CNA Staff, Oct 12, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The rector of a Catholic university in Poland urged academics worldwide Monday to sign an appeal committing themselves to promoting the teachings of St. John Paul II.
Fr. Mirosław Kalinowski, rector of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, launched the appeal Oct. 12, as the centenary of the Polish pope’s birth is marked around the world.
The “International Appeal of Professors and Academic Teachers” emphasizes the urgency of introducing the thought of Karol Wojtyła, who took the name John Paul II when he was elected pope, to a new generation of students.
The appeal said: “The month of October is traditionally associated with the beginning of the academic year at our universities, and this year, October 16th marks the 42nd anniversary of the election of John Paul II, while 2020 marks the centennial anniversary of his birth.”
“This is a good opportunity to introduce once again Karol Wojtyła’s teaching in philosophy, culture, and sociology into our lecture programs, didactic classes, and scientific work; and we encourage you to do that.”
John Paul II, who served as pope for 26 years until 2005, was a prolific writer of poems, plays, and theological and philosophical works. He set out a “theology of the body” in his early general audience addresses and published 14 encyclicals.
Highlighting his 1998 encyclical “Fides et Ratio,” on the relationship between faith and reason, the appeal said that John Paul II had “prophetically indicated” a fruitful path for higher education in the 21st century as a way of helping students to answer questions about life’s meaning.
It said: “This search for undeniable meaning is a challenge for our students today in the increasingly complicated reality that surrounds them. Technological development and the ever-more limitless possibilities of virtual communication accompanying it represent a great opportunity, but they also create unprecedented threats.”
“In the face of these facts, the Polish pope’s teaching and his attitude towards life can inspire young people to strive for truth and inner freedom. We encourage the academic lecturers to use modern media and new teaching methods to make St. John Paul II’s academic, artistic, and spiritual achievements known.”
The Catholic University of Lublin, known by its Polish initials, KUL, was founded by the Polish bishops in 1918. It was shut down during the Nazi occupation and many of its professors and students were executed.
In 1954, Karol Wojtyła began to lecture on ethics at the university. He was appointed to the Chair of Ethics in the university’s Department of Christian Philosophy, forming a link to the institution that lasted until his election as pope in 1978.
He visited KUL in June 1987, giving a speech in which he said that academic institutions were called to “build up a community of people free in the truth.”
Months after John Paul II’s death in 2005, KUL adopted its present name: the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
The text of the online appeal paid tribute to John Paul’s “courage and steadfastness in his pursuit of the truth.”
“In the already-mentioned encyclical ‘Fides et ratio’, we read that faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth. Let us use this potential in our academic environments. May the teaching of St. John Paul II be an incentive for students to respond to challenges and to develop themselves,” it said.
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CNA Staff, Sep 24, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- A Dutch cardinal has said that the Netherlands shows that once euthanasia is legalized safeguards are slowly but inevitably abandoned.
In an interview with CNA, Cardinal Willem Eijk noted that criteria for th… […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 22, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- The three teenage girls who killed Sr. Maria Laura Mainetti 20 years ago attested afterward that, while they were stabbing the 60-year-old religious sister to death, she told them she forgave them.
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.
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