Installation of the first Nativity scene in the European Parliament / Credit: European People’s Party
CNA Newsroom, Dec 5, 2022 / 12:25 pm (CNA).
Christmas this year marks the first time in its history that the European Parliament has allowed a Nativity scene to be set up at its headquarters in Brussels. Until now, officials of the European institution had considered it “potentially offensive.”
The efforts of Isabel Benjumea, a member in the EU’s House of Representatives from Spain, were key to finally having a Nativity scene on display at the institution.
When she was elected in 2019, Benjumea tried her first year in office to prepare the groundwork for a gift of a Nativity scene to the parliament that would be exhibited during the Christmas season. However, she ran into European bureaucracy and deadlines.
The following year she began to take the necessary steps. The response could not have been more disheartening.
A Nativity scene could not be installed, she was informed by the office of the President of Parliament, because it was “potentially offensive” to nonbelievers.
“This had become a kind of crusade because it seemed unacceptable to me to ignore the Christian roots of Europe,” the parliamentarian told Spanish newspaper ABC.
Finally, this year the effort had the support of the Maltese president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, although the Nativity scene has only been “authorized as a special exhibition,” which may or may not be renewed in the future.
The Nativity scene on display in the European Parliament is from Murcia, a region in southeastern Spain with a great tradition of Nativity scenes and imagery.
Artisans from the workshop of Jesús Griñán created the Nativity scene.
In his Aug. 24, 2003, Angelus address, St. John Paul II noted that he was prayerfully following the drafting of the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union.
The pontiff said that “the Catholic Church is convinced that the Gospel of Christ, which has been a unifying element of the European peoples for many centuries, should be and continue to be today too an inexhaustible source of spirituality and fraternity. Taking note of this is for the benefit of all, and an explicit recognition of the Christian roots of Europe in the treaty represents the principle guarantee for the continent’s future.”
However, the pope’s efforts were ignored.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized the EU for excluding any mention of God or the continent’s Christian roots in the institution’s declarations on the 50th anniversary of its founding.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 2, 2022 / 19:46 pm (CNA).
The U.S. Supreme Court will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, according to draft opinion cited in a news report relea… […]
This photo of Father Allan Travers was featured in the local newspaper after his pitching “performance” for the Detroit Tigers against the Philadelphia A’s on May 18, 1912. The photo featured the caption “strikebreaker,” which worried Travers’ mother, since there was a street trolley strike in Philadelphia earlier in the month, and she didn’t want her son caught in the confusion. / Photo credit: Public domain
Detroit, Mich., Jul 23, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
The worst pitcher ever to take the mound for the Detroit Tigers became a Catholic priest.
Granted, Allan Travers was already on the path to the priesthood before suiting up for Detroit on May 18, 1912. But his story — and place in baseball history — is the prime example of being in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time).
Travers played in only one game, but one was enough to show that God had plans for him that didn’t involve the big leagues.
The story begins, as most stories of Tigers lore do, with Ty Cobb.
The Tigers were in New York on May 15 to play the Highlanders (the precursor to the Yankees). Cobb was playing in the outfield when he was verbally abused by a New York fan who was using profanity and racial slurs to describe Cobb’s play.
Cobb — never known for keeping his cool — stormed into the stands and unleashed a volley of punches on the fan. Tigers players rushed to the scene of the chaos, yelling at Cobb to lay off the man, who was missing one hand and three fingers on his other hand after suffering an industrial accident.
Cobb didn’t care and continued the barrage.
Ban Johnson, president of the American League, happened to be at the game, checking on the family-friendly excitement of what was turning into America’s pastime.
Having one of the league’s star players beat up a disabled spectator didn’t jibe well with Johnson’s vision for baseball, so Cobb was suspended indefinitely.
The Tigers felt Cobb’s punishment was unfair, so the players voted to strike until Cobb was reinstated for the club’s next game in three days against the two-time defending World Series champion Philadelphia Athletics.
Detroit Tigers legend Ty Cobb is pictured in 1911. Not one to keep his cool, Cobb launched himself into the stands to attack a fan who insulted him in 1912, resulting in a league suspension and sparking his teammates to strike in protest. Credit: Public domain
Johnson called the Tigers’ bluff, informing then Tigers owner Frank Navin the team would face a $5,000 fine for every game Detroit forfeited.
Navin needed to field a team, and quick, so he and Tigers manager Hughie Jennings collaborated with Athletics owner/manager Connie Mack to field a team of players to take the field.
This was well before the age of expansive minor league rosters — or commercial airlines, for that matter — so it wasn’t as though the Tigers could call up the farm team in Toledo and get them to Philadelphia in time to play the A’s. Instead, scouting was done the old-fashioned way, spreading word throughout town, asking who wanted to play baseball.
And this is where Aloysius Joseph “Allan” Travers, the student manager on the St. Joseph’s College baseball team, comes into the story.
Jennings worked with a friend of his, Joe Nolan, a sportswriter for The Philadelphia Bulletin,to field a team. Nolan knew Travers, a junior at St. Joseph’s who lived in Philadelphia, from the time the A’s fielded a second-stringer team to play St. Joseph’s College.
Nolan asked Travers to find 10-12 amateur players in the area who could suit up for the Tigers in case the Tiger players followed through on their strike threats. The idea was that the amateurs would never actually take the field; rather, it was just a tactic to get Jennings’ “real” players on the field.
Father Allan Travers, SJ, was a priest who taught at St. Joseph’s College (now St. Joseph’s University) in Philadelphia. But in 1913, while a student at St. Joseph, he was the improbable pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, where he secured a bizarre spot in baseball history. Credit: Public domain
Travers rounded up eight players who were free that day and enticed by the $25 Navin offered to each player.
Jennings had his team of strike-breakers, as requested by Navin.
When the umpire called “play ball,” the Tiger regulars took the field, but when the umpire spotted Cobb and told him to take a seat, the rest of the team walked out and took off their uniforms.
The strike-breakers would have to play after all. They were ushered into the locker room and donned the Tigers’ gray uniforms (this was in the days before names were on the back of uniforms). Two bench coaches joined the group to offer the squad some big league experience.
The question was, who would pitch?
There were no takers at first, so Navin offered an extra $25. Travers volunteered; $50 was good money for a college kid in 1912. There was one small problem — Travers had never played organized ball.
He was the assistant manager on the college baseball team, tasked with keeping stats and writing game summaries.
But there he was, the college student with plans to join the seminary after graduation, pitching before 20,000 fans at Shibe Park against the two-time defending World Series champions. A modern David versus Goliath, a plucky underdog story.
This time Goliath won.
Travers did as well as one would expect the assistant manager of a college baseball team to do against professionals. He pitched a complete game, surrendering 24 runs on 26 hits (both American League records), walking seven and striking out one. He got an MLB strikeout — they can’t take that away from him.
But the 15.75 ERA leaves a mark. He also batted 0-for-3 at the plate.
Travers’ time in the major leagues was abrupt. After the 24-2 shellacking the A’s put on the strikebreaking Tigers, Cobb persuaded his teammates to end the strike before the team’s upcoming series against the Washington Senators.
Travers’ calling was the priesthood, not pitching.
After graduating from St. Joseph’s College in 1913, he joined the Society of Jesus, studying at St. Andrew on the Hudson in New York and Woodstock College in Maryland. He was ordained a priest in 1926, making him the only priest ever to play in a Major League game.
His ministry took him to teaching positions at St. Francis Xavier High School in Manhattan and St. Joseph’s Prep and St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia.
Father Travers didn’t speak about his baseball exploits, but he did give an interview about his bizarre start for the Tigers.
“About noon when Nolan told me about the strike of Detroit, he told me the club would be fined and might lose its franchise if 12 players didn’t show up,” Travers told sportswriter Red Smith. “He told me to round up as many fellows as I could. We never thought we’d play a game.”
The replacement Detroit Tigers are pictured in the dugout against the Philadelphia A’s on May 18, 1912. Photo credit: Public domain
The priest said Jennings told him to avoid throwing fastballs to “avoid getting killed out there,” but the A’s didn’t hold back, even resorting to bunting when they found out the third baseman had never played baseball before.
“I fed ‘em nothing but slow stuff after Frank Baker almost hit one out of the park on me, which fortunately went foul,” Travers said. “I was doing fine until they started bunting. The guy playing third base had never played baseball before. I just didn’t get any support. I threw a beautiful slow ball and the A’s were just hitting easy flies. Trouble was, no one could catch them.”
Curious enough, the only “fame” Travers got from his start was his picture in the newspaper with the word “Strikebreaker” printed above. There was a trolley strike in Philadelphia that month, and Travers’ mother was worried for her son’s safety because people might suspect he was a scab.
Travers didn’t like talking about his baseball “career” with his students, and his story is not well known, save for a few baseball history blogs.
He did sign a ball from that fateful day that wound up in the collection of Ada, Michigan, resident Steve Nagengast, who claims to have the largest collection of Tigers autographs. Nagengast was featured in the Detroit News, and the anecdote about Travers piqued Detroit Catholic’s interest.
Travers didn’t have the greatest impact on Tigers history. But the $5,000-per-game fine the Tigers faced for each game the club forfeited would have been devastating, especially in an era when professional teams folded and changed towns all the time.
So who knows.
Father Travers’ one-game career might have just saved the Tigers.
The Knights of Columbus announced the selection of this icon of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus as the centerpiece of this year’s KofC prayer program. / Courtesy of Knights of Columbus
CNA Staff, Nov 9, 2021 / 16:14 pm (CNA).
As the state deputies of the Knights of Columbus gathered for their semi-annual meeting last weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly encouraged the order’s leaders to grow in faith, expand the Order’s membership, and advance the Knight’s mission.
Kelly also introduced the Order’s new pilgrim icon prayer program, which features an icon of St. Joseph holding the child Jesus from St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada.
The Knights of Columbus (KofC) is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, with more than two million members in 16,000 councils worldwide.
The pilgrim icon prayer program is a longstanding tradition for the KofC, in which every few years a new icon of a saint is selected to inspire the Knights and their communities. The icon is distributed to each of the Knight’s more than 75 jurisdictions and travels from council to council.
Councils at parishes will use the icon as centerpieces for “rosary-based” prayer services, a press release said. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first icon during the conception of the program in 1979. Since the initiation of the program, almost 175,000 council and parish prayer services have been held with about 22 million participants.
Past images commissioned by the council have been icons of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Częstochowa, Our Lady of Pochaiv, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Charity, Our Lady Help of Persecuted Christians, and the Holy Family.
Following a Votive Mass in honor of St. Joseph on Saturday, Nov. 6 celebrated by Supreme Chaplain Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Kelly announced the featuring of the St. Joseph icon, which is inspired by Pope Francis’ Apostolic letter, Patris Corde. Pope Francis’s letter announced the year of St. Joseph that stretches from Dec. 8, 2020 to Dec 8, 2021.
Kelly, who received a private audience with Pope Francis last month, said that the Holy Father was grateful that the Knights chose St. Joseph to be “a central focus of our spiritual efforts.”
Kelly was accompanied at the meeting by his predecessor, Past Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, as well as Lori.
The choice for the newly commissioned icon of St. Joseph is no surprise, as Kelly has advocated for devotion to the saint since his installation as the Supreme Knight.
During his June installation, Kelly consecrated his administration to St. Joseph. “The example of St. Joseph teaches us how to be Knights of the Eucharist. He was the guardian of the first tabernacle — beginning with Mary herself when she bore Christ in her womb, and then in the home where he and Mary lived with Jesus,” he said at his installation address.
Also, in October, the Knights released a new documentary on St. Joseph, inspired by Pope Francis’s declaration of the Year of St. Joseph.
The Knights of Columbus’s pilgrim icon prayer program is a longstanding tradition, in which every few years a new icon of a saint is selected to inspire the Knights and their communities. This year, the Knights have chosen an icon of St. Joseph holding the child Jesus from St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada. Jeffrey Bruno, Courtesy of the Knights of Columbus.
During his address on Saturday, Kelly encouraged Knights and their communities to again entrust themselves to St. Joseph. Kelly implored the men to “give thanks to God for the gift of his fatherly example and ask St. Joseph to be a father to us” as we seek to “grow in our own imitation of St. Joseph’s quiet strength, integrity, and fidelity.”
Lori said that St. Joseph’s obedient faith and trustworthiness are “two virtues [that] ought to stand out in us as Knights of Columbus, and especially in us who are leaders among our brother Knights in the Order.”
“St. Joseph’s vocation to foster the earthly life of Jesus is, of course, unique, but all of us have been called to the obedience of faith,” Lori added. “Father McGivney envisioned his Knights, above all, as men of obedient faith, who, with their wives and children, would live their vocation to the fullest.”
“In choosing Joseph to care with a father’s love for the Incarnate Son of God, the Eternal Father recognized in St. Joseph a man of utmost integrity, a man who perhaps had no idea what God had in mind for him but nonetheless went about his daily life and work with honesty and reliability,” he said.
“A lot of men, especially young men, are looking for meaning and answers,” he said. “We offer both — a life of service and a life of meaning. Don’t just encourage men to adopt our initiatives; explain to them why our initiatives matter, and how the Knights can help them be the kind of men God is calling them to be,” he said.
Speaking of the Knight’s founder, Blessed Michael McGivney, Kelly told the state deputies on Friday, Nov. 5 that McGivney was a “man of action.” He said that McGivney “rose to meet the struggles” of his parishioners and community “head on,” and that by establishing the Knights of Columbus, he “gave men a place to stand as brothers, bound together in charity, unity, and fraternity.”
Kelly implored the Knights to fulfil the mission that McGivney started in his time. Kelly also called on the men to expand the Order’s membership by growing “deeper, as men of faith.”
On Nov. 7, at the meeting’s closing session, Kelly presented four Knights with the St. Michael Award for exemplary service to the Order.
The four recipients were: former director of chaplains for the KofC, Augustinian Father John Grace; former Supreme Warden George W. Hanna; Supreme Master Dennis Stoddard; and Col. Charles “Chuck” Gallina (USMC-Ret.), the supreme knight’s advisor for military and veterans affairs.
A nativity scene admitted into the lofty offices of the European Union!
Like the first lunar landing (“a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind”), this small step is a giant leap away from the cancel culture and longer-term amnesia…In A.D. 496 Clovis was baptized, and Gaul (the land of the Franks) became France, “the eldest daughter of the Church.” And “the rest is history”–the marriage of Classical-world learning with our transcendent Christian heritage. That is, the rest is history until the secularist superstructure created the European Union (EU) ex nihilo on Nov. 1, 1993 (also All Saints Day!).
A union which elides the existence of one of its parents! In the Charter of the EU the Classical heritage is noted, but not the Christian. A test-tube baby might as well claim asexual reproduction like rabbits.
So, now, as an anti-Christian 7th-century aberration and 21st-century post-Christian irrationalism, both, challenge the combined and fecund Classical and the Christian roots of the real Europe–a cultural reality more than only geographic–it seems only fitting to concede to reality at least this symbolic gesture. So, the most recent three decades again take note of the past fifteen centuries and more…while self-appointed elites still market their bromides, and the czar and the caliph are pounding on the door.
On what basis, our intrinsic and real human rights?
A nativity scene admitted into the lofty offices of the European Union!
Like the first lunar landing (“a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind”), this small step is a giant leap away from the cancel culture and longer-term amnesia…In A.D. 496 Clovis was baptized, and Gaul (the land of the Franks) became France, “the eldest daughter of the Church.” And “the rest is history”–the marriage of Classical-world learning with our transcendent Christian heritage. That is, the rest is history until the secularist superstructure created the European Union (EU) ex nihilo on Nov. 1, 1993 (also All Saints Day!).
A union which elides the existence of one of its parents! In the Charter of the EU the Classical heritage is noted, but not the Christian. A test-tube baby might as well claim asexual reproduction like rabbits.
So, now, as an anti-Christian 7th-century aberration and 21st-century post-Christian irrationalism, both, challenge the combined and fecund Classical and the Christian roots of the real Europe–a cultural reality more than only geographic–it seems only fitting to concede to reality at least this symbolic gesture. So, the most recent three decades again take note of the past fifteen centuries and more…while self-appointed elites still market their bromides, and the czar and the caliph are pounding on the door.
On what basis, our intrinsic and real human rights?