Saturday, April 21, Second Week of Easter
ST. ANSELM OF CANTEBRURY (ANSELMO D'AOSTA) (b Italy 1033, d England 1109)
Benedictine monk, Abbot, Archbishop of Aosta, Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church
Anselm first wanted to be a priest at 15 but his rich father opposed him, and so he spent the next 12 years of his life enjoying life to the full. During a trip to France, he came to the Benedictine monastery of Bec in Normandy, and joined the order at age 27. Within 15 years, he became its abbot, succeeding Lanfranc, who had been his mentor, quickly transforming Bec into a famous monastic school. He also started publishing his philosophical and theological works which were likened to St. Augustine's, in which he sought to analyze and illumine the faith through reason. Meanwhile, Lanfranc had been sent to England to help the English clergy in a much-needed renewal. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he asked Anselm to help him, and when Lanfranc died, Anselm was named to succeed him. It was 1093 and he was 60 years old. He spent the rest of his life fighting to defend Church freedom in England. Twice he was exiled by two kings for his opposition to them. Finally in 1106, King Henry I renounced his right to the conferral of ecclesiastical offices, the collection of taxes and the confiscation of Church properties. Anselm returned to England in triumph, devoting himself to moral formation of the clergy and carrying on his own theological studies. He is considered the father of Christian scholasticism. He died in 1109. He was canonized in 1492 and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1720. Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to him on Sept. 23, 2009
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090923...
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/042112.cfm
AT THE VATICAN TODAY
The Holy Father met this morning with
- Fifteen US bishops from Region XI (various dioceses of California and nearby western states) on ad-limina visit
- Members of the US-based Papal Foundation. Address in English.
And in the afternoon with
- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
The Vatican today announced many important nominations to membership in the Roman dicasteries, including
- Curial assignments for the new cardinals created last February.
- Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC,
to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Holy Father named Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, President of the Vatican Governatorate, as his special legate
to the celebrations marking the millennial anniversary of the founding of the Sacred Hermitage of the Camaldoli
Benedictine order, on June 19, 2012, in Camaldoli, near Arezzo.
The Office for Papal Liturgical Celebrations released the calendar of liturgies to be presided by the Pope
from April to June this year.
Meeting of the Pontifical Commission for China
The Vatican Press Office issued this statement today:
From April 20-23, the Commission instituted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to study the major issues relative to the Church in China, will be meeting at the Vatican.
Commission members include the heads of Vatican dicasteries who have competence in this sector, along with representatives of the Chinese episcopate and religious orders working in China.
Previous meetings had dealt with formation of seminarians, consecrated persons and priests. This year, they will consider formation of the lay faithful in the light of the situation of the Church in China and in the context of the Year of Faith to be marked by the universal Church from October 11, 2012, to to November 24, 2013.
They will also review progress made in the formation of priests, consecrated persons and seminarians, and what more needs to be done to insure they have adequate preparation for the tasks they will be called on to perform for the Church and the good of society.
See bottom of preceding page for recent stories about the Church in China.
FSSPX expects Pope to decide
on reconciliation by mid-May
A lengthy press release from the German district of the FSSPX
says the Lefebvrians expect to hear a decision from the Vatican in May on their last response to the formula for reconciliation offered by the Vatican.
They expect the Pope to decide shortly after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith holds its next plenary meeting on April 25, at which the FSSPX response will be on the agenda - so by the first half of May.
The release reiterates the brief statements released by the Vatican and the FSSPX on April 19, when the FSSPX answer was received at the Vatican. as well as the steps that have been taken by Benedict XVI to heal the rupture between Rome and the FSSPX.
It ends by citing the possibility that if the reconciliation takes place, the Vatican will most likely propose a Personal Prelature as a canonical structure for the FSSPX, similar to the Opus Dei.
- VATICAN INSIDER has published an interview with dissident lay theologian Vito Mancuso, a best-selling author in Italy for his liberal, anti-orthodox views on Catholicism. [However, INSIDER does not provide an English translation, so if you do not read Italian and care to read this kind of palaver, you may try the automatic translator - if you have the patience to decipher the gobbledygook that it sometimes comes up with, although the gobbledy is much less outrageous than the gook it translates!]
What I have read about Mancuso in the past several years (and statements made by him) has mostly outraged me with its smug arrogance. He personifies all those Catholic dissenters who decided one day that they were going to take on the 2,000-year-old Church because they know better than the Church - with all her Tradition, history and communion of saints - what the Church ought to be and what it ought to do. And I am very outraged that the person who interviewed Mancuso, Alessandro Speciale, was content simply to ask him his list of prepared questions, and did not once react to or challenge the outrages Mancuso glibly mouths and that have now been given free unchallenged rein in the INSIDER.
Let me just quote one of Mancuso's statements, commenting on the demands made by the Austrian dissident priests: "The Church should recognize that legitimate instances of self-realization (for women, and others) are not a priori contrary to the Gospel but could even be more evangelical than the formal obedience demanded by the Pope". Since when was Catholicism - or Christianity, in general - ever about 'self-realization', when selflessness, being the nature of love, as Christ showed the world, is the Christian ideal?
But I am glad that Mancuso thereby acknowledges the ego-driven ideas and actions of dissidents against the faith. I've said before that each dissident seems to think he's the next Martin Luther, except none of them apparently has the primary and overriding interest Luther always had in God. As the Pope told Lutherans in Erfurt last year, "That the question 'How do I receive the grace of God?'was the driving force of Luther's whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians?"
I just checked again, in case my memory betrays me, the 'Call to Disobedience' by the Austrian priests, www.pfarrer-initiative.at/ [they now have English and other languages in addition to German, but they have not added significantly to their numbers - 405 as of April 14 - from the 300 that they started with in June 2011] and I do remember right: Nowhere in the statement is Christ or Jesus mentioned at all, and 'God' is only mentioned as in 'Word of God' in the sentence where they demand that lay people should be able to preach in priestless Masses. 'The Church' is what they mention most often because their demands are all about taking more power in the Church to themselves. No one can be more blind than egomaniacs fixated on a monomania as all dissenters in the Church seem to be.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/04/2012 19:16]