Transcript Document

Letters
To A
Young
Catholic
By
George
Weigel
Letter One Baltimore and Milledgeville
Acquiring the Habit of Being
Growing Up Catholic
The Catholic Culture
 - Baltimore was the first
American diocese
 - The Baltimore Catechism
was used to instruct Catholics
in the faith.
 - Growing up Weigel (right)
 instinctively knew of a world
made up of Catholics and
non-Catholics.
 - The parish made Catholics
a "tribal" people. There was a
rivalry and a loyalty to a
particular church and your
fellow parishioners.
 - Words that were part of a Catholic
vocabulary: vocation, monstrance,
missal, chasuble, ciborium, paten.
 Weigel mentions The idealistic
Catholic life portrayed in films like
“Going My Way”.
 - There was a consciousness of the
Catholic Baltimore Athletes (Unitas,
Donovan, Robinson) and to which
parishes they belonged.
 - Catholic education
shaped society (uniforms,
phonics, nuns, discipline).
 - Latin was the language of
the Church before Vatican
II (Benediction, Gregorian
Chants, Prayers).
 - Marian devotion is a key
part of the faith - May
Crowning, Rosary,
Angelus)
 - Catholics had a unique
leader - The Pope
The Catholic Difference
 - One real "Catholic
Difference" was a way
of seeing the world.
 - Catholicism is an
optic, a way of seeing
things, a distinctive
perception of reality.
 - Catholicism has its
own culture.
Milledgeville, Georgia
 Milledgeville was the home of
Flannery O'Connor
 - born in 1925 in Savannah
 - dies in 1964 of Lupus
 - wrote with a deep intuition
about the Catholic optic on life
 - her friend published a
collection of her letters called
The Habit of Being
 - her writing was often
misunderstood as a dark
parody and violent satire when
actually she was holding a
mirror up to a world that
thought of its distortions as
natural.
 - O'Connor's "Habit of Being" as the spiritual sensibility which
allows us to experience the
world as the arena of creation,
sin, redemption and
sanctification.
 She grew up Catholic in the
heart of the Bible Belt.
 - O'Connor said, There is nothing harder or
less sentimental than Christian realism.
 - History and humanity are the vehicles by
which God reveals himself to the world he
created.
 - History is the arena and Humanity is the
vessel through which God redeems the world.
 - God's love is
unsentimental but
cleansing (i.e. Prodigal
Son)
 - Catholicism is the
antidote to Nihilism
 - Debonair nihilism-- the
nihilism that enjoys itself on
the way to oblivion.
(The world, us,
relationships, sex, beauty,
history is really just a
cosmic joke)
 - Nihilism says that nothing is of consequence
vs. Catholicism everything is of consequence.
 - Catholicism changes the way everything
looks (excerpt on pg. 14)
 - Catholicism wants to change the world by
converting it.
 - Catholicism is not about conformity
(page 15)
 - Catholicism differentiates between sign and
symbol
 "If I really believed like
you say you do that Christ
is in that tabernacle, I'd be
crawling up the aisle on
my hands and knees.”
 Catholicism helps us to
acquire the habit of being,
the habit of seeing things
on depth as they are and
for what they are.
 - Catholicism stresses the
importance of living a
moral life and the
examination of
conscience.
Letter Two
Rome - The Scavi of St. Peter's and the
Grittiness of Catholicism
 Pope Pius XI died in 1939 prompting the
building of his tomb. Needing more room for
the massive marble structure caused the
excavation (scavi) to begin under the altar of
St. Peter's.
The History of St. Peter's
 - The first St. Peter's was
built by Constantine (right) in
the fourth century. It
remained until the latter half
of the fifteen century.
 - Some of the greatest
architects in the world
worked on the basilica
(Bramante, Michelangelo,
Bernini)
- Under the altar, they found
the Tropaion (right), a
classic structure that could
have been the original
altar.
 - At the back of the
Tropaion the archeologists
found ancient graffiti that
seemed to say "Peter is
here."
 - The central grave that
defines the Tropaion is
surrounded by other
graves.
 - Amid the fragments of St. Peter's bones there
is nothing from the ankles down. (Peter is
crucified upside down according to tradition.
 - Peter died during the persecutions of Nero.
St. Peter
 The obelisk in St. Peter's
piazza is probably the last
thing Peter sees before
crucifixion (right).
 - The scavi are more than
excavations, the scavi demand
that we think through the
meaning of an extraordinary
story involving some ordinary
people.
 - The main story of the scavi
revolved around Simon (son of
John) who was a fisherman in
Galilee.
 - Jesus called
Simon Peter which
means "rock"
The imperfect Peter
 - Peter resists when
Jesus insists that
the Messiah must
suffer. (Matt. 16:1323)
 - When Jesus is
arrested, Peter
denies that he knew
him. (Matt. 26:6975)
Peter's Conversion
 - Peter's conversion
begins on Easter
Sunday after
encountering the Risen
Christ.
 - On Pentecost after
being filled with the Holy
Spirit, Peter becomes
the Church's first great
evangelist. (Acts 2:1441)
 - Peter welcomes the centurion Cornelius, a
gentile into the Church enabling his fellow
Jews to see that God intends the saving
message of Christ for the whole world. (Acts
10:1 - 11:18)
 - As the early Church struggles
with what it means to be
Christian, Peter is recognized as
the center of the Church's unity.
Christian identity and practice
are thrashed out. (Acts 15:6-11).
 - According to tradition Peter
goes to Rome where he meets
his death.
 The scavi and the obelisk
confront us with the historical
tangibility, the sheer grittiness of
Catholicism. You can touch
Christianity.
 - Catholicism does not rest on
pious myth.
 - Real things happen to real
people who made real life and
death decisions.
Seized by the Truth
 - Peter did not make his
physical and spiritual journey
because of something he had
discovered and wanted to
satisfy his curiosity.
 - Peter moved from the
security of his modest job to
the center of the dangerous
Roman empire because he
had been seized by the truth,
the truth he found in Jesus
Christ.
 - Being seized by the
truth is not cost-free.
(Matt. 10:8)
 - Faith in Christ costs
not just something, but
everything,
 - Peter was told that his
love of Jesus would not
be easy. (John 21:1517)
 Jesus asks Simon, "Do
you love me more than
these?"
 - Only in binding himself
to Christ and the lambs
of his flock, will he find
himself.
 - Peter's failures and
skepticism really
happened. (Matthew
14:25-32) (walking on
water). The more Peter
looks around for security
and less on Jesus he
beings to sink into the
water.
 - When we have our
eyes fixed upon Christ,
we, too, can do
everything.
Quo Vadis Domine?
 - As Peter flees from Nero's persecutions, he meets
Jesus.
 - As Jesus is heading to where from Peter just came,
Peter asks, Quo Vadis Domine? (Lord, where are you
going?
 - Jesus responds, "I am going to Rome to be crucified."
 - Peter then returns to Rome to embrace
martyrdom.
 - The stories of Peter tell us that failure and
weakness have been part of the Church since
the beginning.
 - "It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as
much from the Church as for it."
- Flannery O'Connor
 - Even with scandal, the humans running the
Church are earthen vessels carrying the treasure
of faith in history.
 - All members of the
Church including its
leadership must be
purified by love.
 - We must avoid The
Great Catholic Sin Smugness (great or
offensive satisfaction with
oneself.)
 - The story of Peter
reminds us that failure is
not the final word. Love is!
Letter Three
St. Catherine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai/The Holy
Sepulcher, Jerusalem - The Face of Christ.
The Face of God
 - Mt. Sinai - the mountain where God met Moses (Jebel
Musa)
 - Jebel Musa became a pilgrimage site (the traditional place
where God appears as a burning bush)
 - Byzantine emperor Justinian built a great Monastery on the
mountain in 527
 - Justinian dedicated the
monastery to Mary. It was
named for St. Catherine after
her relics were brought here
in the eighth century.
 - The main jewel of St.
Catherine is the Christos
Pantokrator (an icon of Christ
the All Sovereign, Christ the
Universal King.
Icons
 - are not intended to be work
of representational art
 - are written, not painted, by an iconographer
for whom his work is both a vocation an a
form of prayer
 - they write icons because they believe God
intended them to do so
 - icons are intended to be another border
place between the divine and human
 - icons are symbols that make present what
they convey
 - in the Christos Pantokrator-- the
iconographer intended that we meet Jesus
Christ, The Lord.
Iconoclasts
 - The iconoclasts destroyed icons
 - The issue of icons was resolved at the
Second Council of Nicea in 787 ( above)
 The council defended icons saying that
through the incarnation the image of God
became a man. Simply put, an icon is an
image of the Image.
 - God, who once forbade
the people of Israel to
make images of himself,
has given us the true
Image in the flesh.
 - Icons show that we can
touch the truth of our
salvation. Christianity is a
matter of truths enfleshed.
God becomes man.
Christos Pantokrator
 - Christ is full-face toward us
 - His head is surrounded by a golden corona or halo.
 - His left arm clutches a Bible (The Word of God)
 - His right hand raised in both greeting and blessing,
the thumb and ring finger touching (a symbol of the
two natures united in one person of Christ.)
 - The index and middle fingers crossed (a symbol of
the instrument of salvation.)
 - The Holy Face is majestic, calm and masculine.
 - We find a truly human
face that is unlike any
face before (human and
divine)
 - The Christos
Pantokrator embodies the
teaching of the Second
Vatican Council: In Jesus
we meet the truth of the
merciful father and the
truth of our humanity.
 - Catholicism is about
God's search for us (ex.
the Prodigal Son, Luke
15:11-32)
Karol Wojtyla
 Preparing for the second Vatican Council-- a commission asked the
bishops of the world what they wanted to talk about. The Acta (the
official record of Vatican II) contains their responses.
 - Most submission by the bishops were mundane, but the response
from the auxiliary Bishop of Krakow seemed profound.
 - Karol Wojtyla asked, how could a century that had
so much promise go so off track.
 - He suggested that the project of Western humanism
had gone off the rails.
 - He proposed that the Catholic Church undertake a
gigantic rescue mission to save humanism.
 - He said that we see the true meaning of humanity in
the face of Christ.
 In Christ, we meet the Father, whose mercy redeems
our humanity and fulfills its true external destiny.
 - Humanism without God is
unhuman and ultimately inhuman.
The Holy Sepulchre
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
was built to commemorate
where Jesus died and rose.
 - The stone of unction (right)
is where the body of Jesus
was anointed when it
was taken off the cross.
 - The Stabat Mater commemorates
Mary receiving the dead body of her
Son.
 - Every Sunday Easter Mass is
celebrated.
St. Helena (above) and the True Cross
 - Sought to find the true cross of Christ.
 - English novelist Evelyn Waugh constructed a
fictional account of the confrontation between legend
and history in his play Helena.
 - Catholicism thinks of men and women who have
loved a crucified God as true humanists because
they have been given the grace of knowing the true
measure of our humanity redeemed at such a cost.
 - The Pope's visit to the
Holy Sepulchre (below)
shows how we bear witness
to the Christ who reveals
who we are and thereby
enables us to be truly, fully,
radically human.
 - In the Holy Face, we meet
the truth about ourselves, in
the flesh.
Letter Four
The Dormition Abbey, Jerusalem Mary and Discipleship
Mount Zion
 - The site of King David's
original fortress.
 - Also known as the
traditional site of the Cenacle
(The Last Supper site) and
surrounded by places where
Jesus preached.
 - Mount Zion is the site of the
Dormition Abbey. (It was built
by Kaiser Wilhelm II) (left)
 Mary's Dormition
 - Mary's assumption was
defined as an article of
Catholic faith in 1950.
 - There is no place that
claims to be the burial
place of Mary or to hold her
relics.
 - One tradition says that Mary
died in Ephesus, where John
lived.
 - Another tradition says that
Mary "fell asleep" on Mt. Zion.
Devotion to Mary
 - Weigel says that "Mary is both an
invitation to Catholicism and for
many Protestants, an obstacle to
Catholicism."
 - Even John Paul II questioned his
devotion to Mary.
 "I began to question my devotion
to Mary, believing that if it became
too great, it might end up
compromising the supremacy of
the worship owed to Christ." (Gift
and Mystery, John Paul II's
memoirs)
 - Karol Wojtyla read
French theologian St.
Louis Grignion de
Monfort's masterwork
True Devotion to Mary.
 - Monfort ( right) said that
all true devotion to Mary
necessarily pointed us to
Christ.
 - Rather that an obstacle
to an encounter with the
living Christ, Mary was
and is a privileged vehicle
for meeting Christ the
Lord.
 - The New Testament
supports Monfort's proposal.
The last words Mary recorded
in the Gospel "Do whatever
he tells you" sum up Mary's
singular role in history of
salvation.
 - Mary is a witness who
always points beyond herself
to her son.
 - Mary also points us to the
heart of the Trinity.
 - Summing up Monfort's
theology: "All true devotion to
Mary is Christocentric and
Trinitarian."
 - Hans Urs von Balthasar
(right) in The Office of Peter
and the Structure of the
Church suggests that the
Church in every age is
formed in the image of the
great figures of the New
Testament:
 St. Paul - the church of
proclamation and
evangelization
 John - the church of
contemplation and mystical
insight
 Peter- the church of authority
 Mary- the church of
discipleship
FIAT
 - Mary's Fiat "Be it done to me
according to your word."
 - The Fiat makes possible
the incarnation.
 - Through her Fiat we glimpse
into the primary lesson of
discipleship We are not in charge of our
lives, God is.
 - Mary's silent Fiat - the
reception of the dead body of
her son at the foot of the cross
(Mary's Martyrdom)
 - Mary teaches us to trust in
God's wisdom.
 - Mary, in Catholic teaching, is
the first of disciples in every
way.
 - Her assumption anticipates
for us our own bodily
resurrection to eternal life.
 - The Church teaches that the
saints enjoy the fullness of
God's life in heaven, but saints
also await the completion of
God's saving purposes in the
resurrection and
transformation of their mortal
bodies (God saves all of us,
not just the "spiritual" within
us.)
The Rosary
 - The Rosary is the most popular form of Marian
devotion in the Catholic world.
 - The Rosary s a privileged form of prayer precisely
because it points us, through Mary, to the truth about
her son.
 - The Joyful Mysteries - involves the events in the
pre-public life of Christ.
 - Sorrowful Mysteries - involves the events of Christ's
passion and death.
 - Glorious Mysteries - The Resurrection and its
effects in the life of the early Church.
 - In 2002, John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries that
recall the events in the public ministry of Jesus. (Baptism,
Wedding at Cana, Preaching of the Kingdom,
Transfiguration, The Last Supper.)
 - The Luminous Mysteries seem to fill the gap of the other
mysteries.
Vocation
 - The Rosary is a prayer that lends itself well to reflection
on vocation.
 - The annunciation takes us back to the Fiat and
reminds us that Mary is also the pattern of Christian
vocation.
 - Her Fiat says “Let it be. I am the Lord's servant
and the Lord will provide.”
 - "Keeping your options open" is not the path to
happiness, wholeness or holiness."
 - Weigel shows how John Paul II learns to trust in his
devotion to the Blessed Mother.
 - "Do whatever he tells you" is Mary's gentle invitation
to make her fiat your own.
Letter Five
The Oratory, Birmingham, England Newman and "Liberal" Religion.
Birmingham Oratory
- Founded in 1564 by
St. Philip Neri
( left), the Oratory is
composed of
members who live in
community, but have
no specific line of
work as a founding
purpose.
 - The Birmingham Oratory
(right) was founded in 1848
by John Henry Newman.
 - Newman spent most of his
life combating Liberal
Religion.
 - Apologia pro Vita Sua is
Newman's spiritual
autobiography. It was written
in response to the false
claims of Charles Kingsley.
 - Newman believed that the pope could, under certain
well-defined circumstances, infallibly define matters
of faith and morals.
 - However, he did not know if it was prudent to assert
this truth through the actions of an ecumenical
council.
 - The doctrine was affirmed at Vatican I (1869 - 1870)
 - The doctrine was attacked by William Gladstone
and Newman effectively defended it in his letter to the
Duke of Norfolk.
 - Newman was made a cardinal by Leo XIII in 1879
 - Newman delivered an address when he became a
cardinal in Rome (p. 70)
Liberalism
 1. Is the doctrine that there is no
positive truth in religion. One
creed is as good as another.
 2. It teaches that all religions
should be tolerated.
 3. Teaches that revealed religion
is not a truth but a sentiment and
a taste; not objective fact, not
miraculous.
 4. It is the right of each individual
to make it say what strikes his
fancy.
 5. Devotion is not necessarily
founded on faith.
Newman and Catholicism
 Newman converted from atheism
then Anglicanism to Catholicism. He
saw Catholicism as the one true
faith.
 - Catholicism to Newman is not a
matter of opinion but truth.
 - Liberal Catholicism was its own
worst enemy.
 - Liberal religion couldn't tell the
difference between appearances and
reality.
 - Liberalism - a culture in which
about all that can be conceded is
that there may be your truth and my
truth.
 - Newman's motto was inscribed on his
tombstone "From shadows and appearances
into truth"
 - He found that faith was more complex than
adding two plus two always equaling four.
 - He used the term "illative sense" to describe
how a convergence of factors reaches a point
where probabilities, added together, drives us
to certainties.
Edith Stein
 - Read the Autobiography of
St. Theresa of Avila at a
friend's house. ("This is the
Truth")
 - Four months later she was
baptized.
 - Twenty one years later
she was martyred in
Auschwitz as a Carmelite
nun.
 - She became a saint in
1998 as Saint Theresa
Benedicta of the Cross.
 - Edith Stein experienced a
form of grace while reading
the Autobiography.
 - Grace brings things together
in such a powerful way that
the force of the truth demands
a response.
 - Liberal religion is religion we
make up.
 - Revealed religion - is a
religion into which we are
incorporated.
 - Liberal religion has no
confidence in the human
capacity to be seized by the
truth of things.
 - Mature Catholic faith is a matter of being seized by the
truth.
 - Liberal religion (including liberal Catholicism) is dying.
 - Liberal religion deprives of the joy that comes from the
obedience of faith.
Weigel's Encounter with Liberal Catholicism
 - Weigel saw that some of the intellectuals who helped the
bishops craft the documents of Vatican II became the selfproclaimed teaching authority of the church.
The Hartford Appeal
 - known also as "An Appeal for
Theological Affirmation"
 - challenged the view that
"modern thought is superior to
all past forms of
understanding reality"
 - thought that Christian
thinking should adopt an
ecumanism of time, employing
wisdom and insight from any
historical era.
 - argued against the
suggestion that "religious
language refers to human
experience and nothing else."
 - insisted we did not invent God, God invented us.
 - denied that all religions are equally valid. (p. 8)
 - insisted that while worship is personally and
communally enriching, it is a mistake to assume that
the only purposes of worship are self-realization and
human community.
 - denied that a world sets the agenda for the church.
 - obedience to Christian truth is liberating.
Letter Eight
The Sistine Chapel, Rome Body Language, God Talk, and the Visible Invisible
The Sistine Chapel
The original Sistine Chapel was named in honor of its
builder, Pope Sixtus IV -1475 (below)
 - Its dimensions are 132 feet long by 44 feet wide and
68 feet high (the dimensions of Solomon's Temple)
 - The original ceiling was
painted blue with golden
stars. The life of Moses
was painted on the south
wall and the life of Christ
was painted on the north
wall.
 - Julius II (Sixtus' nephew)
had to deal with structural
problems because the soft
soil under the chapel
began to shift.
 - Julius wanted to
commission Michelangelo
(right) to paint the ceiling
but architect Bramante
objected.
 - Michelangelo initially refused, but after being ordered back
to Rome, he began work.
 Julius wanted portraits of the twelve apostles.
 - Michelangelo came up with a design that showed the
creation of the world and the early history of the human race.
 - On November 1, 1512 the ceiling was unveiled.
 The Last Judgment
 - Paul III in 1535 asked
Michelangelo to execute a fresco of
The Last Judgment. When it was
unveiled in 1541, most were
awestruck, but some prudes were
angry.
 - Later some loin cloths were added
to the nude figures
 - A major restoration of the frescoes
was commissioned by John Paul II.
He also had many of the loin cloths
removed.
The Dedication of the Chapel
 - April 8, 1994 John Paul II celebrated a Mass in the
Sistine Chapel to mark the completion of the restoration of
the Michelangelo frescoes.
 He said that the frescoes were a kind of sacrament in
which we encounter the visible reality of an invisible God.
 - The Pope suggested: The Last Judgment completes the
proto-history of humankind on the ceiling.
 First six frescoes - God brings creation out of chaos.
 Next three frescoes - humans tend to always make a
mess out of the gift of the created world.
 The Last Judgment: Christ who establishes his kingdom and
brings the righteous into reign with him forever thereby brings
creation to its end.
 The frescoes tell us:
a) Life is not random and aimless
b) There is a purpose in the world, a divine purpose.

In The Last Judgement, we come face to face with the Christ
who expresses himself as the whole mystery of the "visibility of
the Invisible."
 Michelangelo showed that the human body is an icon of God's
outpouring of himself to his creation; God himself is the "source
of the integral beauty of the body."
 - The Sistine Chapel is the "sanctuary of the theology of
the human body." The beauty of man (man and female) is
completed in the beauty of the Risen Christ, come in glory
to judge the living and dead.


Human bodies aren't objects.
Human bodies are icons.
Theology of the Body
 - John Paul proposed that sexual love within the bond of
faithful and fruitful marriage is nothing less than an icon of
the interior life of God himself.
 - Sex helps teach us about God even as it teaches us about
ourselves.
 - John Paul II's "theology of the body" which he laid out in
129 general audience addresses between 1979 and 1984.
 - John Paul begins with Genesis, which teaches us what we
are: made in the image and likeness of God.
 - We are made to make a gift of ourselves to others, as our
lives are a gift to us, which means that the creation of man
was not complete until He created Eve.
 - The only way to find ourselves is to give us away.
 - The "Law of the Gift" is the deep imprint of the "Image of
God" in us for the Holy Trinity is a communion of selfgiving love returned and received for all eternity.
 - When Adam and Eve lived this freedom as a free gift of
self, they felt no shame.
 - Original sin: is the tendency to ignore the Law of the Gift.
 - Genesis teaches human happiness depends on self
giving not self assertion.
 - Lust is the opposite of that self-giving. Lust uses another
person or even abuses another. The other person is no
longer a person but an object. There is no giving or
communion in lust.
 Catholic sexual ethic
liberates the exotic by
transforming longing into
self-giving. It channels
our desires "from the
heart" so that desire
leads to communion, a
true giving and
receiving.
 The mastery of desire
lets us give ourselves to
others intimately in a
way that it affirms the
other. This is what
Jesus means by "purity
at heart"
(Beatitudes)
 - Marriage is one of those
sacramental realities that
takes us into the
extraordinary that lies just on
the far side of the ordinary.
 - Marriage is an icon of
God's creation of the world
which was an act of divine
love and self-outpouring.
 - Marriage is also an icon of
God's redemption of the
world. The love of Christ for
the church is like the love of
husband and wife. It shows
the passion of His love for
which He laid down His life.
 - The church knows that
marital sexual love is not
always ecstatic, but
ecstasy is what love
should aim for.
 - Sex (as a contact
sport) as purely physical
is no different than
animal sexuality.
 - John Paul II calls
chastity the "integrity of
love." Chastity - is the
virtue by which I can love
another as a person.
 - Chaste sexual love = ecstatic sexual love.
 - True sexual love is a matter of putting my emotional
center in the care of another.
Catholic Viewpoint
 Masturbation - when we confuse loving with self
pleasuring, our capacity to give ourselves to others
atrophies. There is no growth in love in the illusory
world of pornographic self-indulgence.
 Pre-Marital Sex - Christians only make love to people to
whom they have made promises.
 Contraception - The Catholic question is not whether a
couple should plan their family, but how they should live
that plan. The church encourages natural family
planning.
 Homosexuality - The church does not teach that
homosexuality is sinful, it does teach that homosexual
desire is a disordered affection, a sign of spiritual
disturbance.
Letter Ten
St. Stanislaw Kostka Churchyard, Warsaw
The Metropolitan Curia, Krakow - How Vocations
changed History
Poland
 Weigel calls Poland the most intensely Catholic
Country in the world.
 Poland is a land of shrines and pilgrimages
- Kalwarzia Zebrydruska
draws thousands of pilgrims every year
 - A Basilica dedicated to our Lady of Fatima for
having spared the life of John Paul II
 Jasna Gora
the home of the Black
Madonna (right)
Warsaw
 Hitler ordered the city
flattened in retaliation
for the Uprising of
1944.
 Weigel says it isn't a
very lovely or lovable
city
 In Warsaw you find the
Church of St. Stanislaw
Kostka
St. Stanislaw (right) and Fr.
Jerzy
 In its churchyard you find a
giant cross that is part of a
large rosary. Buried under
the cross is Father Jerzy
Popieuszko.
 - Fr. Jerzy became the
chaplain to the workers of a
steel mill. They were
striking in support of the
Gdansk shipyards.
 - Fr. Jerzy had poor health
and a weak pulpit voice.
 - After martial law was imposed in Dec. of 1981, he
started celebrating a "Mass for the Fatherland" at St.
Stanislaw.
 - Soon, tens of thousands packed in and around the
church for this mass. He preached non-violence.
 - The secret police saw him as a threat and killed him
in October of 1984.
 - Fr. Jerzy was buried in the churchyard and it
instantly became a shrine. It became known as
Solidarity's Sanctuary.
 - The voice of Fr. Jerzy
helped band the people of
Poland together nonviolently.
 - His story teaches us that
faith has consequences. At
the personal level, those
consequences are
vocational. Faith has
consequences for history,
too. (St. Paul p. 657)
John Paul II
 - first pope in a long time to
tell us that he had a hard
time making a vocational
decision for the priesthood
 - he did not think he would
be a priest, rather, an actor
or writer
 - Karol Wojtyla, born in
Poland, made the decision
that changed his life during
Nazi occupation of Poland
(in Hans Frank's
Gestapoland) right-->
 - The goal of the Nazis was
to erase any trace of Polish
culture
 - so Polish culture went
underground. It was a
capital crime to have any
part of Poland's culture
(Chopin)
 - Karol formed the
Rhapsodic Theatre which
worked to keep the
classics of Polish stage
and poetry alive. (His
apartment, where this took
place, was called the
"Catacomb")
 - His father died in
February 1941. He
wondered why so many
young people were losing
their lives and he
wondered, “Why not
me?”
 - His mentor was Jan
Tyranowski (right). He
gave him St. John of the
Cross and St. Therese of
Avila to read.
 - When most of the priests were arrested in Karol's parish,
Jan was asked to take over the youth ministry.
 - Tyranowski formed "Living Rosary" groups. Karol was
chosen to be one of the youth leaders.
 - Karol became an underground seminarian under
Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapiela.
 - Karol's partner at the seminary was arrested and shot in
April 1944. Again he asked, “Why not me?”
 - The underground
seminary was now
located at the
residence of the
archbishop Metropolitan Curia.
 - Karol was ordained
Nov. 1, 1946.
 John Paul was shot by
Mehmet Ali Agca. "In
the designs of
Providence, there are
no mere coincidences."
John Paul II
Vocation
 - A career is something you have. A vocation is
something you are.
 Fr. Jerzy, St. Paul, Jan Tyranowski and Karol Wojtyla
are living examples of how sometimes God has more
planned for us than we know.
 His-story = God at work in the world under the
surface of history.
 - The obedience of faith has
consequence to societies and history as
well as individuals.
 - The obedience of faith is profoundly
counter-cultural.
Letter Fourteen
The Basilica of the Holy Trinity, Krakow, On Not Being
Alone
The Basilica of the Holy Trinity
 - St. Hyacinth is buried in the basilica. Hyacinth persuaded
the bishop of Krakow to give the property to the
Dominicans.
 - Thomas Torquemada, the feared inquisitor, once stayed
here.
 - The fire of 1850 gutted the interior
 - The Nazis used the priory property as a supply depot
 - Weigel used the Krakow base when he was
researching John Paul II's biography.
 - The best time to come to the basilica is 7:00
p.m. or Sunday night when almost 3,000
young people pack the church
 - The conviction on the faces of the young
people impressed Weigel the most.
Modernization
 Modernization usually means secularization the withering away of traditional religious
belief and practice
 The more modern you are, the less religious
you become
 At the beginning of the 20th century
advanced thinkers predicted that a maturing
humanity, tutored by science, would lose its
"need" for religion.
 Atheistic Humanism
 Henri de Lubac (who was an
influential figure at Vatican II)
called this new phenomenon
"Atheistic Humanism" = this
was atheism with a developed
ideology and a program for
remaking the world. (right)
 The prophets of atheistic
humanism (Comte, Feuerbach,
Marx, Nietzsche) all taught that
the God of the Bible was an
enemy of human dignity.
 - de Lubac argued that men
were free and responsible. The
God of the Bible was not a
willful tyrant.
 - The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
Moses and Jesus entered history and had
become our companion on the pilgrimage of
life.
 - To be in communion with this God was to be
liberated from fate
 - What atheistic humanism had proved was
that without God humans could only organize
the world against each other.
 The story of Edith Stein suggests that the alternative to
ultra-mundane and the antidote to its lethal effects is not
to abandon the great project of western humanism; the
alternative is Christian humanism (which is built on the
three theological virtues of faith, hope and love.)
 - Weigel says that the "secularization hypothesis" has
been falsified. The new century is becoming more
intensely religious.
 - As people of faith, "we are not alone."
 - Weigel gives several examples of flourishing faith
experiences (234, 235)
World Youth Day
 - Meant to recreate the
experience of Holy Week.
 - Each WYD begins with a
variant of Palm Sunday in
which a cross is solemnly
processed into the site of
the opening ceremony.
 - There is an analogue to
Holy Thursday where the
Pope discussed having a
life of service.
 - Then each WYD has its
Good Friday in which the
young people pray for man's
redemption through the cross.
 - A candlelight vigil
symbolizes the Great Easter
vigil. WYD ends with a mass
that evokes the experience of
Easter Sunday and sends
everyone out with a message
of the resurrection.
 - Weigel tells of experiences
at different WYD's
1997 - Paris (p. 237)
2002 - Toronto (p. 239)
2000 - Rome (P. 239)