- Archbishop Niedermeyer's Homily for his installation mass is worth a read. (Curtsy to Zadok.) It's mostly a summary of Deus Caritas Est as his program for San Francisco. St. Blog's is commenting most on this portion:
Of course there's a pachyderm in the parsonage that goes unmentioned here, but I think he strikes the right tone; it's heartening.In the many moral dilemmas that face them today, Catholics look to their Church, to their faith, to be a compass, not a weathervane. The Church must point toward the true North of God’s loving will, and not merely track where the winds, or the polls, are blowing. This is not a new issue. About seventy years ago, the poet T. S. Eliot indicated why many people in our modern world aren’t particularly fond of the Church: “She is hard where they would be easy, and easy where they would be hard.” “Hard where they would be easy:” think of abortion and euthanasia; “Easy where they would be hard:” think of capital punishment and immigration law.
What then are citizens to do, when they disagree? Well, first of all, disagree without being disagreeable. Presume good faith until it is proven otherwise. At the end of one of his poems, Robert Frost famously suggested his own epitaph: “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” I believe that is a richly helpful image. God often had a lover’s quarrel with his people, Israel, and the prophets were his spokespersons. Please presume that if the Church challenges an action, a policy or a program it is because she loves the world around her, and wants what is best for it. All around you here in the Cathedral today you can see evidence of the Church’s lifelong love for the arts: Architecture, painting, sculpture, and music. Always presume that it is love that led to a quarrel, and that love will endure when the quarrel has passed.
- Here's the Holy Father's homily from his Feb. 5th visit to St. Anne's parish. Apparently the delay in the transcript is because he ad-libbed. This is the kind of thing that just falls spontaneously from his lips, apparently. Since the Gospel was about the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, I'll just pass along the crack one of guides made at the site of the ruins of Peter's house. He said it's an old joke among the Palestinian Christians that Peter denied Christ because he'd healed his mother-in-law. Ha-ha. The Pope's a bit more respectful of women.
This woman who has just been healed, the Gospel says, begins to serve them. She sets to work immediately to be available to others, and thus becomes a representative of so many good women, mothers, grandmothers, women in various
professions, who are available, who get up and serve and are the soul of the family, the soul of the parish.
And here, on looking at the painting above the altar, we see that they do not only perform external services; St Anne is introducing her great daughter, Our Lady, to the Sacred Scriptures, to the hope of Israel, for which she was precisely to be the place of its fulfilment.
Moreover, women were the first messengers of the word of God in the Gospel, they were true evangelists. And it seems to me that this Gospel, with this apparently very modest episode, is offering us in this very Church of St Anne an opportunity to say a heartfelt "thank you" to all the women who care for the parish, the women who serve in all its dimensions, who help us to know the Word of God ever anew, not only with our minds but also with our hearts.
- I hadn't planned to address this yet, but as long as the Pope brings it up, I'll mention that Fr. John Solana, LC, of the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, has a terrific initiative underway, with the approval of the Holy See and the Patriarch of Jerusalem: The Galilee Project. He wants to develop a parcel of land in Magdala, on the shore of Lake Galilee, as a northern center for pilgrims. Currently the only places for pilgrims to lodge overnight are in Jerusalem, which means much of the richness of the Galilee area --about which I'll begin writing shortly-- goes under-explored.
This would be a worthy work in itself --great for pilgrims and great for the local economy. But since it's the home of Mary Magdalene, the first to hear and spread the Good News, Fr. John's idea is to create on the same site a conference center for studies on the dignity of woman --using Christ's relationships with the women of the Gospels as the starting point for study. The ruins of Mary Magdalene's tomb are nearby but unused, and the Franciscans have already agreed that if the center gets built, they'll allow the ruins to be opened for pilgrims. Just as Notre Dame is not only a hotel, but also a center for ecumenism, the Galilee Center would have a dual role. I can't think of a better place to set a center devoted to the dignity of woman than so close to a people a little unclear on the concept. Go here for details or to help bring the project to fruition.
- Well, I took my little digression, but do go back and read the homily. The Pope packs interesting ideas on several topics into a short space. And then there are the Angeluses (5, 12) and Audiences (15 Italian, 8 English), to catch up on. He completed the cycle of Psalms & Prayers from JPG's catechesis with the Feb. 15th audience on the Magnificat, so it will be interesting to see what his own program will be.
