Tag: Christianity

Our Lady, the Rosary and Europe

Post author By stefan
Post date October 11, 2021

11th October 2021

Our Lady, the Rosary and Europe

Stefan Kaminski

Since the end of the 19^th century, October has been dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Of all the devotions to Our Lady, the rosary is the most notable, of course. Indeed, the place of the Rosary at the forefront of Marian devotion particularly, and Catholic prayer generally, is reinforced by the fact of the Church having established a universal Feast of the Holy Rosary, which is celebrated on the seventh of October, and from which grew the dedication of the entire month to this prayer.

In this month of October then, it’s worth calling to mind both the origins of the Rosary as well as its historical role in the fortunes of Christian Europe. Although the challenges facing Christians and Catholics today have a different aspect and character, the nature of those challenges to the Faith remains the same.

Tradition tells us that it was St Dominic who received the Rosary from Our Lady in response to his plea for help in the face of the Albigensian heresy. Surfacing near Toulouse in the eleventh century, this corruption of the Christian faith took a particular hold in the southern French territories in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Albigensian heresy, though formally speaking long extinct, is not entirely irrelevant to today’s dialogue with a secular world.

The Albigenses held a belief in two opposing principles of existence: a good principle and an evil principle. They held the good principle to be the creator of the spiritual world, and the evil principle to be the creator of the material world. Thus, a fundamental rupture with the Christian faith takes place: the good principle is not all-powerful, being co-equal to the evil principle; and material creation is not good, being the work of the evil principle, and therefore not redeemable. Morally speaking, this resulted in a dualistic view of the human person, where the body – and all activity related to it – seen as something to be supressed and denied.

On the face of it, this does not seem to bear much similarity to today’s attitudes to the body, which simultaneously exalt bodily desire, justifying all forms of its expression, and degrade the body by objectifying it. Underneath however, lies the same problem: an inability to grasp and to accept the intrinsic goodness of the body’s natural ordering. If for the Albigenses the material world was evil, today’s secular world sees the material world as meaningless. Thus, where the Albigenses repressed, we manipulate according to our desires. And we forget that these desires remain profoundly marked by sin.

In the midst of the division and conflict caused by this heresy, St Dominic presented the Rosary to the Catholic faithful as an antidote. This might strike some as slightly strange, if we consider St Dominic as a great preacher and founder of an order that has a particular charism for teaching. Why not combat an error of thinking with an irrefutable piece of writing or speaking? And here lies a two-fold lesson.

Firstly, our rational knowledge or understanding of the faith can never be separated from the life of prayer. At both a corporate (i.e. the Church) and individual level, that which we pray informs that which we believe. This is summed up in the ancient axiom, lex orandi, lex credendi (the law prayed is the law believed). The rosary is a particularly powerful instrument in this respect, as it directs us to meditate on the key moments of the story of God’s Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection amongst us.

Secondly, Our Lady has a particular and active part to play in nurturing and defending the Church, of whom she is the Mother. An appeal to Mary was not just successful in the case of the Albigensians, where the Rosary was seen as securing their final defeat at the Battle of Muret in 1213, but has a strong track record since. Most notably is the Battle of Lepanto, where the threat of the Turkish empire overrunning and extinguishing Christian Europe was, and has ever since, been attributed to the plethora of rosaries offered publicly and privately in response to Pope Pius V’s call for prayer.

Less-known, but equally important, was the previous Turkish attempt to gain a foothold in Europe in 1565, with the Great Siege of Malta. Again, after much Marian invocation, the Turkish fleet – the largest recorded in history to that date – sailed away from Malta with its army and weaponry, never to return, on the Feast of Our Lady’s birthday. Similarly, the victories of Christendom at the Battles of Vienna in 1683 and of Peterwardein (Hungary) in 1716 against the same Turkish aggressors were attributed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary. Numerous other histories of victory or protection, not just physical but also spiritual, exist, which this article will have to leave to the reader to discover for themselves!

Although the Faith and its practice may be on something of a decline in modern-day Western Europe, a powerful reminder of our historical devotion to Our Lady and her concern for us remains emblazoned on the very flag of the European Union. Aside from the devout Catholics who were behind the original EU project – such as Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Alcide de Gasperi – the designer of the flag, Arsene Heitz, told Lourdes magazine how his inspiration had come from the Book of Revelation: “a woman clothed with the sun… and a crown of twelve stars on her head”. Coincidentally (or perhaps God-incidentally!), the flag was adopted on 8^th December 1955: the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our Lady of Europe, pray for us!

Tags Blessed Virgin Mary, Christianity, Europe, Mary Mother of God, Rosary

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Dare we forget the call to sainthood?

Post author By stefan
Post date September 20, 2020

Sunday 20th September 2020

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Dare we forget the call to the sainthood?

Stefan Kaminski

The lives of the saints have historically provided one of the great staples of the catechetical and spiritual life.

Their biographies, in varying levels of literary and spiritual complexity, would be read by Christians of all ages. Children would be presented early on with these figures in story book form. As they grew, so also did they in knowledge of and friendship with the saints, through reading more complex or original texts as they were able to.

This has always been a self-evidently important element in the formation of a person’s faith, since the saints are guiding lights for the sincere Christian. They mark out a true and trodden path that navigates the difficulties and complexities of this life, while making a bee-line for Heaven. The saints are those who have ‘fought the good fight… finished the race… kept the faith’ (2 Timothy 4:7).

They have faced the world, they have discerned what is right and what is wrong, and they have relentlessly pursued the former. Do we not still need them today?

It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that our celebrity culture has, to a large extent, either pushed the saints off our radar or filled in the previously-vacated space that the saints used to inhabit. The saints were at once role models and witnesses to the reality of our faith. Celebrities also serve as role models, and most often as witness to the realities of this world. The saints are clearly a less attractive role model to someone who does not understand the primacy of Heaven over earth, or the spiritual over the physical.

And equally, someone whose primary aim is to make the most out of this world, rather than to strive for Heaven, will not see their relevance.

Perhaps it is precisely the apparent unpopularity or unattractiveness of the saints that serves as a warning of our need for them more than ever.

It continues to be in the relational nature of humans to look for role models, to aspire after others and to imitate that which we see as appealing in them. This is especially true throughout childhood, in the most formative years of our character. So it is precisely then that we let children down most of all if we fail to present them with these great, Christian role models.

If we take seriously the words of Pope Francis, “To be saints is not a privilege for the few, but a vocation for everyone” – in other words, if we take seriously the fundamental Christian precept that we are all called to holiness – we cannot discard what the saints have to offer us. Pope Benedict XVI once said that for him, “Art and the saints are the greatest apologetics for our faith”. A vivid and real knowledge of the lives of the saints is itself a powerful testimony to the reality of God and the possibility of a relationship with Him. Every young boy who sees the attraction of combat and soldiering can draw great inspiration from St Ignatius of Loyola’s mercenary adventures and his discovery of the one cause worth fighting for. Every young girl who wants to find the means to security and success can look to the commanding and uncompromising presence of St Teresa of Avila.

Moreover, knowing the saints well teaches us that their lives are not somehow simply summarised in a single, beautiful stained-glass window. Seeing the saints means seeing how to struggle to find what is good, how to fight to choose that good for ourselves, and how to persevere in that choice of the good. Knowing the saints is empowering. It teaches us that, as Pope St John Paul II said,

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures: we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son”.

It is tremendously liberating to truly know and live this, because it gives us both the courage to identify and name our sins, as well as to fight them.

If, on the one hand, St Ignatius warns us that “It is preferable for us to avoid sin than to be lords over the whole world”, on the other, Padre Pio encourages us with the reminder that “Jesus is never so close to you as he is during your spiritual battles”.

The lives of the saints and the fruits of their spiritual wisdom are treasures that we should not be willing to discard or to fail to hand on. They are part of that great spiritual heritage of Catholic Christianity, which constitutes a sure foundation for navigating this earthly pilgrimage.

With the upcoming 50th anniversary of the canonisation of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, and the first anniversary of John Henry Newman’s canonisation, it is an opportune time to revisit our spiritual patrons and friends in Heaven. At Stonyhurst we have therefore brought together a number of highly respected and well-known speakers, to offer insights into the lives and spirituality of some of the great spiritual masters of the Western Church. The series of talks that they will present will be offered online for free (they will also be accessible afterwards on our website).

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of the Christian Heritage Centre, Stonyhurst.

Tags Christianity, holiness, saints, spirituality

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Christians must fight against post-modernism

Post author By stefan
Post date November 1, 2019

Michael Dopp speaking at the Christian Heritage Centre on 1st October

Friday 1st November 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Christians must fight against post-modernism

Stefan Kaminski

Faith and reason: ‘the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth’

The well-known line reproduced above comes from Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio. It presents a powerful, and no doubt provocative, challenge to today’s society. Many would scorn such a statement. Indeed, perhaps a surprising number of Catholics might also raise their eyebrows. Surely, the ingenuity and the progress of the human spirit are only thanks to our intellectual capacity?

The Enlightenment philosophers certainly thought that faith and doctrine no longer had a place in the rational, modern world order. As a result, faith became distanced from reason in the public forum and increasingly privatised.

The gradual effect of this public separation of faith and reason for the individual is a loss of the sense of the relationship between their own intellect and God. The spiritual life, then, all too easily becomes reduced to a matter of the emotions only. The danger of undernourishing our intellect in the matter of faith is that the reception of the sacraments become mere ritual and prayer takes on a certain tedious repetitiveness. In the meantime, the intellect is left to hold on to certain basic ideas it believes to be true, without ever developing these or integrating them more fully into the spiritual life.

Today, however, not only has the search for truth cast off any reference to faith, but truth itself is questioned: our deconstructed, post-modern age denies the validity of any universal truths.

“Post-modernism” does not merely reject faith and doctrine, it also rejects the existence of objective truth that is accessible to our reason. As a result, we live in an age where opinions and feelings are the only measure of the human spirit, where tolerance is the highest social virtue, and where morality is a purely subjective matter.

The resulting challenge facing the Catholic who wishes to live out the faith coherently in today’s world has multiplied. Today’s Catholic does not simply need to justify his faith: today’s Catholic must also justify his reason. It is no longer enough to say, “I believe in God”. It is no longer even enough to explain why one believes in God. It is now also necessary to articulate why any sort of belief can be at all considered true in the first place.

Recently, the Christian Heritage Centre hosted Michael Dopp, a well-known Canadian speaker on the New Evangelisation and Catholic apologetics. During the course of a talk, Michael commented that, “post-modernity is essentially insanity… [because] everything that matters is unknowable.”

He succinctly observed the contradiction inherent in postmodern thinking: it claims that there is no metaphysical truth, and yet this itself is a claim about metaphysical truth; it says that all truth is relative, and yet it makes judgements (a claim to absolute truth) about the truths proclaimed by others; it claims to be tolerant, and yet it is inherently intolerant of views motivated by a different way of thinking.

When we proclaim our faith in the Incarnation, we make an incredibly bold statement that stands in opposition to the core tenets of postmodern thinking. By stating that God the Son became man, that He assumed a real human nature while remaining fully God, we are not only claiming a metaphysical truth: we are also claiming that our intellect is capable of knowing metaphysical truth. The Christian holds that the Word – the Logos, the Reason –through whom and for whom Creation was made (cf. John 1:1-3), does not simply remain an inaccessible, spiritual reality.

The Christian proclaims that the Logos became man. In other words, truth – the highest and most significant Truth – joined itself to our human nature and embraced a human soul, with a human intellect and a human will.

What does this say about humanity? Simply, that humanity is capable of knowing, of loving and of receiving God. What do the Incarnation and the Paschal mysteries say to us about metaphysical truths? That there is one, overarching reality with which our physical reality is in strict relationship: we were made by God and for God, we fell from His grace, and we have been redeemed by Him. This truth about the human race is neither abstract nor purely metaphysical: these are events that occurred in the flesh, that are part of a history. They are events that gener-ated consequences and continue to be experientially verifiable.

To separate these Christian truths from our intellectual lives is, indeed, insanity. The 20th century apologist, Francis Sheed, notes at the beginning of his book Theology and Sanity: “If we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world.”

Post-modernism, and indeed many of us on a day-to-day basis, are guilty of living in a fictitious world where we do not see everything in its real place, namely in an essential relationship to the living God.

This is not simply an exercise of faith by the heart and the will. This is an act of the intellect: it is an intrinsically different way of looking at the world to that proposed by both modernity and, even more radically, postmodernity. St John Henry New-man once said: “Dogma is the food of prayer”. This may sound foreign to our contemporary ears, but putting aside societal preconceptions, he makes a profoundly relevant point for us today. It is necessary for us, as it was for Newman, not only to make space for the “heart-to-heart” conversation with God, but also to seek the objective truth and reasoning for our beliefs, as handed on by the Church over the centuries.

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of The Christian Heritage Centre

Tags Christianity, post-modernism

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Sacred places that speak of the Catholic Faith throughout the ages

Post author By stefan
Post date August 2, 2019

The Cistercian abbey at Whalley dates from the Middle Ages

Friday 2nd August 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Sacred places that speak of the Catholic Faith throughout different ages

Stefan Kaminski

Times change; people and places come and go. But the one Person a Christian relies on never changes or leaves: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). This fundamental conviction remains true for all Christians regardless of the age or society in which they live. It provides the same foundational inspiration for every authentic Christian life, and unites people throughout history – and indeed outside of history – in the hope of the Resurrection.

Up in Lancashire, within the space of about 10 miles (as the crow flies) one can visit the ruins of Whalley Abbey, the Shrine of Ladyewell at Fernyhalgh and Stonyhurst College. Each of these speaks in a particular way of a different era and dimension of the Catholic faith: each place witnesses to individuals and communities that bore out the conviction expressed by St Paul at various times and in various walks of life.

Whalley Abbey testifies to monastic life, in the form of Cistercian monks, during the late Middle Ages. Established in 1296, it had a relatively short life of less than 250 years, before being dissolved by Henry VIII. Despite the bad press that is sometimes meted out, monasteries served as an important cultural driving force, maintaining the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts, generating artistic and architectural trade, and working the land to sustain their communities. If the Cistercian monks were more aesthetic and orientated to a life of prayer, all the more because of their desire to serve God alone.

Although the Shrine at Fernyhalgh pre-dates the Abbey with a devotional history extending back to the 11^th century, it speaks most powerfully of the harshest period of the Protestant Reformation and the testimony of the Martyr-saints. The staunch faithfulness of local recusant Catholics, the determination of missionary priests and the willingness of all to lay down their lives for their belief in the one Church established by Jesus Christ, is vividly expressed in the collection of relics and in the famous Burgess Altar. This latter is a beautifully carved wooden altar, complete with a triptych of panels and a Nativity Scene underneath, which closes up to disguise itself as cupboard. Saints Edmund Campion and Edmund Arrowsmith are amongst the many priests to have offered Holy Mass at it, risking their lives and those of their congregation for this greatest of Mysteries.

Stonyhurst College of course begins its history precisely because of the Reformation, with the establishment of the school at St Omers in France, in 1593. Its story on English soil starts in 1794. Across both periods however, the school’s story is a testimony to the creativity, ingenuity, learning and sheer hard work of the Jesuit order. The great learnedness of the Society’s members is evidenced in multifarious ways in the school’s operations: the contribution to astronomy through the work of its observatory; the design and operation of its own powerplant; the writing and production of whole series of plays; numerous musical contributions. All of this has its inspiration and final end “ad majorem Dei gloriam” (for the greater glory of God).

Across this panoply of Catholic activity, the underlying dynamic is the same: a personal conviction that God became man, and that He died and rose on the Cross for our salvation. If we wonder at the force of the conviction held by those monks, martyrs and school masters, it is because it was not simply a belief: it was faith. And therein lies a subtle, but substantial, distinction. In a society which tends towards viewing beliefs as a private matter, each as valid as the next, which may be held freely so long as they do not interfere in the lives of others, it is easy to lose a sense of the grandeur of the theological faith that the Church holds.

Beliefs are common to everyone – be they beliefs in a political system or in the wisdom of their favourite TV personality – and indeed everyone has some belief about God. In all its guises however, belief remains an intellectual act that begins and ends with the human individual. As such, it only has its foundations in that same person.

Faith, on the other hand, is a response. It is firstly the acceptance of Truth: the highest and final Truth, which is valid for all people in all places. This Truth is known to be true by the Christian, not because he or she thinks it an attractive thing to believe, but because it comes from God. How do we know it comes from God? Because we choose to believe the corporate witness of the Church: from those first Christians who saw the God-man walk this earth, down to each and every man, woman and child who has testified to that Truth with their lives over the last two millenia.

Such a faith does not remain a personal belief for private consumption: it prompts an obedience (literally, a “listening to” as the Latin roots signifies) and subsequent action. From Abraham taking all his family and possessions to an unknown destination across the Arabian desert, to those parents of the 17^th and 18^th centuries illicitly sending their sons across the Channel to receive a Catholic education, they all acted on “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1): they had faith.

We might be tempted to wonder dubiously at our own faith (or indeed, to avoid asking ourselves what might feel like an embarrassing question!). However, Rome was not built in a day, and neither were places such as Whalley Abbey, Ladyewell and Stonyhurst. The real work started with the daily prayer and attentiveness to God of each individual concerned in all of those histories. The places that remain – be they merely the stones of a ruined church or a functioning school – reach back to beyond the external achievements of those Catholics: they bear witness firstly to lives that were centred around God. Without that continued response of faith – an acknowledgement of God, a prayerful listening to His Word, a striving to live out His teachings – there would be nothing for us to marvel at.

Visiting sites such as Fernyhalgh and Stonyhurst, one should therefore see “through” each physical place to the faith of the men and women that built them. They might be of another era and walk of life, but they follow the same Lord Jesus. They are now united with Him in the great “cloud of witnesses” that watches over us, waiting for us to pick up the baton and run the good race in our own time, and so join them in our heavenly destination (cf. Hebrews 12:1).

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of The Christian Heritage Centre

Tags belief and faith, Christianity, faith, Ladyewell, Lancashire, Stonyhurst, Whalley Abbey

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A life of service comes from the Gospel and the heart of Christ

Post author By stefan
Post date December 7, 2018

Friday 7th December 2018

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

A life of service comes from the Gospel and the heart of Christ

Lord Alton of Liverpool

The principle of serving others is a central tenet of citizenship. For Christians it is at the very heart of the Gospel; and for all of us, service of others, changes lives, changes society, and changes us; all for the better.

Before I became a member of parliament I was a school teacher in Liverpool, where I soon learnt that inspiring young people to read, study and learn was far more effective than either simple reward or punishment. I witnessed how young men and women, inspired by all sorts of people, have made great contributions to their families, neighbours, society and world.

As a young boy, along with millions of others, I walked past Winston Churchill’s coffin in Westminster Hall. He has been lionised as the man who saved democracy, and he certainly inspired me. Nearly 2,500 years before this Aristotle warned that “he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must either be a beast or a god.” And a little late Hillel asked, “If I am not for myself who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”

Nelson Mandela often reflected on the idea of ‘Ubuntu’ – a person is a person because of other people, while Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained that “A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good…”

For many who come to the Christian faith as adults, the first exposure is seeing an individual or group of Christians in service – teachers, medics, aid workers, judges, politicians. We are first inspired by people, and only then by their ideas. The Gospels tell us that the first Christians were inspired by Christ, and only then by what He taught them. For us to encourage the next generation to serve, we must do so by setting that example of service, and by doing so we become instruments by which others are inspired.

If we want to change the world, we need to change our nation; if we want to change our nation we must change our communities; if we want to change our communities, we must change our families; and if we want to change our families we must change ourselves. Change does not come about by itself – it comes through active participation and voluntary service.

Churchill insisted that,“The flame of Christian ethics is still our highest guide. To guard and cherish it is our first interest, both spiritually and materially… Only by bringing it into perfect application can we hope to solve for ourselves the problems of this world and not of this world alone.”

In 1993 St John Paul II, in Veritatis Splendor, wrote that, “If there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” While, in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI, in Caritas in Veritate, wrote that, ‘Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except to themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people’s integral development. Hence it is important to call for a renewed reflection on how rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere licence.’

Inspiring and channelling religious adherents into public service is transformative of individuals and of society. If the imperfect system of democracy is to function and survive, there must be a continuous cultivation of virtue and an upholding of those values that enrich and underpin a system that can so easily be subverted. Inspired political service can put right more than minor injustices, Wilberforce, who with Clarkson, the Quaker ladies and others campaigned for 40 years against the slave trade. Political service, legal service, medical, spiritual and many others, all better society and those who serve.

As a teenager I was inspired by Robert Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King – both murdered for their beliefs. Kennedy insisted that every person could make some sort of difference: “Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events”, while King insisted that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

I was recently in Pakistan, raising the case of Asia Bibi – who has thankfully been released, though not yet been able to find sanctuary outside Pakistan. In 2011, after championing her case the Christian Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, was murdered. He knew his potential fate: “I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know the meaning of the Cross. I am following the Cross and I am ready to die for a cause.”

When people take up a mantle and fight for something good, they often have a twofold effect. First, of moving their cause forward, but also inspiring those around them. They inspire others to realise that they can improve the lives of others and made a difference in our world. In a moving letter, the last he wrote, John Wesley told William Wilberforce to use all his political skills to end slavery and to fight for human dignity, to be like the fourth century Christian bishop Athanasius, an ‘Athanasius contra mundum’ or an ‘Athanasius against the world’.

We see a long line of inspiration of one Christian to another, parents to children, teachers to pupils. At the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst’s Theodore House, we are proud to encourage this long line of inspiration, that begins and always points to Christ. We remember the many Saints and Blesseds (many old boys of Stonyhurst College) who have been faithful against the odds and have both enriched the world they lived in, and also inspired the next generation.

We continue in this long tradition by inviting young people from around the world to Lancashire to learn about the Christian story, and the many heroes of it – how they served in their time, and allow the freedom of young minds to discover how they may serve in their word and in their time.

‘I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know the meaning of the Cross. I am following the Cross and I am ready to die for a cause.’
Shahbaz Bhatti (below)

Tags Christianity, service, society, witness