Pope Benedict Copies Credo: Launches Vatican News Service Website

Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI - on @news_va_en


Pope Benedict is ahead of Credo: we don't have a Twitter feed. But the Holy Father has, and he used it to announce the launch of what looks like a comprehensive Vatican News Service website, appropriately, on the Feast of Sts. Peter & Paul and the 60^th anniversary of his ordination. Wow. It looks like the new website collects stories of interest from other Vatican sources, and organizes them all in one place. This is similar to the plan for Credo's website, except we plan to focus primarily on St. Louis.

Love Your Enemies -- Luke 6:27

An unusually thoughtful article by a U.S. Army surgeon in Afghanistan appears in the June 22/29, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.  Joshua Alley, M.D. begins by referring to a March 12, 1945 Time magazine story entitled "Amazing Thighbone" which described advanced, and ahead of its time, intramedullary rod treatment of femur fractures in American soldiers returning from German prison camps.  Dr. Alley remarks that the captivating thought is that the enemy would render not just reluctant care, but outstanding care.

Eucharistic Congress June 24 - 26

The 2011 Eucharistic Conference in the St. Louis Archdiocese is coming up soon, corresponding with the Feast of Corpus Christi. A Eucharistic Congress is a relatively recent phenomenon in the church, evidently dating from the late 19^th century. The first one (so called) was held in Lille, France in 1881, and immediately became an annual event. Saint Pope Pius X ratified the idea by requesting an (or the) International Eucharistic Congress be held in Rome in 1905. Read more in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

In some places in Europe there were civil laws against religious processions and of course some "vigorous" Protestantism which denies the truth of the Substantial Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharistic Species. It seems that the first Eucharistic Congresses were meant to be simultaneously witness to the Faith and a protest against civil laws forbidding public expression of it. The story in the encyclopedia article about the 1908 Eucharistic Congress in London seems indicative. Here in the USA we don't have an established church actively opposing us, but we do have a very skeptical and condescending popular culture as in 19^th century France. A Eucharistic Congress serves to "confirm the brethren" and to publicly witness to our future brethren. Cardinal Burke will be back in St. Louis for the event. Registration is requested. For more information, click the graphic.

The Barbarism of Dr. Death

St. Louis own Colleen Carroll Campbell remembers Dr. Death in this column at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The penultimate paragraph is particularly good.

Do check a few of the comments -- these represents the attitude we're up against; people can't understand the point of Chesterton's Ballad of Suicide at all, primarily because  they can't understand the point of anything -- they deny that anything has a point. And it is nothing new.

Chesterton Society Conference in St. Louis

One difficulty faced by the Church in this past century has some irony about it: just as more and more people are learning to read and books are becoming more available, actual literacy has fallen. This makes it difficult to produce good Christian and Catholic art -- there is no audience for it. There is a chicken and egg problem: without a market, talented writers will go elsewhere, as pointed out in 1957 by Flannery O'Connor. And without good literature, any remaining popular interest (understandably) wanes. But in the early part of the 20^th century, there was a rich and robust group of Catholic and Merely Christian writers, informing, debating, and entertaining in the popular press. The greatest of these was G.K Chesterton.

Uncovered WWII Note re: Pius XII

An article in Our Sunday Visitor dated June 12, 2011 reports on wartime correspondence between Myron Taylor, President Franklin Roosevelt's representative to the Holy See, and his British counterpart, Sir D'arcy Osborne in which Osborne expressed his fear that Pius XII would make a radio appeal for Hungarian Jews and criticize Russians for their actions in occupied countries.  Osborne said something should be done to prevail upon the Pope not to do that because Osborne feared such an appeal would have "very serious political repercussions."  This 1944 document lends support to the necessity for balancing any public statements and denunciations with deadly political repercussions which could include Nazi reprisals against Jews.

Dr. Ronald Rychlak, Law Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Mississippi School of Law, found the aforementioned war correspondence, and is quoted extensively by OSV as a primary authority on Pius XII during WWII.  Dr. Rychlak's most recent 2010 book explores fascinating new data implicating the KGB in the cold war disinformation program to discredit the Vatican by besmirching the character and reputation of Pius XII.

Dr. Rychlak is scheduled to speak on these topics  at a Credo Dinner Forum in Clayton, MO on Sunday evening, June 12.

Through My Fault

When the Mea Culpa returns to the penitential rite of the Mass this fall, we will strike our breast three times while saying, "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." The association of these physical actions with the words of repentance has been present since Biblical times.

But there is also a good chance that there is a linguistic linkage between the words and the actions, something innate, something closer than traditional practice.

Of the three likely and complementary early Latin sources of the word culpa, one of them, col-tua, means "something to be beaten for." If this is a verbal ancestor of mea culpa (my fault), then it isn't just traditional practice that insists on the striking of the breast. It is the word itself that demands it.

For more on the Confietor, see this WikiPedia article. Note the addition of omissióne (omissions) to the Confietor of the Ordinary Form.