramon Llull's mystical reflections in his Book of the Lover and the Beloved, can be downloaded HERE. It is about 50 pages long and contains a short introductory essay from one of the foremost translators and scholars of Llull, E. Allison Peers.

Most of the meditations (366 of them) are on the nature of love and how the love of God is tied to grief and tribulation. From time to time he gets autobiographical and addresses missionary topic explicitly, in terms of how he has traveled far and wide to defend the honor of his beloved's name, and also his disappointment with the mediocrity of the average Christian of his medieval day.

But there is one verse that explicitly mentions Islam, and I wanted to share that with you:

The Lover (Llull) reproached Christian people, because in their letters they put not the name of his Beloved, Jesus Christ, to do Him the same honour that the Saracens do to the false prophet Mahomet, when they honour him by naming him before everything in their letters. v. 149

Presumably he is referring to a custom of writing the shahada at the beginning of any official communication, which does indeed name Muhammad.

You can find some other of my posts on Llull here, here, and here. A list of all the links is here.

Syrian bishop says government must crush the uprising

HT to Reflecting by the Shore.

By John Pontifex

The Syrian government must resist the uprising – and has the people's backing in quelling forces seeking "destabilisation and Islamisation" – according to one of the country's most respected Catholic bishops.

In a strongly worded defence of President Bashar al-Assad's response to the protests and instability, Bishop Antoine Audo accused the media including the BBC and Al Jazeera of "unobjective" reporting, unfairly criticising the Syrian regime.

The Jesuit, who is the Chaldean Catholic Bishop of Aleppo, went on to warn that if Assad's government was overthrown, it would cause widespread instability, a breakdown of basic services such as electricity, increased poverty and a drive towards Islamisation.

Speaking from Aleppo in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Audo said: "The fanatics speak about freedom and democracy for Syria but this is not their goal.

"They want to divide the Arab countries, control them, seize petrol and sell arms. They seek destabilisation and Islamisation."

"Syria must resist – will resist. 80 percent of the people are behind the government, as are all the Christians." [...]

Read the rest of it here.

Patron Saint of Muslim converts to Christianity?

Ok, ok, so a lot of you don't believe in patron saints. The idea behind a patron saint is that certain saints have such an affection for certain kinds of people or people in certain situations that they intercede for the before God. If this is indeed the case, then Joseph, patron of travelers, has been interceding for me and my family for years. Also Francis Xavier, patron of missionaries. Also, Aquinas, who is a patron of scholars has been interceding for me. Lots of intercession there! Also, our city in the Middle East has a patron, and presumably that patron prays for us as residents of said city.

Which got me thinking--is there a patron for Muslims who convert to Christianity? I figured there was not, but that Bl Ramon Llull would make a fine patron, should he be recognized as a full-fledged saint some day (which he should).

But alas, it appears that there is a contender for Muslim converts to Christianity: St Casilda of Toledo (died c. 1050).

Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1697

Thanks be to God for books.google! What a treasure trove of information that is :-)

My never-ending research into the history of Christianity in the Middle East brought me to this book, which was footnoted in a book by Kenneth Cragg, if I recall).



This is the account of one English pilgrim, Henry Maundrell, visiting Jerusalem in 1697 for Easter.

Jean Mohammed: Convert from Islam and Franciscan Monk

Just learned about this guy today. Very interesting...

Read more here.

Religious freedom as the path to peace

Religious freedom expresses what is unique about the human person, for it allows us to direct our personal and social life to God, in whose light the identity, meaning and purpose of the person are fully understood. To deny or arbitrarily restrict this freedom is to foster a reductive vision of the human person; to eclipse the public role of religion is to create a society which is unjust, inasmuch as it fails to take account of the true nature of the human person; it is to stifle the growth of the authentic and lasting peace of the whole human family.

--Pope Benedict XVI

Pope wants religious freedom in Middle East

Another contribution that Christians can bring to society is the promotion of an authentic freedom of religion and conscience, one of the fundamental human rights that each state should always respect. In numerous countries of the Middle East there exists freedom of belief, while the space given to the freedom to practice religion is often quite limited. Increasing this space of freedom becomes essential to guarantee to all the members of the various religious communities the true freedom to live and profess their faith. This topic could become the subject of dialogue between Christians and Muslims, a dialogue whose urgency and usefulness was reiterated by the Synodal Fathers.

From here.

Am tired and it's late for comments on my part. But this is great stuff!

Pope wants to re-evangelize the West

My Letter to the Pope

Hi All,

Well, I'm not sure he'll every actually read this, but I thought it was worth writing. My letter to the Pope on the topic of Catholic witness to Muslims can be downloaded at St Francis Magazine's website. Or just click HERE for the PDF.

Here is a sample:

The first reform I suggest is regarding Holy Scripture. One of
the most recurrent themes in conversion narratives of Muslims is
the reading of the Bible. Yet how many hundreds of thousands of
emigrants live throughout the West without access to the bible in
their own language? What if parishes in areas with significant
immigrant populations were told they had to have bibles available
in those languages--perhaps Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Pashto, Turkish,
or something else? What if each sleepy Catholic parish became a
de facto source of distribution of Scripture? I am not talking about
proselytism, or even evangelism.

Please pass this on or link to it on your blog or website, especially if you are Catholic. Catholic mission to Muslims today is very weak, and it doesn't need to be like that.

--Abu Daoud

Papal Mass in Glasgow

Because I have some Catholic friends in Scotland, and I happened to be in the UK at the time, I was able to make the papal mass today. It was inspiring in several ways. First, the sermon (which I have not yet found transcribed online) contained some direct challenges to the people present, in terms of not buying the world's narrative of success (sex, money, drugs, porn, fame, etc.), but rather invesitng in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. (How evangelical is that!)

Second, one of the hymns actually contains the explicit phrase, 'justified by faith.' Which I loved. Why be afriad of this phrase? This bishop recognizes that there is nothing unbiblical or indeed un-Catholic about this phrase. He embraces it.

Finally, most of the liturgy of the word was in Latin, which I much appreciated, though it surprised me.

May God giver this pastor success during the rest of his sojourn in this United Kingdom.

--AD

Joseph Kenny OP: Using the Church Fathers to Answer Muslims' Questions

Well, what can I say, I love this guy. His translations are very straight forward and readable, while still being technical enough to not lost some of the philosophical foundations. I also think that his project of supplying sections of basic historical documents to answer Muslim questions is great. It looks like it's a work in progress, but give it a visit:

Muslims Query Christian Beliefs

Aquinas responds to Muslims

Holy Schnykies! I almost fell out of my chair just now. How in the world did I not know about this text?

DE RATIONIBUS FIDEI (REASONS FOR THE FAITH AGAINST MUSLIM OBJECTIONS)
(and one objection of the Greeks and Armenians)

By St Thomas Aquinas, OP

And guess what, it's all online right HERE.
Will let you all know how this reading goes. If you read it (or have read it) let me know what you thought.

--AD