St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), pictured in 1938-1939. / Credit: Public Domain
CNA Staff, Aug 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Aug. 9 is the feast day of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as Edith Stein. A convert from Judaism at the age of 30, she later entered the Carmelite order and died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.
St. Teresa Benedicta was a scholar and an intellectual who earned a doctorate before her conversion, which, after years of interest in Christianity, came to fruition after she read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila. She taught at a university before entering the Carmelites and continued to study and teach, completing before her death a study of St. John of the Cross titled “The Science of the Cross.”
Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and proclaimed her a co-patroness of Europe the following year.
St. Teresa Benedicta is not yet a doctor of the Church, but there’s an effort underway right now to name her as one. Her order, the Discalced Carmelites, put in an official request to the Vatican in April and has proposed for her the title “doctor veritatis” (“doctor of truth”) because of her relentless intellectual pursuit of truth in Jesus Christ. (The co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites, St. John of the Cross, is also a doctor of the Church, as is the saint who had such a profound influence on Stein, St. Teresa of Ávila.)
If St. Teresa Benedicta is named a doctor of the Church, she would join 37 other saints with that title, four of whom are women: St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and St. Hildegard of Bingen. She would also be the second doctor of the Church to be a martyr, after St. Irenaeus of Lyon.
(Also, if St. Teresa Benedicta were named a doctor of the Church, it would mean that three of the five female doctors would have essentially the same first name.)
What is a doctor of the Church?
The title “doctor of the Church” recognizes those canonized men and women who possessed profound knowledge, were superb teachers, and contributed significantly to the Church’s theology.
Traditionally, the title of doctor of the Church has been granted on the basis of three requirements: the manifest holiness of a candidate affirmed by his or her canonization as a saint; the person’s eminence in doctrine demonstrated by the leaving behind of a body of teachings that made significant and lasting contributions to the life of the Church; and a formal declaration by the Church, usually by a pope.
The list of more than three dozen doctors of the Church includes some of the most well-known and revered Catholic saints, including St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Not quite half of the saints revered as doctors in the Catholic Church are also honored in the Orthodox church since they lived before the Great Schism in 1054.
The most recent doctor of the Church to be named was St. Irenaeus of Lyon, with the title “doctor unitatis” (“doctor of unity”), in 2022. Pope Francis had previously in 2015 named as a doctor of the Church St. Gregory of Narek, a 10th-century priest, monk, mystic, and poet beloved among Armenian Christians.
Among Catholics who lived in modern times, there have been calls for St. John Paul II,St. John Henry Newman, and Pope Benedict XVI to be named doctors of the Church — though the late Pope Benedict’s sainthood cause has not yet been opened.
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A close-up of the copy of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, usually kept at the Vatican Museums. / Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
As war rages in Ukraine and the pandemic lingers, Michelangelo’s celebrated Vatican Pietà — and two lesser-known figures he also sculpted — can be deeply meaningful to a pain-wracked world, says a priest and art historian.
Michelangelo Buonarotti’s Pietà depicts a larger-than-life Virgin Mary as she mourns her crucified Son, Jesus, lying limp in her lap. The masterpiece, carved out of Carrara marble, was finished before the Italian artist’s 25th birthday.
Over the course of more than 60 years, Michelangelo created two more sculptures on the same theme — and a new exhibit in the Italian city of Florence brings the three works together for the first time.
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The exhibit opened at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo on Feb. 24, and includes the Florentine Pietà, also called the Deposition, which Michelangelo worked on from 1547 to 1555, and exact casts, or copies, of the Vatican Pietà and Milan Pietà — which could not be moved from their locations.
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, the director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, told CNA by phone that the gallery wanted to do something to show its solidarity with a Feb. 23-27 meeting of mayors and Catholic bishops.
“The images of suffering that the Pietà always implies I think will deeply touch people. I think that visitors will be moved to see these works,” he said. The image of the Pietà evokes “the personal suffering of mothers who hold their children not knowing if their children will survive.”
A close-up of the copy of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, usually kept at the Vatican Museums. Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio.
The 75-year-old Verdon is an expert in art history and sacred art. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, but has lived in Italy for more than 50 years.
“So many of the issues that face the Mediterranean world today are forms of suffering,” he said, “and so this ideal series of images of the God who becomes man [and] accepts suffering, and whose Mother receives his tortured body into her arms, these are deeply meaningful.”
“All human situations of suffering and exclusion invite a comparison with the suffering of Christ, the death of Christ. And [the Pietà] condenses and concentrates a devout reflection on that,” the priest said.
The lesser-known Pietàs
Many years after Michelangelo completed the Pietà displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica, he began his Florentine Pietà, which depicts Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and the Virgin Mary receiving the body of Christ as it is removed from the Cross.
The 72-year-old Michelangelo worked on the sculpture for eight years before eventually abandoning it in 1555.
Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà, part of the permanent collection at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy.
He probably began the Rondanini Pietà, which is in Milan, in 1553. Michelangelo continued to work on the piece until just days before his death in 1564.
According to a press release from the city of Florence, “near his own death, Michelangelo meditated deeply on the Passion of Christ.”
One way this is known is because shortly before his death, Michelangelo gave a drawing of the Pietà to Vittoria Colonna, the Marquess of Pescara, on which he wrote: “They think not there how much of blood it costs.”
The line, from Canto 29 of Paradiso, one of the books of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, is also the subtitle of the Florence exhibition.
A perfect cast of Michelangelo’s unfinished Rondanini Pietà, on display at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Bringing the three Pietàs together into one exhibit gives the viewer the chance to see “the full range of Michelangelo’s reflection on this subject across 60-some years,” Verdon explained.
Not only is the Renaissance artist’s stylistic evolution on display, but also his spiritual development.
“We know that [Michelangelo] was a religious man,” Verdon said. “His interpretation of religious subjects, even in his youth, is particularly sensitive and well informed.”
According to the priest, Michelangelo seems to have had a range of theological influences.
“His older brother was a Dominican friar and in Michelangelo’s old age we’re told that he could still remember the preaching of Savonarola,” Verdon said.
Girolamo Savonarola was a popular Dominican friar, preacher, and reformer active in Renaissance Florence. He spoke against the ruling Medici family and the excesses of the time, and in 1498 he was hanged and his body burned after a trial by Church and civil authorities.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In the beginning Savonarola was filled with zeal, piety, and self-sacrifice for the regeneration of religious life. He was led to offend against these virtues by his fanaticism, obstinacy, and disobedience. He was not a heretic in matters of faith.”
“That’s an interesting page in cultural history,” Verdon said, “because the early Pietà is done in effect shortly after the Savonarola period, or in the Savonarola period.”
“So we’re talking about an artist to whom this subject means a great deal, and which he is also equipped to treat.”
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The artist’s last Pietàs were created, instead, in the context of the Counter-Reformation.
The council, he explained, “had to rebut the heretical ideas of Protestant reformers, and so it insists, in a decree on the Eucharist published in 1551, that indeed in the bread and wine, Christ’s Body and Blood are truly present.”
“So Michelangelo, who was personally religious, and who, especially in his later period, worked exclusively for the Vatican, was therefore very close to the changes occurring in Catholic thought, Catholic theology, Catholic devotion,” Verdon said.
The exhibit “really gives us the opportunity to gauge the evolution of a theme from one time to a very different one, from the end of the 15th, to the mid- 16th century.”
The St. Peter’s Basilica Pietà
Verdon said that the Vatican Pietà is the only one of the three to remain in the place it was intended for — above an altar in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The sculpture was originally created for the 4th-century Constantinian basilica, the “Old St. Peter’s Basilica,” which was replaced by the Renaissance basilica standing today.
In Michelangelo’s Pietà, the Virgin Mary holds her Son as she did at his birth. . Paweesit via Flickr.
Viewing art in a church is not the same as viewing it in a museum, the art historian noted.
“Obviously it is different, especially for the fact that the Vatican Pietà has remained on an altar, above an altar, and so the body of Christ depicted by Michelangelo would have been seen in relation to the sacramental body of Christ in the Eucharist.”
“This was true of the first situation in the Old St. Peter’s, the work was on an altar, and it’s true of the present collocazione [position],” he said.
“And actually,” the priest continued, “the same thing was true of both of the other Pietàs. They were intended by Michelangelo to go on an altar in a chapel in a Roman church where he expected to be buried. We think the church was Santa Maria Maggiore.”
“So the relationship of the image of Christ’s body with the Eucharistic Corpus Christi is very important,” he said.
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The copies of the Vatican and Milan Pietàs are on loan from the Vatican Museums, and will be in Florence for the Three Pietàs exhibit through Aug. 1.
“And in our museum, in the Florence Opera del Duomo Museum, we have put the Pietà, our Pietà, on a base that evokes an altar, as the very specific Church meaning [of an altar] has to do with the Sacrament,” Verdon said.
Sion, Switzerland, Jul 11, 2018 / 04:32 pm (CNA).- On Wednesday the general chapter of the Society of Saint Pius X, a canonically irregular priestly society, elected Fr. Davide Pagliarani as its superior general.
The July 11 election was made at the Seminary of St. Pius X in Ecône, about 10 miles southwest of Sion, Switzerland. The general chapter is being held through July 21.
Elected as general assistants were Bishop Alfonso Gallareta and Fr. Christian Bouchacourt.
The SSPX was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to form priests, as a response to what he described as errors that had crept into the Church after the Second Vatican Council.
Its relations with the Holy See became particularly strained in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer consecrated four bishops without the permission of St. John Paul II.
Fr. Pagliarani, 47, succeeds Bishop Bernard Fellay as superior general of the SSPX. He has a mandate of 12 years in his office as superior general.
He was ordained a priest in 1996, and served at chapels in Italy and Singapore before he was appointed superior of the Italian district of the SSPX. He has been rector of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Seminary in Argentina since 2012.
After accepting his office, Fr. Pagliarani made a profession of faith and took the Anti-Modernist Oath.
The illicit episcopal consecrations made in 1988 resulted in the excommunication of the bishops involved. The excommunications of the surviving bishops were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI, and since then negotiations “to rediscover full communion with the Church” have continued between the SSPX and the Vatican.
When he remitted the excommunications, Benedict noted that “doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry.”
The biggest obstacles for the SSPX’s reconciliation have been the statements on religious liberty in Vatican II’s declaration Dignitatis humanae as well as the declaration Nostra aetate, which it claims contradict previous Catholic teaching.
There were indications in recent years of movement towards regularization of the priestly society, which has some 590 priest-members.
In March 2017, Pope Francis gave diocesan bishops or other local ordinaries the authorization to grant priests of the SSPX the ability to celebrate licitly and validly the marriages of the faithful who follow the Society’s pastoral activity.
Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary for the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, spoke about interactions with the SSPX in an April 2016 interview with La Croix. The archbishop, whose commission is responsible for discussions with the SSPX, said that discussions over the last few years have led to “an important clarification” that the Second Vatican Council “can be adequately understood only in the context of the full Tradition of the Church and her constant Magisterium.”
And in September 2015, the Pope announced that the faithful would be able to validly and licitly receive absolution from priests of the SSPX during the Jubilee Year of Mercy. This ability was later extended indefinitely by Francis in his apostolic letter Misericordia et misera, published Nov. 20, 2016.
Rome, Italy, Sep 13, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During routine restoration of a nearly 1000 year-old church, a worker discovered bone fragments in clay pots – which may belong to St. Peter, three other popes, and four early Church martyrs.
“There were two clay pots which were inscribed with the names of early popes – Peter, Felix, Callixtus and Cornelius,” the worker told Italian television channel Rai Uno, according to the Telegraph.
“I’m not an archaeologist but I understood immediately that they were very old. Looking at them, I felt very emotional.”
The existence of the bone fragments has been known for centuries, but they had never been found. Inside the church of Santa Maria in Cappella, a stone inscription recorded the remains, indicating that the relics where kept alongside a piece of fabric taken from the dress of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Due to structural problems, the church has been closed for 35 years. As part of routine maintenance, the worker discovered the bones under a marble slab behind the altar.
The worker then notified Deacon Massimiliano Floridi, who handed the remains over to the Vatican. Church officials have not yet commented on the bones’ authenticity.
“We’re waiting for a detailed study to be undertaken. A DNA comparison between these bones and those kept by the Vatican would shed light on the issue,” the deacon said.
Santa Maria Church in Cappella is located in the district of Trastevere, Rome, near the Tiber River. Consecrated in 1090 by Pope Urban II, the church is home to many other historical and artistic treasures, including ceramics and murals dating back to the fourth century.
The church also includes a fragment of the episcopal chair, which was once a temporary seat of the Papal Consistory – a formal gathering of the College of Cardinals as called by the pope.
Some have theorized that the relics were moved to the church for protection under the rule of Pope Urban II. During a schism, the legitimacy of Pope Urban II was challenged by Clement III, who was an anti-pope backed by Emperor Henry IV.
In days of old Marcion also amputated Christianity from its Jewish roots–by recognizing only Luke’s Gospel (Luke had been a Gentile and his genealogy of Christ is not as truncated/tribal at the other) and the Letters of St. Paul.
Maybe Marcion would join you in rejecting the name “Edith Stein.” But early Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian denounced Marcion as a heretic or antichrist, and he was even excommunicated by the Church around A.D. 144.
But, you’re half right. A “secular outlet” would reject both Stein and St. Teresa Benedicta.
In the article, St. Teresa Benedicta is mentioned five times. One statement equates St. Teresa Benedicta to Edith Stein. No other mention is made of Stein except reference to saints who influenced “Stein”; she was not then a saint, so why fault the writer on that? FURTHER, Edith Stein was known in her historical time as a philosopher, and some of her writings published in her lifetime would have carried her name “Edith Stein.” Why not write the publishers of those works to tell them they are in error?
Edith was not always an atheist. Edith Stein was also a Catholic name. Since when have names been designated as “atheist” names, and who has decided which names are which?
I recall a post from the recent past when someone like you lodged the same complaint. What gives? Do you hold some resentment against the author or against the saint?
Why call her by her atheist name. She has a professed name. I would expect a secular outlet to make that error.
Edith Stein is her Jewish name.
In days of old Marcion also amputated Christianity from its Jewish roots–by recognizing only Luke’s Gospel (Luke had been a Gentile and his genealogy of Christ is not as truncated/tribal at the other) and the Letters of St. Paul.
Maybe Marcion would join you in rejecting the name “Edith Stein.” But early Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian denounced Marcion as a heretic or antichrist, and he was even excommunicated by the Church around A.D. 144.
But, you’re half right. A “secular outlet” would reject both Stein and St. Teresa Benedicta.
Did you read the article? S
In the article, St. Teresa Benedicta is mentioned five times. One statement equates St. Teresa Benedicta to Edith Stein. No other mention is made of Stein except reference to saints who influenced “Stein”; she was not then a saint, so why fault the writer on that? FURTHER, Edith Stein was known in her historical time as a philosopher, and some of her writings published in her lifetime would have carried her name “Edith Stein.” Why not write the publishers of those works to tell them they are in error?
Edith was not always an atheist. Edith Stein was also a Catholic name. Since when have names been designated as “atheist” names, and who has decided which names are which?
I recall a post from the recent past when someone like you lodged the same complaint. What gives? Do you hold some resentment against the author or against the saint?