Pope Francis said Wednesday that freedom is under threat in Europe, as people choose consumerism and individualism over building families and community.
Even today, “freedom is under threat,” he said May 3. “Above all with kid gloves, by a consumerism that anesthetizes, where one is content with a little material well-being and, forgetting the past, one ‘floats’ in a present made to the measure of the individual.”
“This is the dangerous persecution of modernity that advances consumerism,” he underlined.
“But when the only thing that counts is thinking about oneself and doing what one likes, the roots suffocate,” he warned. “This is a problem throughout Europe, where dedicating oneself to others, community feeling, the beauty of dreaming together and creating large families are in crisis. All of Europe is in crisis.”
Pope Francis spoke about Europe, its roots, and the problem of consumerism, during his weekly audience with the public.
Speaking about his visit to Budapest, Hungary, April 28-30, he asked those present at the audience to think about “the importance of preserving roots, because only by going deep will the branches grow upwards and bear fruit.”
He began his reflection on the three-day trip to Hungary’s capital city by recalling the European country’s Christian roots and the ways those were tested in the 20th century.
“Their faith, as we have heard from the Word of God, has been tested by fire,” he said, noting the atheist persecution in the 1900s, when “Christians were struck down violently, with bishops, priests, religious, and lay people killed or deprived of their freedom.”
“But while attempts were made to cut down the tree of faith, the roots remained intact,” he said, pointing out the steadfastness of the “hidden Church” in Hungary.
“In Hungary, this latest persecution, the Communist oppression was preceded by the Nazi oppression, with the tragic deportation of a large Jewish population,” the pope added.
“But in that atrocious genocide, many distinguished themselves by their resistance and their ability to protect the victims; and this was possible because the roots of living together were firm,” he said. “Thus the common bonds of faith and people helped the return of freedom.”
Quoting St. Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis also spoke about Hungary’s “many saints and heroes, surrounded by hosts of humble and hard-working people.”
He noted, in particular, the devotion of Hungary’s St. Stephen, to the Virgin Mary.
“I want to recall, at the beginning of the month of May, how very devoted the Hungarians are to the Holy Mother of God,” he said.
“Consecrated to her by the first king, St. Stephen, they used to address her without pronouncing her name, out of respect, calling her only by the titles of Queen,” Pope Francis said. “To the Queen of Hungary, therefore, we entrust that dear country; to the Queen of Peace, we entrust the building of bridges in the world; to the Queen of Heaven, whom we acclaim at this Easter time, we entrust our hearts that they may be rooted in the love of God.”
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CNA Staff, Feb 16, 2021 / 01:03 pm (CNA).- A statement Tuesday from the bishops of England and Wales said they are “distressed” by recent reports that COVID-19 patients are being given “do not resuscitate” orders solely on the grounds of intellectual d… […]
Saint Peter’s Chapel and Native American Museum at Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine and Historic Site in Fonda, New York. / Photo courtesy of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine and Historic Site
Chicago, Ill., Jul 13, 2023 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Shrines to various saints can be found in every part of the world, including every state in the U.S. Each one is dedicated to faith and prayer, but one shrine in the northeastern United States also has a distinct mission of connecting pilgrims with Native American culture and sharing the fascinating history of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first American Indian to be canonized a saint.
The Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine and Historic Site in Fonda, New York, honors not only the life of St. Kateri, whose feast day is July 14, but also the life and history of the local Indigenous people to whom she belonged.
“We have cultivated strong ties to both the Catholic Mohawk community and the traditional Mohawk community,” said Melissa Miscevic Bramble, director of operations at the St. Kateri Shrine, in an interview with CNA. “We see it as our mission to educate about her Mohawk culture as well as her Catholic faith.”
Who was St. Kateri?
Called the Lily of the Mohawks, Kateri Tekakwitha was the child of a Mohawk father and a Christian Algonquin mother but was orphaned at age 4 when the rest of her family died of smallpox. Her own early bout with the illness left lasting scars and poor vision.
She went to live with an anti-Christian uncle and aunt, but at age 11 she encountered Jesuit missionaries and recognized their teaching as the beliefs of her beloved mother. Desiring to become a Christian, she began to privately practice Christianity.
Beginning at about age 13, she experienced pressure from her family to marry, but she wanted to give her life to Jesus instead. A priest who knew her recorded her words: “I have deliberated enough. For a long time, my decision on what I will do has been made. I have consecrated myself entirely to Jesus, son of Mary, I have chosen him for husband, and he alone will take me for wife.”
At last, she was baptized at about age 19, and her baptism made public her beliefs, which had been kept private up until then. The event was the catalyst for her ostracism from her village. Some members of her people believed that her beliefs were sorcery, and she was harassed, stoned, and threatened with torture in her home village.
Tekakwitha fled 200 miles to Kahnawake, a Jesuit mission village for Native Amerian converts to Christianity to live together in community. There, she found her mother’s close friend, Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, who was a clan matron of a Kahnawake longhouse. Anastasia and other Mohawk women took Kateri under their wings and taught her about Christianity, and she lived there happily for several years until her death around age 23 or 24.
Although she never took formal vows, Tekakwitha is considered a consecrated virgin, and the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins took her as its patron. She is also the patron saint of traditional ecology, Indigenous peoples, and care for creation.
A shrine with a special mission
The Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine and Historic Site has a unique mission of archaeological and historical research related to Kateri Tekakwitha and her people. Welcoming several thousand visitors per year, the shrine ministers not only to Christians but also to all American Indians.
According to its website, the shrine and historic site “promotes healing, encourages environmental stewardship, and facilitates peace for all people by offering the natural, cultural, and spiritual resources at this sacred site.” Describing itself as a sacred place of peace and healing with a Catholic identity, its ministry and site are intended to be ecumenical and welcome people of all faiths.
In keeping with this mission, the shrine’s grounds include an archaeological site, the village of Caughnawaga, which is the only fully excavated Iroquois/Haudenosaunee village in the world. St. Kateri lived in this village, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Visitors can also visit the Kateri Spring, where Kateri Tekakwitha was baptized.
“The water from the Kateri Spring is considered holy water by the Catholic Church,” Bramble said. “People are welcome to come take the waters, and we regularly get reports of healing. We’ve sent that water all over North America to folks who have requested it.”
Besides the archaeological site, the main grounds of the shrine include St. Peter’s Chapel, housed in a former Dutch barn built in 1782; museum exhibits of Native American culture and history; St. Maximilian Kolbe Pavilion; a Candle Chapel dedicated to St. Kateri; Grassmann Hall and the Shrine office; a friary; a gift shop; an outdoor sanctuary; and maintenance facilities. The 150-acre property includes hiking trails that are open to the public year-round from sunrise to sunset.
Outside the Candle Chapel, which is always open for prayer, visitors can participate in a ministry of “Kateri crosses.”
“St. Kateri was known for going into the forest, gathering sticks, binding them into crosses, and then spending hours in prayer in front of crosses she created,” Bramble said. Sticks are gathered from the shrine grounds and visitors are invited to make their own “Kateri crosses” and take them home to use as a prayer aid. Bramble shared that the shrine sends materials for Kateri crosses to those who aren’t able to visit, including recently to a confirmation group.
The feast day weekend
The Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine has a schedule of special events planned for St. Kateri’s feast day on July 14. Bramble said they anticipate several hundred visitors for the feast day events this year, which include Masses, a healing prayer service, and talks. (A listing of the full schedule can be found here.)
The weekend Masses, which include special blessings and the music of the Akwesasne Mohawk Choir, “incorporate American Indian spiritual practices in keeping with the Catholic Church,” Bramble said. “The Akwesasne Mohawk Choir is made up of descendants of St. Kateri’s community who lived in the area historically.”
Bramble described numerous events each year that partner with the local American Indian community, such as the fun-filled “Three Sisters Festival” in May (celebrating corn, beans, and squash — the “three sisters” that were staples of Native cuisine), healing Masses during Indigenous Peoples’ Week in October, and a recent interfaith prayer service with Mohawk elders.
“There is a reestablished traditional Mohawk community a few miles west of the shrine, and we feel very blessed that we’ve been able to cultivate a very cooperative and mutually respectful relationship with the folks there,” Bramble said.
The Saint Kateri Shrine is also a great place for families. Events often include activities and crafts for children, there is an all-ages scavenger hunt available at the site, and the shrine’s museum is “a phenomenal educational opportunity.”
Bringing together American Indian archaeology and history with the story of St. Kateri, the shrine and its programs shed light on the saint’s story and keep alive the traditions and history of her people.
“This is the dangerous persecution of modernity that advances consumerism,”
This is the most nonsensical statement ever made by any human being in human history. An evil result “persecutes” a presumed good, subsequently described as an evil for promoting the evil that gave rise to the evil that performed the persecution in the first place.
Francis refuses to understand how evil exists in the human experience because his ego is so consumed with ignoring how the moral absolutes he often trivializes despite their origins from the mind of God. He is a secular elitist at heart and believes the world’s progressives can engineer evil out of existence with enough attacks on impersonal forces requiring structural reforms rather than personal redemptive actions.
Contemplating the rising storm clouds in 1940, the Anglo-Catholic T.S. Eliot already mourned over the loss of freedom–and truth–across what had once been Christendom. He made some initial proposals for a “Community of Christians” buoyed in part of Education. He wrote:
“[in this essay] I was less concerned with the more superficial, through important differences between the regimens of different nations [Britain contrasted with Germany and Russia], than with the more profound differences between pagan and Christian society [….]
“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion [….]
“It is not enthusiasm [he cites a flicker of Anglican “revivalism” in 1938], but dogma [!], that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society” (“The Idea of a Christian Society,” 1940).
In our now more septic state of paganism, wondering here if progressive and big-tent Synodality in 2023 (where even rudimentary sexual morality is up for grabs) will even try to catch up with Eliot in 1940?
I suppose we need to credit Pope Francis for finally recognizing that freedom is under threat in Europe (and not just there!) He does need to investigate the source a little more rigorously. It comes not from some abstract consumerism, however evil and empty that theory is. Rather it originates from the ideas and actions of his friends and allies in the EU, the Democrat Party, the international banking cartels, the tech and pharmaceutical industries, and other pillars of the Great Reset for which he serves as chaplain.
Materialism/consumerism is responsible for Ireland losing its Catholic soul & it set the stage for outside interests to successfully lobby for the acceptance of feticide, homosexual unions, & the rest of it. “Hate” laws are just the next chapter.
Sadly, the Protestant North has held on to their traditional views on family & marriage a whole lot better than the Catholic South has. I never thought I’d be praising Ian Paisley, but that sort of stubbornness has its virtues.
Well, yes, I can sort of see the progression of regressions you delineate here, although consumerism by itself did not bring Ireland or us to this unhappy place. A large dose of cultural Marxism it its many versions – feminism, multiculturalism, critical race theory and others – was added to the mix to make that happen. I will grant that consumerism helped to weaken resistance to this posion.
Freedom is realized in the exercise of our human rights, faith, family, sufficient and secure living conditions. Pope Francis’ policy on migration, largely from Muslim Africa and the Near East, described by Vat Secy of State Card Parolin to Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni as, Welcome, Protection, Promotion and Integration – are antithetical to those rights. As they are to the rights of Americans with Pres Biden’s open border policy promoted by our USCCB in fealty to Pope Francis. The open border EU policy and the Biden administration’s policy is highly favored by Francis and actually defines his definition of Modernism.
Giorgia Meloni is strongly opposed to this policy which puts her at odds with Vatican policy. She argues we’re stripping Africa of its geological resources and leaving little in terms of development, while simultaneously stripping Africa of its vital human resources, causing irreparable damage to migrants exploited by Mafia, [in America by the Mexican drug cartels] unable, unwilling to integrate, hostile to Christianity [actually polls indicate most S American migrants renounce their Catholicism].
If the Vatican were prepared to alleviate the human misery of world migration Pope Francis should use his influence with his friends George Soros, Bill Gates to foster investment in the impoverished, exploited areas of Africa and the Near East. Then ‘consumerism’ might become a blessing for those peoples.
“Freedom is under threat in Europe.” He just noticed that? It’s under threat EVERYWHERE.
I’m sorry to be so sarcastic but with every passing day it becomes increasingly difficult for me to take this man seriously.
Sarcasm is likely the most polite response possible, especially in reply to one who is very much at the heart of the problem.
“This is the dangerous persecution of modernity that advances consumerism,”
This is the most nonsensical statement ever made by any human being in human history. An evil result “persecutes” a presumed good, subsequently described as an evil for promoting the evil that gave rise to the evil that performed the persecution in the first place.
Francis refuses to understand how evil exists in the human experience because his ego is so consumed with ignoring how the moral absolutes he often trivializes despite their origins from the mind of God. He is a secular elitist at heart and believes the world’s progressives can engineer evil out of existence with enough attacks on impersonal forces requiring structural reforms rather than personal redemptive actions.
May the Almighty have mercy on us. I’ll pray today for unity in the Church from one of the seven images of Fatima’s Madonna, in Venice.
Conversion is an ongoing and a never-ending opportunity. “Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep” – Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Contemplating the rising storm clouds in 1940, the Anglo-Catholic T.S. Eliot already mourned over the loss of freedom–and truth–across what had once been Christendom. He made some initial proposals for a “Community of Christians” buoyed in part of Education. He wrote:
“[in this essay] I was less concerned with the more superficial, through important differences between the regimens of different nations [Britain contrasted with Germany and Russia], than with the more profound differences between pagan and Christian society [….]
“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion [….]
“It is not enthusiasm [he cites a flicker of Anglican “revivalism” in 1938], but dogma [!], that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society” (“The Idea of a Christian Society,” 1940).
In our now more septic state of paganism, wondering here if progressive and big-tent Synodality in 2023 (where even rudimentary sexual morality is up for grabs) will even try to catch up with Eliot in 1940?
I suppose we need to credit Pope Francis for finally recognizing that freedom is under threat in Europe (and not just there!) He does need to investigate the source a little more rigorously. It comes not from some abstract consumerism, however evil and empty that theory is. Rather it originates from the ideas and actions of his friends and allies in the EU, the Democrat Party, the international banking cartels, the tech and pharmaceutical industries, and other pillars of the Great Reset for which he serves as chaplain.
So this explains a lot! You know how Bergoglio always seems to be trying to destroy the Church?
That’s not what he’s doing at all!
He’s just trying to give Catholics enough adversity to shake us out of our lethargy!
Makes perfect sense!
LOL!
Is consumerism to blame for the unbelievable new “hate speech” law in Ireland? Try harder, Holy Father!
Materialism/consumerism is responsible for Ireland losing its Catholic soul & it set the stage for outside interests to successfully lobby for the acceptance of feticide, homosexual unions, & the rest of it. “Hate” laws are just the next chapter.
Sadly, the Protestant North has held on to their traditional views on family & marriage a whole lot better than the Catholic South has. I never thought I’d be praising Ian Paisley, but that sort of stubbornness has its virtues.
Well, yes, I can sort of see the progression of regressions you delineate here, although consumerism by itself did not bring Ireland or us to this unhappy place. A large dose of cultural Marxism it its many versions – feminism, multiculturalism, critical race theory and others – was added to the mix to make that happen. I will grant that consumerism helped to weaken resistance to this posion.
Freedom is realized in the exercise of our human rights, faith, family, sufficient and secure living conditions. Pope Francis’ policy on migration, largely from Muslim Africa and the Near East, described by Vat Secy of State Card Parolin to Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni as, Welcome, Protection, Promotion and Integration – are antithetical to those rights. As they are to the rights of Americans with Pres Biden’s open border policy promoted by our USCCB in fealty to Pope Francis. The open border EU policy and the Biden administration’s policy is highly favored by Francis and actually defines his definition of Modernism.
Giorgia Meloni is strongly opposed to this policy which puts her at odds with Vatican policy. She argues we’re stripping Africa of its geological resources and leaving little in terms of development, while simultaneously stripping Africa of its vital human resources, causing irreparable damage to migrants exploited by Mafia, [in America by the Mexican drug cartels] unable, unwilling to integrate, hostile to Christianity [actually polls indicate most S American migrants renounce their Catholicism].
If the Vatican were prepared to alleviate the human misery of world migration Pope Francis should use his influence with his friends George Soros, Bill Gates to foster investment in the impoverished, exploited areas of Africa and the Near East. Then ‘consumerism’ might become a blessing for those peoples.
It’s true that Latin American immigrants are increasingly non Catholic but many are Pentecostal rather than non believers.
From this man, a hymn to freedom rings hollow.