A recent meeting between the Pope and a high ranking bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church has raised talk of a possible reunion between the two largest Christian Churches. No one would rejoice more than I at a reunion between these two great Churches. However, I would argue that a reunion now would be a potentially terrible thing.

Why do I say that? Because it could easily be the Council of Florence all over again. In the 15th century, bishops from both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches met to discuss a reunion of the estranged Churches. And miraculously, a reunion actually occurred, which led to much celebration and rejoicing in the West. So why aren’t we united today? Because in the East, some bishops and monks, led by Mark of Ephesus (who was the only bishop in attendance at the Council who did not sign off on the decrees), preached against the reunion, claiming that it was a capitulation of the East to Western “heretical” theology. In the end, the people of the East rejected the Council and the schism remained in effect.

It is easy to blame Mark of Ephesus for the disastrous aftermath of the Council of Florence. But the truth is that the groundwork had not been laid in the East for reunion, and thus Mark’s rejection of the Council was widely supported at the grass-roots level. I think the same would be true of any attempts at a corporate reunion today. Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has promoted the importance of reunion with the East, and most Catholics agree with this, but this is not the case in the East, especially in Russia. To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, there is no drive at the grass-roots level in Russia to reunite with Rome. Thus, if a formal reunion were to somehow take place, I think we’d see the same results as we did after the Council of Florence: the grass-roots in the East would reject the reunion and the bishops who supported it would be ousted. Relations between the Churches would then be worse than before the “reunion” took place.

But I think the Pope as well as Russian Orthodox officials realize this fact. That is why no reunion will be happening anytime soon; it will take a long time to lay the groundwork throughout both Churches so that when corporate reunion does come (pray God!), it will be accepted joyfully by all.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius, pray for us!

I think most married people will tell you that marriage involves a lot of hard work. In many ways it goes against our selfish natures – we must put the good of another always before our own good. Marriage is Gospel living: you must die to self every day to make it work successfully. Here is a great example of a couple who have lived that Gospel life to the full:

Couple say faith, commitment sustain 70-year marriage

It is a story about Marcellus and Marcella Ruder, who were married in October 1939. They have seen good times and bad during their marriage:

From the start of their marriage in 1939, the Ruders can tell you story after story about difficult times — and good times as well.

Because of the economic times, the couple began their marriage living with Marcellus’ parents. There also was another married sibling living at home, as well as seven younger Ruder children.

Marcella’s mother died when she was 11, and her father depended on her and her sister to care for the younger ones. After Marcella married, she went to town two days a week to help care for her siblings and her father’s household.

Marcellus and Marcella later moved to Hays and Plainville, then to Wyoming, Texas and back to Hays — wherever Marcellus’ job with an oil company took him.

“We lived in Wyoming for nine months, and that was one hellacious winter,” Marcellus said. “I asked for a transfer, and that’s when we moved to Texas.”

Through all the moves and the raising of their children, the Ruders continued to give of themselves. If it was a new school that needed to be built, Marcellus came home from work, skipped supper and helped to build the school until late into the night. If he could help to do anything for the church or its school, he did. In addition, each summer he took vacation to return home to help with the harvest on the family farm.

What a model for us all. Let’s pray that we, like the Ruders, might all have marriages that stand the test of time.

Creative Minority Report linked to a disturbing video which shows how evil begets evil:

CMR calls the video “shocking”, but in reality it is not that shocking. Those who are directly involved in the work of abortion clinics – and their “work” is killing little children – have allowed a great evil to enter their hearts and evil is something that always grows if not fought against. Working at an abortion clinic has a tremendous impact on one’s soul – how can it not? This is not just passively supporting legalized abortion politically (as bad as that can be), but it is actively performing actions that end the life of babies in the womb.

A story from my own pro-life activist days (one of many) will reflect the depths of evil many who provide abortions will sink. When I was in college, our pro-life group went every Friday afternoon to the local abortion clinic to pray the rosary and sidewalk counsel. We would stay until they closed at 6pm and then head home. There were usually “escorts” there who would harass us and try to keep us from talking to the women going into the clinic. Also there was usually a police presence there to keep everyone in order.

One day the clock turned 6pm but we decided to stay and continue to pray the rosary. The clinic closed and the police left, but most of the escorts stayed. As the sun started to go down and we continued to pray, the escorts became more and more agitated. They always would yell and ridicule us, but the content of their yelling began to change. Instead of simply chanting some idiotic pro-abortion slogan like “Get your rosaries off my ovaries” or “Not the Church, not the State, let women decide their fate”, they began to chant more hideous things like “Kill the Christians”, “Bring back the lions” and things about Jesus which I will not repeat due to their incredibly blasphemous content. It was clear to us that if they could get away with it, they would have killed us right then and there and felt no moral compunction about it. Being directly involved in the killing of innocent children every day had a terrible impact on their souls. That is the true face of the pro-abortion movement, one that is whitewashed and cleaned up for display on the nightly news.

The answer to this evil is prayer and mortification. It is only by the power of Christ that such souls can be converted, and we should pray for these people and be willing to do reparation for such sins in whatever way we can.

Do you know what I think is the most frustrating aspect of spiritual life?

The inability to obtain spiritual direction.

Spiritual direction is something all the saints and spiritual masters recommend, even demand, for growth in the spiritual life. This advice is often repeated today. Pope Benedict recently emphasized the importance of spiritual direction. When I heard Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA speak recently, he hammered home the importance of spiritual direction.

However, this is definitely a case of easier said than done. An audience member asked Metropolitan Jonah how could an average layperson receive spiritual direction when there were few priests or monks available for such a task. His Beatitude admitted that there were too few parish priests for everyone to go to spiritual direction to them, and most parish priests in his own church were unqualified for it anyway. I think it likely that the same is true in the Catholic Church.

Personally, I go to the same priest for confession each month, which does help as he knows me and can build upon what he said previously (or, as is often the case, repeat what he said last time). But confession is not spiritual direction. In spiritual direction, one gets direction for all aspects of the spiritual life – not just advice on how to avoid certain persistent sins (as important as that is). A spiritual director can guide the individual to a deeper relationship with Christ by recommending specific practices and prayers that will help the directee.

I don’t really have a solution to this problem, but I do think it important that we pray for the Lord to bring more spiritual directors into our Church so that we all might advance in holiness.

As is well known, the Vatican is currently conducting an apostolic visitation of the Legion of Christ. Reports recently seem to indicate that there is a good chance that the Legion will be disbanded and then possibly reconstituted in a different form. If this happens, what does that mean for members of both the Legion of Christ and their lay apostolate, Regnum Christi? Where will these men and women go, the great majority of whom are faithful Catholics striving for holiness?

An analogous situation that happened here locally over a decade ago might give us some answers. There was a local Catholic charismatic group that grew tremendously in the 1970′s and 1980′s, attaining over 1,000 members at its height. People moved from all over the world to join this community and it was quite dynamic. However, complaints began to emerge about the leadership and its practices. The details are unimportant for our purposes, but in the end the Archdiocese of Washington decided to investigate the group. The result of this investigation was that major changes were made to the structure of the group, and the leadership was ousted by the bishop.

The aftermath was traumatic, even to this day. Many good people who had devoted much of their lives to this group felt betrayed and disillusioned. Their faith was shaken, sometimes irrevocably. There are still people who have deep-seated feelings of animosity and betrayal towards this organization. In the end, members of the original group followed one of four paths:

1. They remained in the reconstituted organization. This was a small number of people, but they followed the bishop’s directions and remade the (now much smaller) group into something obedient to the Church.
2. They left the group and formed a new organization under the direction of the ousted leadership and outside the oversight of the Church.
3. They left the group and remained faithful Catholics. Many of these people still have misgivings about the group, but they recognized the difference between the Church and this specific group in their own faith lives.
4. They left the group and the Church. This was unfortunately the decision of too many members (one would be too many). In their minds, they directly connected their membership in this group with their membership in the Church. This led to a rejection of both the baby and the bath water.

I think these are the options that will be considered by members of the Legion and Regnum Christi if the groups are disbanded (and re-formed). We need to pray fervently that all members of these two organizations choose options (1) and (3) given above, but I fear that many will choose to leave the Church over this scandalous situation.

St. Peter, pray for us!

Today is the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle. Matthew’s Gospel has always been my favorite (and I’m one of those retrograde bumpkins who thinks it was actually written by Matthew and was the first Gospel composed), and the saint has always been one of my most beloved. When I was deciding which Gospel to use as my focus in my book, it was natural that I chose St. Matthew’s.

I especially love the story of Matthew’s conversion; he and John are the only apostles whose conversion is told by the convert himself. Matthew’s story is one of deep humility:

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mt 9:9-13)

Matthew is declaring for all who read his Gospel that he is “sick” – he needs a physician. And this is the first, necessary, step of conversion: an acknowledgment of our sinfulness and need for someone to heal us. If Matthew was comfortable with this life, feeling self-justified, he would have never abandoned his table to follow Jesus. He could only do that because he recognized his own need for healing.

The danger for all of us is that we consider ourselves one of the “righteous,” instead of one of the sinners. And this is the case throughout our lives. We must remember that if we do think of ourselves as “righteous” and comfortable with our position before God, Christ has no interest in us.

I don’t usually post on Saturdays, but I thought I’d make an exception today. On this day twelve years ago, Rich Mullins died in a car accident. One of my all-time favorite musicians, Mullins was a contemporary Christian artist who was cut from a different mold than most modern Christian musicians. He is mostly known for his (overplayed) “Awesome God” but that song does not really reflect his musical tastes.

Mullins had a deep faith and an earnestness that came through in his music. And he most definitely practiced what he preached – he gave away almost all his money to various causes and only lived on a working man’s salary.

Here are a few of his songs on YouTube, but Rich was always best live (I was fortunate enough to see him twice in concert):

Take a moment today to pray for the repose of the soul of this deeply Christian man.

This will be an impressive meeting. All the Patriarchs of the Catholic Church are meeting with the Pope regarding a variety of issues:

The growth of fundamentalism in the Middle East and the concerns it is generating among Christians, the importance of Islamic-Christian dialogue, the status of Eastern Catholic Patriarchs in the Universal Church and the Ecclesiastic jurisdiction in Kuwait and the Gulf States are the four main issues the seven Eastern Catholic Patriarchs will discuss tomorrow with Benedict XVI at their request.

Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, Armenian Catholicos Bédros XIX and Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan arrived in Rome yesterday; Melkite Patriarch Gregory III, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal and Coptic Patriarch Antonios Naguib will join them today.

The Patriarchs’ observations are contained in a note to be delivered to the Pope. In their meeting, they plan to talk in great detail with the Holy Father first of all about issues relating to the place of their Churches in the Universal Church as well as other ecclesiological matters, including the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Kuwait and the other Gulf emirates, countries which in recent years have welcomed tens of thousands of Arab Christian blue and white collar workers attracted by their booming economies. The Eastern Churches want Rome to reflect on the fact that from an historical perspective the region should belong to the Antiochian Rite.

The Patriarchs are also concerned about the fate of Christians of the Middle East, who are challenged, especially in Egypt and Iraq, by the growth of fundamentalism. They will stress the importance of a strong and concerted international action to redress the injustice visited upon Palestine, and will recommend a just resolution that would include the right of Palestinians to their own state. They also insist on the importance of the Islamic-Christian dialogue.

During their stay in Rome, the Patriarchs will also participate on 21 and 22 September to a preparatory session for a special assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, which should be held in the Vatican next year.

These Patriarchs govern churches in quite difficult situations – let us in the West pray that they might be able to preach and live the Gospel freely.

H/t: Byzantine, TX

According to a Vatican official, belief in aliens is not necessarily against the Catholic Faith:

Father Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, said this week there is no opposition between belief in the existence of aliens and at the same time belief in God. This position, he reminded, was held by Father Angelo Secchi, the 18th century Jesuit astronomer and director of the Observatory of the Roman College—today the Pontifical Gregorian University.

In an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, Father Funes explained that Father Secchi was the first scientist to classify the “stars according to their spectrum” and that the existence of aliens “could not be excluded a priori.”

Boy is this going to open up some evangelization opportunities, along with some unique challenges. But if you thought St. Francis Xavier had a hard time as a missionary to Asia, imagine how difficult it will be to convert Klingons (although they probably would appreciate our veneration of the martyrs). At least this site will make the job a bit easier.

An old friend of mine, Fr. Michael Najim, who is a priest of the Diocese of Providence, has started a new blog, and it is wonderful. Called Live Holiness, it contains beautiful reflections on living a life of holiness – which is the only life we should strive to live.

Check it out!

I’ve read a lot lately about the impact the Swine Flu is having on Catholic worship, specifically whether or not bishops should ban the sign of peace, communal drinking from the sacred chalice, as well as receiving the host on the tongue. There has even been talk of shutting down churches. I have to admit, I’ve been uncomfortable with the idea of such restrictions, but I’ve not been exactly sure why. Mulling it over, I think there are a number of reasons:

• Nanny state. Do we really have to impose such restrictions en masse? If you are fearful of catching the swine flu, don’t shake hands at the sign of peace and make a spiritual communion. Why do we have to impose restrictions on every activity that might possibly harm a few people?

• Emphasis of the physical over the spiritual. Let’s be honest: doesn’t it seem that the underlying assumption is that what we do in church is not as important as our physical health? We are saying that it is okay to even shut down churches if the appropriate health authorities say we should, in spite of the spiritual harm that might cause.

• Bias against communion on the tongue. For centuries the only way to receive communion was via the tongue. Somehow civilization survived. Yet now we get a disease with a little media attention and communion on the tongue becomes an instrument of death, even though there is no evidence that communion on the tongue is more dangerous than in the hand. Something tells me that more than safety concerns are at play here.

Living involves risks. On my way to Mass I could get hit by a truck. On my way up to communion a brink could fall off the ceiling, hit me in the head and I could die. My stomach could explode from all the Mt. Dew I drank in my younger days. There are an almost unlimited number of ways to die. Yet we cannot stop living for fear of dying. And what is supposed to be the source and summit of our life? The Mass. Men and women have faced extreme persecution including the threat of death to attend Mass. We should not let some little virus stop us from going, regardless of the possible risks involved.

This year I am going to be teaching one of my children a history of the Church through the lives of the saints. I’m picking two or three saints from each century since the Church was founded to represent how men and women throughout the years have best followed Christ in their time and culture. I have found this Wikipedia page of extreme help. It lists all the saints in chronological order, divided by century.

A few (admittedly trivial) statistics I gathered:

• First Saint to die: Joseph (this does not include saints who died before Christ was born, such as Anne and Joachim)
• Saint most recently born: St. Gianna Beretta Molla (1922)
• Saint who most recently died: St. Josemaria Escriva (1975)
• Century with the most saints: 4th century (531!)
• Century with the least saints: 15th century (only 30)

I find it interesting that the 15th century has the least number of canonized saints, for the division of Western Christendom immediately followed it in the 16th century. Would so many souls have decided to leave the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation if they had more examples of saints living within the Church during the 15th century?

The 4th century gets the distinction as the “most holy” century with 531 canonized saints. Two distinctive events of that century produced this large number of saints: the persecution of Diocletian at the beginning of the century led to numerous martyr-saints, and the later legalization of Christianity brought internal debates into the open, creating a need for great theologians like Athanasius, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen to defend the faith against powerful heresies.

For the really geeky out there (like me), here is a chart showing the number of canonized saints by century:

My own favorite “saint centuries” are the 1st (of course), 4th, 13th (can’t beat Francis, Clare, Dominic and Thomas Aquinas), and 20th. If you have a favorite “saint century,” feel free to leave it in the comments.

Update: A number of people have commented on the fact that these numbers don’t really reflect the exact number of saints through the centuries (either due to Wikipedia’s unreliability or the anonymity of many saints or all the machinations that are involved in getting someone officially canonized). This is true. The above information is not intended to be scholarly, but instead just a fun look at canonized saints through the ages. We can be very thankful that heaven is full of a large number of saints unknown to us who constantly intercede on our behalf.

This is an odd story:

WYD overstayers on the run

280 pilgrims from last year’s World Youth Day are still illegally in Australia, The Daily Telegraph reported, but the number represents less than 0.3 percent of the number who had arrived for the event.

The newspaper said that of 110,000 people who came to Sydney for World Youth Day last year, 550 did not go home. Federal immigration authorities have caught and expelled about half of those but 280 pilgrims are still on the run, it added.

I really enjoyed Denver when I went for WYD 1993, and I’d love to return, but I don’t think I would have thought to not go home after it was over. Maybe these people really liked the kangaroos…

My wife and I have always had a devotion to St. Gianna Molla, the courageous Italian mother who died after refusing to have her fourth child aborted. She is the unofficial patron saint of pro-life work, and we often (and still do) pray for her intercession in our work against abortion.

This past week, her daughter Laura Molla, was in DC for a Eucharistic Congress. Catholic News Service interviewed her on what it is like to have a canonized saint for a mother:

“We had to work through the shock of losing our mother to find the joy in knowing she is a mother for all,” Molla told Catholic News Service Sept. 11, the day before she addressed participants at a eucharistic congress at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington sponsored by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. The theme of the Sept. 11-12 congress was “Sacrifice of Enduring Love”…

Molla described the canonization ceremony as beautiful and full of “a lot of happiness.” But what pleased her most about it was that her father, who had been sick, was able to attend.

She has self-proclaimed her 97-year-old father as a saint, saying through an interpreter: “Faith overflows in my father.”

She said her father never realized he was “living next to a saint,” and her mother didn’t realize it either.

Molla said her mother was convinced of her call to the vocation of marriage and “lived that until the end” — a commitment that Molla hopes will be an example to others.

“She teaches us to truly discern” what our vocation should be, she said, and then to “live that vocation to the fullest”…

As she sees it, her mother’s decision nearly 50 years ago was not an isolated choice. She told participants at the eucharistic congress Sept. 12 that her mother’s action was “the crowning of a whole life of virtue, a life lived constantly in the light of the Gospel as a young woman, physician, spouse and mother.”

When she hears people question the choice to leave behind three children in order to give birth to a fourth, Molla insists her mother was convinced her unborn child had the same right to live as her other children.

“She did not choose death” but “at that moment she chose the life of her child.”

The 20th century saw some of the most horrific evil ever conceived: Nazi Germany, Atheistic Communism, mass legalized abortion, and rampant materialism are just a few examples. Yet God also raised up some incredible saints to respond to those evils, including Pope Pius X, Maximilian Kolbe, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Padre Pio, Gianna Molla and Josemaria Escriva. Let we who live in the 21st century aspire to be like these great modern saints.

St. Gianna, pray for us!

According to a Catholic Archbishop in Moscow, Catholic-Orthodox Unity could be achieved “within a few months”:

In an interview today in Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, Archbishop Paolo Pezzi said the miracle of reunification “is possible, indeed it has never been so close.” The archbishop added that Catholic-Orthodox reunification, the end of the historic schism that has divided them for a millennium, and spiritual communion between the two churches “could happen soon, within a few months.”

“Basically we were united for a thousand years,” Archbishop Pezzi said. “Then for another thousand we were divided. Now the path to rapprochement is at its peak, and the third millennium of the Church could begin as a sign of unity.” He said there were “no formal obstacles” but that “everything depends on a real desire for communion.”

As much as I fervently desire for the Church to breath with both lungs again, and as much as I believe that the Lord can do the impossible, I think the good Archbishop’s prediction is extremely optimistic. My own experience of interaction with Orthodox Christians, both online and in the real world, tells me that the desire for unity is much greater on the Catholic side than in the Orthodox world. Not that the Orthodox don’t want a reconciliation with Catholics, but they more often than not see reconciliation as a “return” of Catholics to the Orthodox fold, rather than a reunion of two Churches.

I will continue to pray for East-West unity, but when people ask me how long I think it will take for reconciliation to happen, I answer that we have been separated for 1,000 years and it may take that long to repair the damage that has been done during that time.