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Alas, for whatever silly reason, I have never gotten to participate, even partially, in any of the now-famous annual Summorum Pontificum pilgrimages. It is a gathering held over several days here in Rome each year to discuss and celebrate the traditional Latin rituals – Mass and other devotions, such as vespers.

It is not “the old Mass” – it is “the current Mass” too!

The pilgrimage ends today. Here are some highlights of last year’s pilgrimage:

Happy weekend… I am in my old apartment building in uptown Rome. Monteverde Vecchio.

Go find friends, have fun, and relax and pray this weekend… like me.

God bless you!

-Eamonn

I am back in the Apostolic Archives doing research for my doctoral work.

I say archival work is like fishing. Sometimes you get nothing. Sometimes a nibble is a big fish, sometimes you think you have a good catch but are reeling in a shoe.

Today I came across the handwritten notes of Pius XI’s first radio address. I thought I’d seen an image of them somewhere (maybe in a book?), but I can’t find the image online. And I learned today it is about $200 to get the permissions to put such an image online for you to view. Sorry. He had absolutely horrible handwriting anyway, like chicken scratch.

The video will have to suffice!

Here is something connected and a bit more watchable… Marconi set up the radio station in the Vatican Gardens for Pius XI, here is the inauguration.

I talk a big game. Sometimes I play games too. Most Thursdays during the school year I am playing soccer with some seminarian friends. It got me thinking – I should write about that. Lessons learned. Etc.

I’m also preparing for a 100-mile ultramarathon in April. I do a LOT of running. Loads.

So, I will start cataloguing random thoughts on the relationship between faith and athletics here, almost every Thursday. Stay tuned.

-Eamonn

Leaves turn brown in Rome
The Tiber keeps on flowing
We walk together.

Happy Feast of St. Anthony Claret!

He is a favorite and deserves to be much better known. He essentially invented Catholic press as we know it today, revolutionized Cuban agriculture, was a miracle-factory, and founded seminaries and his own religious order. He wrote some 200 or so books, confirmed about 300,000 people and rectified some 12,000 marriages as Archbishop in Cuba, and visited each parish at least twice, almost always by walking. He essentially didn’t sleep.

As confessor to the Queen of Spain later on, he suffered much on account of the culture of the court… He deeply disliked it. The various politicians would write him letters all the time – he received (and read) about 100 each day. He never responded to a single one. The only time he intervened on a political matter was on the Queen’s approval of the unification of Italy – she disobeyed him, and she was excommunicated; he had to go fix everything, as she went into a kind of exile in France.

I have visited his tomb… Sort of. I went all the way there, some years ago when I first came to Italy. The place was locked! I wrote about that trip here. I owe it another try.

He is a saint for our times… A strong preacher and defender of the integrity of marriage, a courageous and merciful man (who faced many assassination attempts – including twice from the same man, who had been pardoned by him once back in Spain, but then somehow ended up being hired by Anthony’s presbyterate in Cuba to kill him – the second time he sent him back to Spain to stay in prison)… He knew the stakes were high for clergy and for souls. He also dealt with a major outbreak of cholera in Cuba, and an earthquake in the same city. He didn’t close the churches. He didn’t “suspend the sacraments.” He didn’t tell people to follow medical superstitions (“fires in the street will burn up the disease”). It was the opposite.

He gave a brief but powerful intervention at Vatican I in favor of papal infallibility. As one Austrian bishop was speaking against it, it was noticed that the normally meek Anthony was becoming so angry that saliva was bubbling out through the scar on his cheek, where he had once been stabbed in a failed assassination attempt. Leo XIII remembered Anthony from the Council, and he advanced his cause, making him “Venerable” in 1899. Pius XI beatified him, and Pius XII canonized him. That’s FAST.

Go read his life. He’s one of the only saints who has left us a meaningful autobiography. It is an incredible read, especially useful for missionary clergy, and for men who are turned away from religious life (he tried to enter the Carthusians and the Jesuits, but it failed – he started his own order and then was promptly chosen bishop, so he was never really able to live that life). There’s another book which is a proper biography, and another book just documenting his miracles.

We must not forget our saints – especially the recent ones who are so strong and prophetic.

St. Anthony Claret, pray for us!

The Scriptures map out the journey of the spiritual life in various ways. I’ve talked here before, for example, about the last Resurrection narrative in John, where we see in the miraculous catch of fish a whole catechesis on the sacraments of initiation and the three major conversions and ages of the spiritual life – initial conversion and purgation, illumination, union. The Lord already has His own few (Jewish) fish, and now He will eat the Gentile fish caught by Peter, etc.

A similar pattern can be observed in the exodus from Egypt and the entry into Canaan, and the Lord coming down into Israel to become one with His people.

The Lord turning back towards Jerusalem after Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi is another moment for consideration. And the trouble starts immediately – with Peter himself. Mere seconds after confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Peter seeks to deny that the Christ must suffer – the perennial temptation of pastors of souls… to keep their people from suffering, even when that suffering is necessary.

From then on, Christ is basically alone. He is surrounded by others, and He has some friends in Bethany who care for Him just before and during Holy Week, but after Peter’s proposal to avoid the Cross, Christ is in battle-mode. He knows He will be betrayed. Mocked and humiliated. Abandoned. Tortured and killed.

He could have just stayed up north in Caesarea Philippi. It’s as far away from Jerusalem as the Lord ever went during the Public Ministry.

We often think of our own personal crosses in terms of “what” – is your cross a family crisis, bad health, some problem at work, etc… But we should also think of our crosses in terms of “where.” It is all too tempting to press the eject button where there are toxic people, compromised people, evil people… But that was Christ’s Jerusalem. He had to go there, to that place. The great rock at Caesarea Philippi, looming in the background as Peter made his confession of faith, covers the stream where all the demons were said to enter and exit the underworld – thus was the Temple of Pan (“pan-theon,” “all the gods”) placed nearby, and thus we get the rhetoric about the Gates of Hell and Peter being the Rock against which they will not prevail. But Jerusalem was far worse. With Christ’s words about Peter, it’s as if it were an invitation for the roaming spirits of Caesarea Philippi to attack him; immediately, Peter has strayed. He is just like any other man. He is compromised – Satan has entered him, much the same as with Judas. A few days later we will see him whimpering around a fire denying that he even knows Jesus. Peter misunderstood the entire messianic project – he was ready for a physical battle, not a spiritual one. So he panicked when told to put down his sword. Christ sits in silence, and darkness, and cold, knowing that God will deliver Him from death – that is real power. And that power can only really be made manifest in Jerusalem, on Golgotha. That’s where He has to go.

Where are we running away from? Where is the problem that we are called to face? Where can we go to suffer, die, and rise that will have the maximum impact for God’s glory? Where is our Golgotha? Real power comes from the Cross, as does real wisdom. (1 Cor. 1:24) We don’t have to insert ourselves into every bad environment – we shouldn’t, in fact – but surely, if we are always avoiding every Jerusalem, we will never find our Golgotha.

I’ve just arrived back in Rome after a weekend in France. It was great to be out for a bit – Rome can be stifling – but I am happy to be back.

There are really some terrible problems going on in the Church right now. I have tried on these pages to contextualize that a bit throughout the years, in various ways… It is important that we not forget about all the other awful times in which the Church has found Herself across the centuries. And it is important to remember that we are always doing better than Good Friday, when God was killed and everyone ran away.

Many of the worst things going on are happening in Rome. Some of it is actually more boring than you might think – a kind of Hannah Arendt “banality of evil” sort of situation – but there is also more openly twisted stuff. And we read about it, hear about it, talk about it all the time. Good people who are here are often hurt by it, and they often try to just stay away or get out – or they succumb to despair. Sometimes, they even become evil themselves through the corruption of those they are set against.

This series, which I will endeavor to add to each Sunday indefinitely, will do one very simple thing: remind people that actually there is good stuff happening too. There are signs of life, signs of hope, signs of God’s love working upon the Earth – yes, even here in the Eternal City. It will often just be a picture or two with a short description of something happening that week. It could be things in the news already, or, ideally, it will be stuff that I am somehow personally a part of.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” -John 16:33

I am writing today from the island of Les Embiez off the coast of Toulon in southern France. It is a VERY nice place. I’m blessed to have gotten to come here for the weekend to meet with a bunch of Christian business leaders and other such types to network and talk about “the issues.”

I think it’s really important that anyone even remotely on the same page as each other with regard to the role of Christianity and classical Western civilization work together and see past their differences to build up shields and swords against the forces of rabid secularism (and Islam). We rise and fall together to a great degree.

I am more than a bit skeptical of the liberal view of religious liberty – I am what would be called an “integralist” – but that doesn’t preclude ecumenical interventions and cooperation on large projects that create bulwarks against the most powerful and evil people around. Definitely not everything needs to be or should be ecumenical (let alone interreligious), but when that’s actually advantageous politically or economically then we should embrace it, not balk. Team-playing also creates opportunities for meaningful conversations about religious truth.

Sometimes ecumenical ventures are easier than projects among Catholics with slightly different opinions, projects, “circles.” Like two half-notes on a piano being played together – the dissonance is just too much. But we have to get over this. That division is of the Devil. It’s not from God.

We need to work together as far as possible. We need to be looking for ways to build up “the team,” even if it makes us uncomfortable or forces us to swallow our pride. We can’t be self-promoters, we must be “us”-promoters, freedom-promoters, and Christ-promoters.