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Posted by on Sep 27, 2007

Saint of the Day – St. Vincent de Paul

Saint of the Day – St. Vincent de Paul

 

St. Vincent de Paul (1576? 1580? – 1660) is justifiably remembered as a great model of charity. However, his charity addressed not only the immediate needs of people but also focused on longer term solutions.

Born to poor parents at Pouy, Gascony in France, St. Vincent de Paul’s life was an amazing adventure. Working his way through school he was ordained a priest. He spent two years as a slave in Tunisia after having been captured aboard ship by Turks. He managed to escape and made his way home via Italy and Rome. He preached to the rural poor, ministered to galley slaves, and rose to the Royal Court while becoming the hero of the poor of Paris.

St. Vincent de Paul organized groups of men and women, priests and nuns to expand his mission of preaching, feeding, housing, nursing, and teaching the most abject members of society. He had influence with some of history’s most powerful men – Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin who, as first ministers to the King, made France the dominant power in Europe. King Louis XIII asked for St. Vincent de Paul’s assistance on his deathbed. After the king’s death, he managed to prevent a violent crackdown on the people of Paris, who had protested the interim rule of Louis XIII’s widow, Ann of Austria, as Regent.

St. Vincent de Paul organized massive relief efforts for areas of France devastated by the 30 Years War. He raised incredible amounts of money from nobles and the merchant class by letters and publications. He built hospitals, old age homes, and orphanages that also had endowments to fund their continued service. Certainly, these achievements alone would have make him one of the greatest figures of the early Modern period.

However, St. Vincent de Paul’s lasting legacy is his sense of creating organizations and institutions to meet longer term needs. The organizations include the Daughters of Charity, founded by St. Louise de Marillac, The Congregations of the Mission (Vincentian Fathers and Brothers) and various lay groups, such as the Ladies of Charity, which now operate in 40 countries.

St. Vincent shaped the emergence of the Catholic Church in the Modern period by his establishment of training programs for priests and his efforts to stem the gloominess of Jansenism.

The Council of Trent (1545 -1563) mandated several major reforms. One of these was the establishment of special schools or seminaries for the training of priests. Previously, priests might have been educated in monasteries and universities or received very little formal education. Of the 20 seminaries established after the Council of Trent, only 10 had survived by the early 1600’s due to the wars of religion.

Theologically, St. Vincent made a lasting impact by his opposition to Jansenism. He used his influence to make sure that priests who subscribed to this heresy did not receive funded positions (benefices). St. Vincent de Paul was especially active in securing the censure of the Jansenist heresy. He got the support of 85 bishops to condemn the teaching, which obliterated free will and left people predestined to heaven or hell by a grim and capricious God. St. Vincent de Paul was instrumental in securing the censure of Jansenism by Pope Innocent X in 1655 and Pope Alexander VII in 1656.

Although much of his wonderful work was swept away by the French Revolution, the institutions he founded now operate in 40 countries. St. Vincent de Paul’s spirituality – the love of God for all – is the gift that keeps giving.

St. John’s University presents an excellent portrait of St. Vincent de Paul’s spiritual journey on its website.

In the interests of transparency, I must disclose my debt to St. Vincent de Paul as well, since I received my high school education from a mixed faculty of diocesan priests and Vincentian Fathers (the Congregation of the Mission) at Our Lady Queen of the Angels Seminary in San Fernando, CA. How do you say thank you to those who not only taught you to write but to think critically and live compassionately? All I can hope to do is to pay it forward.

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Posted by on Sep 26, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Picasso Self-Portrait

Picasso: Self-Portrait

WNYC’s Radio Lab pod cast, “Who Am I?” aptly summarizes current scientific understanding of the neurology of self-perception. Traditionally, the sense of the self, along with intellectual capabilities, are thought to be contained in the soul. Apparently, our perception of self awareness appears to come from the right hemisphere.

There is a compelling story about a 46 year old woman who suffered an aneurysm and recovered as a person with a completely different self who happens to share the same history and memories of her previous self. The emergence of this new person was startling to her only child, her daughter. From being very proper and aware of social conventions, her mother became much less of perfectionist, someone who loves to sing, and is much more interested in sex. Her mother does not worry about death, although she doesn’t have a memory of a near death experience.

A neuropsychologist, Dr. Paul Broks, author of Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology, said that we are all just a car crash away from being a completely different person. Our self is nothing but the story the brain tells itself.

Dr. V.S. Ramachandran says that what is unique about us is our ability to tell stories. He believes that introspective consciousness began some time between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago. For example, a monkey can make associations with a color such as red but it cannot imagine something called a purple striped canary. Only humans can take images from the real world and make abstractions. Humans can conjure imagination. This allows us to manipulate ideas to the extent that we can imagine ourselves. The idea of ourself is a story that we can change from day to day, according to this perspective.

What happens when we sleep? Our brain produces our dreams as well as producing ourselves. There is a fascinating story, told by Robert Louis Stevenson, of training little people in his head to tell him a story in a dream that he could later write down to meet his need to produce stories to make a living.

There is also a very interesting story about the loss of a father and the son’s grief reaction which blurred the boundaries of identity between the two.

With all of this neurology, what happens to the concept of a spiritual soul that is our fundamental principle of identity? What about all of the intellectual faculties that are supposed to inhere in the soul? If what we call the soul is the result of neurological activity, what survives when we die?

Clearly this is another contrast between scientific modes of explanation and religious and philosophical modes of explanation. However, it is fair to say that just as geology and paleontology changed our notion of the nature and meaning of creation, neuroscience is about to take us and our notions of philosophy and theology on a roller coaster.

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Posted by on Sep 25, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Saint of the Day: St. Elzear & Bl. Delphina – The Happy Couple

Today, an unconsummated marriage would probably not be considered advisable by the Church and mental health experts. St. Elzear and Blessed Delphina were a couple who were married and lived together chastely. They are saints because of their care of the poor and the suffering. This couple is also known for their conscientious exercise of their duties as members of the nobility. Interestingly, they were known and remembered as a happy couple.

Personally, I don’t think that I would have responded by taking a vow of chastity on my wedding night the way St. Elzear did when he found out the Delphina had already made one. We have a contemporary theology of marriage that stresses and endows love making and sex within marriage as sacramental.

Certainly the late Middle Ages (St. Elzear 1286 -1323, Bl. Delphina 1283- 1358) was not a “puritanical” time. In fact, Puritanism would not happen for another 200 years and would never take root in the Mediterranean.

St. Elzear was born at the family castle in Ansouis, Provence, in the south of France. At 23, he became lord of Ansouis and Count of Ariano in the Kingdom of Naples. The Count and Contessa became influential in the court of King Robert of Naples and Elzear was the tutor to the King’s son Charles. He was also the “justiciar” or head of law enforcement and justice for southern Abruzzi under King Robert. St. Elzear died on September 27, 1323 while on a diplomatic mission to Paris to arrange the marriage of Charles to Mary of Valois. Blessed Delphina would survive him for another 35 years and spend the time in continued acts of charity.

As nobles, producing children was a serious responsibility. Even when having children was precluded due to medical reasons, noblemen usually had some illegitimate sons at hand. William the Conqueror was one such son. Since the marriage of the Count and Contessa of Ariano (St. Elzear and Blessed Delphina) was so atypical by the standards of their day and ours, how do we relate to it?

Perhaps it was a marriage of convenience, in the sense that due to their social station they were obliged to marry but would have really preferred monastic vocations. Since their state in life was determined when they were young children of a noble family, they simply found a way around it.

Young children at the ages of 5 -7 were sent as oblates to monasteries and convents. Hildegard of Bingen and St. Thomas Aquinas are two examples. We also know, of course, that many people who found themselves in “enforced” monastic vocations would do their best to bend or break the rules.

Then as now, marriages – especially those among the rich and powerful -were not happy affairs. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) and her Church sanctioned marriages to King Louis VII of France and King Henry II of England demonstrates the far from Romantic character of such marriages. In fact, Eleanor of Aquitaine was a major promoter of the troubadour movement. The origins of what we today experience as romantic love originally began as songs of chaste love for the unattainable woman. As we know, the reality of courtly love was far from chaste, but it seemed to provide some fluidity in a tight social structure. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t cause feelings of betrayal and rejection resulting in duels, beatings, and death. The case of King Henry VIII in the early modern period (1491 -1547) provides a window onto the complexity of marriage in Europe in previous centuries.

The Count and Contessa feeding the poor, living as lay Franciscans, and in the case of St. Elzear healing lepers were definitely unusual for the time. What was probably most striking about them is that they were known as a happy couple. Their marriage – even if its lack of consummation might not adhere to the Church’s definition of one – was a partnership for a radical living of the Gospel.

In our own culture and time, can we say as much about our marriages and the joy, happiness and moral guidance they bring to others?

There are two slightly different accounts of these saints, with some inconsistencies. Please see Saint of the Day at AmericanCatholic.org and Catholic Online.

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Posted by on Sep 24, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Spiritual Machines?

Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is an update of his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines.

Kurzweil has excellent credentials in information technology. He invented the first flat bed scanner, initiated speech and voice recognition technologies, pioneered music synthesizers. Kurzweil was the first to develop technology that could read text and speak it out loud.

Based on this record of achievement and innovation on matters relating to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil estimates that we are approaching a point at which machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence. The point of intelligence surpassing human biology is called the singularity. The point from which everything begins.

Contemporary physics, as elaborated by Stephen Hawking in his updated A Briefer History of Time, refers to the emergence of the universe from an initial singularity.

Kurzweil uses the singularity concept to describe a tipping at which machines surpass human intelligence. It also implies that when the intelligence of machines surpasses (or even approaches) human intelligence, a sense of self – an experience of soul – will occur in these mechanical systems.

Basically, intelligence and the sense of self is reduced to a critical mass of neurons firing, whether they are carbon based neurons in humans or silicon based neurons in machines. The next assumption is that spirituality derives from this sense of self awareness.

Physician and scientist, Antonio Damasio in his book, Descartes’ Error: Emotion Reason and the Human Brain (1994), presents the case that our perception and intelligence is linked – literally – with our nervous system’s extension outside the skull and throughout the body. According to Damasio, it is not possible have a functioning nervous system floating in a medium separate and apart from the human body.

Since our body influences and literally shapes our sense of self awareness and identity, what will happen to silicon based intelligence developing without an analagous body is not clear. Even carbon based “organic” computer systems floating in a liquid medium would not have the human sense of body.

The other issue is that the sheer volume of firing neurons does not necessarily create consciousness in humans. If we reduce consciousness, self identity, and soul to the direct or indirect product of physical functions, how can there be a spirit on which to have a spirituality? By definition, the spirit cannot be reduced to the physical.

If we reduce the soul to the product of physics and chemistry, isn’t our sense of spirit and spirituality merely a cognitive error of some type? If there is no objective or actual realm that transcends the physical, won’t machines in their cognitive excellence avoid this delusion?

Stay tuned for a post on Bernard Lonergan, S.J. author of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.

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Posted by on Sep 23, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Subtle Signs of God

Changes in the seasons on California’s Central Coast are marked by subtle signs, especially near the ocean. The climate is classified as “Mediterranean,” meaning there’s a wet season and a dry season. There are some temperature variations between the two seasons, but the presence of the ocean tends to moderate the amount of change. A really hot summer day records temperatures in the 80s. A really cold winter day may have lows near freezing. But, generally, the temperatures are not extreme.

As the terms “wet” and “dry” imply, the biggest variable is the probability of measurable rainfall. Rain is scarce from late April to mid-October, sometimes even later. With the first major rainfall, children and even some adults are seen outside “dancing” for joy, twirling around with their hands raised over their heads, enjoying the freshness of the rain.

When I first arrived in California over 30 years ago, I often missed the signs of the seasonal changes. The changing color of the poison oak leaves was not at all as obvious to me as the changing color of the leaves of the maple and oak trees at home in Eastern Washington had been. The return of green grasses on the hills and fields by December didn’t signal the arrival of Advent and Christmas for me as they do now.

There are many other examples, but I won’t bore you with them here. Suffice it to say that I’ve become more aware of subtlety over the years.

A couple of days ago, I saw one of those subtle signs of transition while out walking near my home. The Monarch butterflies are returning. They come every year about this time to the eucalyptus groves near my home and stay until mid-March, the start of spring.

On sunny winter days, they flutter all over the neighborhood, sampling the nectar of winter blooming flowers and weeds. On cold, stormy winter days, as waves crash thunderously on the nearby beaches, they huddle together for warmth on the branches of the eucalyptus and cypress trees. They are beautiful.

Seeing the butterflies and the other subtle signs of the changing seasons here reminds me of the way God often works in our lives, very subtly, but with occasional flashes of brilliant beauty. Over time and through the seasons, we, like the butterflies, grow to be signs of His grace and presence in our world.

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Posted by on Sep 22, 2007

Saint Thomas of Villanova: Almsgiver, Father of the Poor, and Model of Bishops

Saint Thomas of Villanova was born to a family of modest means in Fuentellana, Spain in 1488. His father was a miller and his parents were known for their generosity to the poor.

Thomas was educated as a child and at sixteen entered the University of Alcalá. While there, he earned advanced degrees in Theology. By 1514, he received the chair of arts, logic and philosophy. He was offered the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Salamanca, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe, but declined it in order to enter the Augustinian order in 1516. He was ordained a priest in 1518. His new duties included teaching scholastic theology at the Salamanca Convent of his order. As the years passed, his duties expanded to include preaching in many areas of Spain. Eventually he was named to the position of court preacher to Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain).

Thomas held many positions of responsibility among the Augustinians, including the position of provincial-prior in Andalusia and Castile. During those years, he sent the first Augustinian missionaries to Mexico (1533). In 1544, he was nominated to serve as Archbishop of Valencia, a post that had been open for nearly one hundred years. He had declined the position of Bishop of Granada previously, but this time he accepted the position as a matter of obedience to his superiors.

Thomas of Villanova was the thirty-second bishop and eighth archbishop of Valencia. He served in this role for eleven years. During his time as archbishop, he began a series of reforms and initiatives in service of the poor, for which he received the titles of “Almsgiver,” “Father of the Poor,” and “Model of Bishops” from Pope Paul V at his beatification in 1618. The reforms included abolition of excessive privileges and unreasonable exemptions for the clergy, visits to parishes in the archdiocese, and abolition of underground prisons. He set up institutions to serve the poor in practical ways, including rebuilding Valencia’s general hospital that had been destroyed by fire, setting up two colleges, including one for the children of the poor, founding a home for orphans and children whose parents could not support them, and having Mass offered early in the morning, so working-class people could attend before going to their jobs.

The palace in which Thomas lived as archbishop was always open to the poor. Anyone who came for help received it, with hundreds of people receiving meals through the years. In every city, he appointed people to seek out those “respectable” people who were in need but hesitated or did not think to ask for help. To these he provided clothing, food, or money to help them get back on their feet. To workmen, farmers, and mechanics, he provided tools, seeds, livestock and other items they needed to be able to earn their livings again.

Thomas himself lived simply, mending his own clothing and repairing things as needed. He spent much time in prayer and study. He was known for his supernatural gifts, including healing the sick, resolving conflicts, and bringing people closer to God. He was a mystic and his writings and sermons include practical rules and reflections regarding mystic theology.

Despite his education and commitment to reform in the Church, Thomas did not participated in the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Many reasons have been given for his absence, including illness, the difficulty of travel, and the press of his duties to his people and as advisor to the emperor.

Thomas of Villanova died of angina pectoris at the age of 67, at the end of his daily Mass. He was buried in the cathedral of Valencia. Pope Alexander VII canonized him on November 1, 1658.

Descriptions of the life and works of Thomas of Villanova, while impressive, may not have as dramatic a ring of heroic sanctity today as they did in his day. Bishops who lord it over the people, live lives of conspicuous consumption, and spend most of their time living and acting as princes are not the norm today, as they were in his lifetime. The ideal of bishops has come to be one that more closely resembles the life of Thomas of Villanova. The title, “Model of Bishops,” was well bestowed. The example he gave has borne fruit into our days. When we intercede for our bishops, we would do well to ask his intercession for them too.

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Posted by on Sep 22, 2007

Canning, A Little “Communion of Saints”

Monday this past week was a “Canning Day” at our house. The pears were ripe enough to be sweet even without the addition of a light syrup. Canning days cannot be easily scheduled. They can be predicted, but everything must wait for the right degree of ripeness. I had bought the pears nearly a week earlier, on Tuesday, with the hopes that they would be ripe on Saturday. (Saturdays are easier for canning because I can lasso a helper. Weekdays she’s in school.) But they were still green. Sunday they were smelling like ripening pears, but when we tasted one that was beginning to mold, it still had a green tang, so we waited. I washed the jars and made sure I had honey for making the syrup, but that was as far as I could go. Monday they were ready and I set to work.

Canning pears is not difficult, but it is time consuming because the pears must be pealed and the core removed before they are put into the jars for processing. I only had one box of them, but it still took an afternoon of work to get them into the jars and processed and the jam made to complete the day’s work. But oh, the wonder of them in the middle of the winter, when I enjoy them as part of my breakfast or for a midnight snack! It’s worth every minute spent.

So how does this relate to the “Communion of Saints?” I was blessed to know not only all of my grandparents, but also one set of my great-grandparents. Great Grandad died when I was very young and I really don’t remember him except from a picture. But my Great Grandmother Heitstuman lived until after I graduated from college and was engaged. She lived in town and we saw her frequently. We called her Grandma, because I was the first great grandchild and she didn’t like to think she was old enough to be a great grandmother. She even gave us lemon drops when we remembered for a whole visit to call her “Grandma” rather than “Great Grandma.”

Grandma’s birthday was July 3 and she liked to celebrate it on the 4th. We’d gather at her house for a potluck of all the relatives living in town, including three families of my Mother’s cousins who were children my age. (We called my mother’s mother, Grammy. Grammy’s brothers and sister had children much later than she did.) While awaiting the expected fireworks coming after dark, we children would play in the yards and basements of the three family houses on Grandma’s block. In a corner, safely tucked away on neat shelves, there were the jars and jars of canned fruits, vegetables, jams, and jellies. Everyone had them. By the end of the growing season, the shelves were full of the bounty of summer and ready to take us all through the coming winter.

My grandmothers, my mother, my aunts, and many of our neighbors and friends preserved both fruits and vegetables. When I got married, I too began to preserve foods for my family, despite the fact that by the mid-70s fresh fruits and vegetables were available in the stores year round. The variety, textures and flavors of commercially prepared or preserved foods did not match those I had grown up loving. Continuing the tradition, my married son and his wife have joined in the art of canning and preserving foods for the coming seasons.

While none of us is likely ever to be named officially as saints, and certainly we all have our share of faults, our sharing in this activity of canning brings us together in a very special way. I always feel very close to the women who have gone before me as I prepare the raw ingredients and fill the shelves with jars of pickles, jams and canned fruits. I’m sure they are smiling at the sight with their own memories of the work and the pleasure of the enterprise.

The Communion of Saints is somewhat like this communion of canners of fruits. Not people we worship in any way, but more like older sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. People who care about us, who are interested in what we do and how we do it, and who want to help us in whatever way they can to live our lives responsibly, do the good that God hopes we will accomplish, and have a little fun along the way. And, like an older brother or sister, if we need someone to put in a good word for us along the way, they’re happy to do that too!

Yes, Canning Days are special. They bring the reality of my little “communion of saints” into focus again in its relationship to the great Communion of Saints in which all of us share.

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Posted by on Sep 21, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement 2007

Sunset September 21, to Sunset September 22, 2007 is the Jewish Day of Atonement.

This is the day set aside for asking for forgiveness of God and those against whom we have sinned. The “virtual” Talmud – an adaptation of the Jewish tradition of teaching and commentary has an excellent post for today. A key point is that one’s individual wrongdoings are more than a personal matter. They have consequences for our loved ones, communities, and society overall.

Confession of sins, repentance, and turning around appear to the theme of the day not only for Jews.  They also appear to be making a comeback among Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals. The Wall Street Journal today has an interesting feature on the return of repentance – specifically confessing one’s sins. “Confession Makes a Comeback” (page W1).

Even some Lutherans, whose founder Martin Luther opposed the sale of indulgences (the ability to get one’s time in Purgatory reduced or eliminated), are restoring a sacrament that they say they neglected for too long.

Take some time, tune up your conscience, make that phone call, send that card, forgive and ask to be forgiven. You might get a dose of your own medicine – we all do. Get straight with God and your neighbor. Find peace.

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Posted by on Sep 21, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

St. Matthew the Apostle

St. Matthew by Caravaggio

According to tradition and some internal evidence, St. Matthew was the author of the Gospel that bears his name. He was also the tax collector referred to in the Gospels who turned to follow Christ. Tax collectors of the time were the most reviled of all sinners.

According to Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish writer (30 BC – 45 AD), as cited by Maureen B. Cavanaugh in her article, “Private Tax Collectors: A Roman, Christian, and Jewish Perspective”

“They [Romans] deliberately choose as tax collectors men who are absolutely ruthless and savage, and give them the means of satisfying their greed. These people who are mischief-makers by nature, gain added immunity because of their “superior orders,” obsequious in everything where their masters are concerned, leave undone no cruelty of any kind and recognize no equity or gentleness . . . as they collect the taxes they spread confusion and chaos everywhere. They exact money not only from people’s property but also from their bodies by means of personal injuries, assault and completely unheard of forms of torture.”

Tax collectors were independent contractors who frequently got out of control, since there were few safeguards to protect the local populace in ancient society. Interestingly, Ms. Cavanaugh’s article is a cautionary history lesson in the context of plans by the United States government to outsource tax collection to independent contractors.

Jesus’ association with tax collectors was even more scandalous than his association with prostitutes and members of terrorist organizations such as Simon the Zealot. Tax collectors were so despicable that their ritual “dirtiness” defiled everything in a house that they entered. In contrast, a thief only defiled those things that he touched in the house.

After his conversion, Matthew was not free from controversy. His Gospel established a hostile attitude toward Jews that persisted for almost 2,000 years. Since the Gospel According to Matthew refers to the temple and city of Jerusalem in their state before their obliteration in 70 A.D., some scholars conclude that the Gospel was written prior to that year. St. Matthew’s stance toward Jews can be understood in the context of a struggle between Jews regarding adherence to their traditional faith or conversion to Christianity. St. Paul lists himself as a persecutor of early Christians. In fact, his conversion occured while he was on a mission to track down believers.

Douglas R. A. Hare’s monograph “The Theme of Jewish Persecution in the Gospel According to St. Matthew,” asks whether St. Matthew exaggerated the persecution and what effect it had on his theology. Using Christian and Rabbinic sources, Hare concludes that the persecution was directed at Christian missionaries, as opposed to Christians in general.

We see this continuing contest after the destruction of 70 AD in the efforts of St. John Chrysostom to stem Jewish influence in the Christian community in Antioch in the fourth century. It was not until 1965 that the Second Vatican Council, in its decree on relations with non-Christians, “Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Time”), that the Church told her members to adopt a posture of respect and dialog with Jews.

The Gospel of St. Matthew, in its beauty, is a central document in Christianity. The emphasis on Christ as the Messiah and the passing away of Judaism are central themes. Pharisees, those staunch guardians of Judaism from the rampant Hellenistic paganism of the time, won’t make it into the Kingdom before repentant tax collectors and prostitutes.

If we substitute  the words “Faithful Christians” for “Pharisees” we get some idea of how incendiary the message still is today.

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Posted by on Sep 20, 2007

Neuropsychology – Beyond the Soul: The Secular Sense of Self

Saints of the Day – Korean Martyrs

Kim Dae Geon (1822 - 1846) Priest & Martyr

If you ever wonder about the power of books, the church in Korea owes its start to them. It is probably unique in this regard. Korea was closed to outside trade and influences at the time. Unfortunately, this is still the case in Communist North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Christian books were obtained by Korean scholars from the Korean embassy in China. The first convert Ni-seoung-houn was baptized in 1784 in Beijing, where he had gone to study Catholicism. He returned to Korea and converted many others. Most of these first Christians were later killed in 1791. However in 1794, when a Chinese priest, Fr. James Tsiou, arrived, he found 4,000 Catholics. Subsequent waves of persecution and martyrdom followed in 1836, 1846, and 1867. The martyrdom of French missionaries, in part, led to to a war called the French Campaign Against Korea.

Their stories are compelling. It is especially interesting to see how a sacramental and liturgical church can grow without any ordained clergy. It is even more interesting how they adapted with relative ease to a foreign clergy and developed their own.

Pope John Paul II canonized (designated as saints) the martyrs of 1836, 1846, and 1867 in Seoul on May 6, 1984. The Pope began his homily with Luke 24:26 from the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus after the death of Christ. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?” He went on to relate the rest of this story of encouragement and also incorporated a history of the church in Korea. and the testimony of the martyrs.

The faith demonstrated by these Christians, and their statements prior to their deaths, are very reminiscent of the early Church. They should also be a reminder that in many parts of the world today, Christians are still being persecuted. In China, Sudan, and even Latin America, the faith remains something to die for.

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