1942: The Start of a Very Long Summer

1942: The Start of a Very Long Summer

by Rev. George W. Rutler

As I begin to rummage through the files I have from 1942, I notice a pastoral letter of Msgr. Sigismund Waitz, prince archbishop of Salzburg, read in all his churches on October 19, 1941, but only published in London in July 1942. Archbishop Waitz, along with other prominent Austrian clerics such as the Jesuit Rev. George Bichimair, had been typical of attitudes toward the Jews as "an alien people" who were frustrating attempts at political concordats after World War I. He did not share the amiability that made Theodor Cardinal Innitzer a protector and advocate of Christ's "brothers in Judaism." But even the cardinal was strongly reprimanded by Pope Pius XI and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli for naively welcoming the Anschluss.

After Cardinal Innitzer's episcopal palace was ransacked by Hitler Youth in 1939, Archbishop Waitz's own residence was attacked by a Nazi mob shouting for him to be sent to Dachau. His letter, read from the pulpits, said:

When I was anointed as a Bishop, the Gospel was placed on my shoulders as God's burden so that I should see that it was preached. We Catholics often have to give way nowadays to outside force. Where earthly matters are concerned we can be patient and silent. Where it concerns our belief, however, there must be no yielding; we must stand firm or die.

Eleven days later, Archbishop Waitz was dead.

In June of 1942, Msgr. Paul Yu Pin, exiled bishop of Nanking and future cardinal, offered Mass for the Allied cause in Chungking, the Chinese provisional capital: "A prayer day is like the stone for David's sling, a simple, foolish, and even scorned way according to many, but which is the most efficacious means of attaining a quick victory and a just and lasting peace."

In France, the Protestant newspaper Feuille in the French unoccupied zone called for Catholic and Protestant unity:

The militant Catholics in our country have taken a place which is important and, we do not fear to say, preponderant, at the head of the movement of resistance in which, very often, they have taken the initiative, and of which they remain the inspiration. . . . The Catholics have not feared to affirm themselves in the sphere of positive action, and, in spite of their repugnance, it is they who most often are the soul of the secret associations of resistance, and who publish anti-collaborationist papers.

The Italian-occupied zone in France was a refuge for Jews fleeing the Vichy government. But ethnic tensions rattled the cobbled armistice between the Italians and the French. Italian newspapers scorned the bishop of Nice, Msgr. Paul Rémond, as an "Italiophobe" for exhorting the Italian boys in his jurisdiction to grow up into "good Frenchman" and for expressing a wish to be called "Sa Grandeur" instead of "Son Excellence," since the latter "is a title given in Italy to rogues and cabmen."

The London Tablet frowned upon the Lord Mayor of Blitz-weary Birmingham for organizing lively summer church services in public parks instead of "mumbled services in cold churches." The editorial comment was equally cold: "The view that worship must have an entertainment value has seldom been so frankly expressed. But American experience has not encouraged those Ministers who have shown a film instead of preaching a sermon. It is the 'reductio ad absurdam' of the foolish and fashionable catering for the modern mind."

A correspondent in Lisbon sends word of the grand Jesuit Rev. C. C. Martindale, a prisoner of war in Denmark for six years: "He sounded much better when he wrote, having had the Last Sacraments about Passion Sunday, and settling down to real angina pectoris . . . . The cold is, I gather, his chief horror . . . . The letter is just like one of his old vivid ones, typed, and of immense length." Father Martindale would go on converting souls with wit and stiff upper lip until his death in 1963.

The newspaper of Poles exiled in London, Widdomosir Polskie, prints a prediction -- nay, prophecy -- of the statesman Count Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki of Lwow written in 1890:

As anything is possible, it may happen that the King of Prussia and the Prussian Junkers will put themselves at the head of a social movement and on its basis establish a new political order. Or, from among the workers there may emerge a dictator who will achieve this after the downfall of the now reigning dynasties. The voice of pessimism will then be hushed for a while and history will witness a final and terrible attempt to realize the German ideal on a new, democratic, foundation. The might of Germany will reach its apogee, individual liberty will shrink in all fields, labour will be intensified, happiness will disappear, and pessimism, returning with a smile of triumph, will proceed to carry out the suicide of a great nation.

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The Rev. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, A Crisis of Saints: The Call to Heroic Faith in an Unheroic World, 2nd edition, is available from the Crossroad Publishing Company.

Source: http://insidecatholic.com/

The Year of the Priest

La Petite fleur d'Ars

FROM THE PASTOR
by Fr. George W. Rutler
June 28, 2009

On Friday, June 19, Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated a special “Year of Priests” with a special ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica, during which he venerated relics of Saint John Marie Vianney, which had been brought from the French village of Ars where the saint had been parish priest in the nineteenth century. The Pope declared that Vianney, who has been patron saint of parish priests, will from now on be patron of all priests, whatever their particular priestly work may be.

The Pope chose to begin the Year of Priests, which will include the 150th anniversary of Vianney’s death on August 4, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart represents Christ’s merciful love for the world, as Vianney’s own heart, which is one of the preserved relics, represents the saint’s love for his parishioners. He once said that “the priesthood is the love for the Heart of Jesus.” Pope Benedict XVI echoed those words, saying that “the gift of our priesthood originated directly from that Heart.” He said that he wants the Year to be a chance for priests to grow in intimacy with the Divine Love and become “in today’s world, messengers of hope, reconciliation, and peace.”

Not long after I became pastor here, I placed a statue of Saint John Vianney, the “Holy Curé d’Ars,” in our church. Many were unfamiliar with this saint. Around the same time I also restored the altar cross and candles which I found tarnished in the basement (one individual expressed surprise, being under the impression that Vatican II had abolished this arrangement). I am gratified now that the Pope has brought Vianney to wider attention, just as he has called for the restoration of altar crosses and lights as we have them here, to emphasize the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament. Since we erected the statue of the Curé d’Ars, our parish has been remarkably blessed with priestly vocations.

The Gospel (Mark 8:24) records a severe storm on the Sea of Galilee during which Our Lord seemed to be asleep in the stern of the boat, his head on a cushion. Pope Benedict has provided this Year of Priests because the world is storm-tossed: politically, economically, morally, and spiritually. Some have thought that God is paying no attention. The fact is that when he seems to be sleeping he is preparing to calm the storm as Jesus did when he rebuked the wind. Along with that is the other fact that many Christians have indeed been asleep and now must be awakened. The Pope is calling on priests to do that, but not before they commit themselves anew to the saving power of Christ who has called them to show people the road to Heaven, as Saint John Vianney promised to do when he arrived in that little village of Ars in 1818, and which he did do in an amazing way.

The Gregorian Calendar

Father Stanley L. Jaki

(August 17, 1924 – April 7, 2009)

FROM THE PASTOR

by Fr. George W. Rutler

June 21, 2009

On this day of the Summer Solstice, I think of how much I enjoy the calendar published by the Vatican Observatory, with beautiful photographs of the planets taken with its telescopes at its headquarters on the grounds of the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. Under the direct patronage of the pope, it is probably the oldest astronomical research institute in the world. Using it, Pope Benedict XVI’s predecessor Gregory XIII was able to promulgate the Gregorian calendar in 1582, a tremendous scientific achievement which we still use.

In this connection I am also reminded of a dear friend and great priest who died in Madrid in April, having just given a lecture on science and religion in Rome. Father Stanley Jaki was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science. He was born in Hungary in 1924 and was trained as a Benedictine monk. Throughout his life he remained under obedience to the archabbot of Pannonhalma. Eventually he came to the United States and studied physics at Fordham with the Nobel laureate, Victor Hess, a pioneer in the study of cosmic rays. Father Jaki lectured throughout the world, and was Freemantle Lecturer at Oxford, Hoyt Fellow at Yale, and Gifford Lecturer at Edinburgh. For many years he lived in Princeton and was Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall. He received the Templeton Prize, which is the largest monetary award in the world, and used the prize money to help support his brother Benedictine monks. The theme of his more than fifty books was how the Catholic understanding of creation gave rise to modern physics and is the most substantial guide for the right use of theoretical physics and all physical sciences.

I am glad to say that we shared a common affinity for the writings of Newman and Chesterton. While he took no prisoners in academic debates, he had a splendid sense of humor, was an accomplished pianist, and particularly enjoyed the conversations of children. The rosary was a favorite devotion and he dutifully kept a daily Holy Hour which strengthened both his heart and brain (don’t think he made a distinction between them).

He often said, “Science lives by hope no less than religion.” His own priestly witness gave hope to many in his own day who might otherwise have lapsed into the “ennui” which is the moral infection of our present culture. Indeed, he knew with all great thinkers that there can be no culture without cult, which is worship. As Pope Benedict inaugurated the Year of Priests on the Feast of the Sacred Heart to help priests live priestly lives, we should also give thanks to the “Saviour of Science,” as Father Jaki called Our Lord, for priests who have already finished their earthly work.

Saint Paul

Saint Paul at His Writing-Desk

FROM THE PASTOR
by Fr. George W. Rutler
June 14, 2009

The last Sunday of June will end the Holy Year of Saint Paul, commemorating the 2000th anniversary of his birth. The end, of course, should be the beginning of a new reverence for his teachings. In the liturgies of these weeks, an emphasis is on his two letters to the Corinthians. They have never been more timely. Corinth was a Greek city, located south of Athens in the area connecting the Peloponnesus to the mainland. In the arts and sciences it excelled and it produced some engineering marvels. It was full of energy, much of it uncontrolled, and money was the real god, although everything sensual was extolled. The temple of Aphrodite at one point housed one thousand cultic prostitutes and every sort of fantastic superstition was tolerated. In very many ways it was like New York City, and just as we say “If you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere,” the Romans who took over the city said “Not for everyone is the journey to Corinth.”

Saint Paul was a brave man to preach the Gospel there and it is no surprise that he had severe difficulties. Unlike the Galatians, whose caution about doing the wrong thing bordered on scrupulosity, the Corinthians were tempted to think “anything goes.” Their lush cosmopolitan environment, symbolized by the third architectural order which was the most elaborate in contrast to the Doric and Ionic, tolerated any kind of behavior and philosophy so long as it was aesthetically satisfying. They were heavily influenced by the Gnostic notion that the spiritual world had nothing to do with the material world. They compartmentalized their existence, thinking that they could engage in high abstract thoughts while living dissolute lives. A sacramental sense of creation was alien to the Corinthians, like some New Yorkers who prefer to speak of “spirituality” rather than Christianity, and who think they can be Catholic without confession, and “do what they want with their own bodies” while ignoring the sacredness of life, fornicating and cohabiting outside the marriage bond, and sanctioning perversions as “alternate lifestyles.”

After Saint Paul established the Church in Corinth in about 51, he wrote to them from Ephesus in Turkey, reminding them, sometimes with tears, that the human body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. He knew how hard it was for the Corinthians to be counter-cultural, as a Christian must be in a pagan environment. He was never discouraged, nor did he “lower the bar” by watering down doctrine like a false evangelist who would attract crowds by preaching a non-threatening generic Gospel. So he blesses the raucous Corinthian flock with a highly developed Trinitarian theology: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14)

Painting: Rembrandt's Saint Paul at His Writing-Desk
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Angels and Demons

FROM THE PASTOR

by Fr. George W. Rutler
May 31, 2009

On the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, God filled his Church with the Holy Spirit. Jesus kept his promise: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Pentecost is the start of Christian life rather than the end of the story, rather as Churchill said after the battle of El Alamein: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The power the Holy Spirit gives the Church is the truth. Truth is the ultimate power because it is reality. “Men may all lie, but God is always true” (Romans 3:4). Truth always wins, in the long run. In the short run it may seem that lies win. But truth sustains life while falsehood destroys it. Jesus said that Satan “was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Lies do have power, but it is a fatal power and eventually self-destructs. In our society there are lies that an unborn baby is not human, and that marriage is not naturally the union of male and female, and that truth is only opinion. When a society accepts these lies, it eventually clashes with inescapable reality and crumbles. Even Satan is forced to tell the truth in the presence of Christ: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24).

A recent film, Angels and Demons, is the latest embarrassing attempt to lie about Christ and his Church. It is filled with amateurish technical mistakes, not to mention the historical and archeological ones. The script says the Church opposes scientific truth, when in fact, as the recently deceased Benedictine priest Stanley Jaki explained in dozens of books, the Church provides the philosophical matrix for the motive and method of physical science. The Church attends to the truths of Heaven, but she does not neglect physical science, because God made the world as a blessing. Galileo, whom the film mentions as a member of an esoteric secularist sect known as the “Illuminati” (which in fact was founded two centuries after Galileo), became the leading member of the original Pontifical Academy of Sciences founded under the patronage of Pope Clement VIII. Major discoveries in mathematics, astronomy, physics, genetics, botany, zoology, and medicine have taken place in universities established by the Church and they continue to be the work of Catholics from John XXI and Sylvester II, through Hermann of Reichenau, Robert Grosseteste, Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Buridan, Descartes, Copernicus, Schyrleus, Pascal, Lobkowitz, Secchi, Pasteur, Carrel, Marconi, Fleming, up to Father Georges Lemaître who proposed the Big Bang theory.

On Pentecost, we rejoice that “God cannot lie” (Titus 1:1-2). The same cannot be said of Hollywood.