Europe

Rome, Italy, Aug 12, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One hundred years ago, at the height of a cultural about-face in Russia, Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Portugal, predicting and encouraging prayer for Russia’s conversion.

Years later, a well-known and beloved Russian Orthodox icon known as Our Lady of Kazan, commonly referred to as “the protection of Russia,” would become tied to the site of the Fatima apparitions, where Mary predicted that “the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

Looking back into Russia’s history, it’s clear that that the Virgin Mary has had a very strong cultural influence in the country – from its religion to its art and architecture.

In fact, before the revolutions of 1917 which overthrew the Russian Empire and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, Russia was colloquially known as the “house of Mary,” since there were more shrines and churches dedicated to Our Lady than in any other country at the time.

According to veteran Vatican analyst Robert Moynihan, who has an extensive knowledge of Russian culture, the majority of Russian icons depict Mary with the child Jesus.

An icon, he explained, “is a sacramental, as it were, which allows the reality of the person depicted to be perceived in prayer and in meditation.”

“(So) in looking at these icons the Russian people are communing with the Virgin Mary, and they have a profound relationship on a spiritual level with Mary.”

And there are unarguably far more varieties of icons depicting the Virgin Mary in Russian iconography than any other figure. Most Russian icons depicting Mary are divided into four broad groups: the Eleusa (The Tenderness), the Odigitria (The Guide), the Oranta (The Sign), and the Akathist (The Hymn).

Many of the world’s most famous icons today are images of Mary found to be miraculous, including the Vladimir, Smolensk, Kazan and Cz?stochowa images.

Aside from Poland’s Cz?stochowa icon, each of these are from or are currently found in Russia.

Our Lady of Kazan is by far one of the most famous images in Russian Orthodoxy, and it has a unique history linking it to the Catholic Church and to the Fatima apparitions.

The icon itself dates back to at least 1569, when it was found in the town of Kazan, located roughly 500 miles east of Moscow. At the time, the area was caught in a conflict between the Volga Tatars and the Tsardom of Russia

According to tradition, one night a little girl had a dream in which Our Lady appeared to her and told her to go to the ruins of a church that had been burnt down, and “there you will find my image.”

The child’s mother refused to let her go out, arguing that it was too dangerous. However, after having the dream for two more consecutive nights in a row, Our Lady said she would become upset if the girl didn’t go.

So the next morning, the child’s mother accompanied her to the church, where they saw a golden light amid the ashes. When they brushed the soot away, they saw that they were holding an image of Mary and the Child Jesus, and that it was glowing.

As they were holding it, a blind man in the area was said to have regained his sight, and the image became known as a miraculous icon. Word of the event spread and eventually reached the tsar in Moscow, who asked that the image be brought to the capital.

“Over the centuries the icon became known as the ‘protection of Russia,’” Moynihan said, explaining that whenever Russia would engage in war, the tsar would call the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the patriarch would then lift the icon in front of the army and pray for Russia’s protection, and although the country suffered great loss, “Russia was never conquered.”

The icon was eventually placed in Moscow’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, which sat directly across the street from the Kremlin.

However, in 1918, after the Bolsheviks came to power, the icon was taken from the church and sold to an art dealer in Warsaw, and it end up in the possession of an English nobleman who hung the image on the wall of his house in London.

Years later, in 1950, a Russian Orthodox bishop happened to be visiting the house and recognized the image, telling the owner he was in possession of “the protection of Russia.”

After his death, the icon was purchased from the estate by the Blue Army of Fatima – an international organization dedicated to spreading Our Lady of Fatima’s message – in the 1960s, and in the 1970s a chapel was built to house the icon at the Fatima shrine in Portugal.

So the Kazan image ironically ended up in the same place from which Our Lady in 1917 asked the three shepherd children to pray for Russia, asked that it be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart, and predicted that it would be converted.

When St. John Paul II was elected Bishop of Rome in 1978, he had wanted to return the icon to Russia, but it was impossible while the country was under communist rule.

So when the Iron Curtain fell in 1991, within a few days the Polish Pope called the Vatican’s ambassador to Portugal and asked that the Kazan icon be brought to him in Rome, so that he could carry it back to Russia.

Moynihan, who had already developed a strong interest in Russia at that point, began to become curious about the image as plans for a papal trip to Russia fell through.

At one point he asked St. John Paul’s secretary if the story about Our Lady of Kazan was true, and in response was told that it was in fact true, and he was invited to come see the image for himself in his apartment.

“I stood in front of the icon on the mantle piece in the Pope’s study, and I felt a sense of vertigo,” Moynihan said, “because looking at the eyes of the icon, I felt that Mary was both tender and severe, and was both present and distant, and was both in time and out of time.”

However, the Russian Orthodox Church did not want to icon to be returned during a papal visit for fear that it would seem like a triumphant return for the Catholic Church, and not for the Orthodox.

In the end, the icon was handed over in 2004, by Cardinal Walter Kasper, then the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then the Archbishop of Washington, who traveled to Moscow and placed it in the hands of Patriarch Alexey II.

Moynihan reflected on the icon’s importance for the Russian people.

“It seems to me that there is a profound veneration in Russia for eternal things, for the eternal motherhood of Mary, and that this is still percolating in the dusty soil of the communist ideology,” he said.

Describing it as kind of “holy grace that is attached to the icon of Kazan,” he said this grace “is still working its way through the history of Russia,” and thanks in part to St. John Paul II, “this story is still not finished.”

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Munich, Germany, Aug 11, 2017 / 03:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church in Germany is “spiritually impoverished and in decline, yet rich in material means.”

That is the diagnosis of Anian Christoph Wimmer, editor of Catholic News Agency’s German edition.

Writing in the U.K. Catholic Herald Aug 10, Wimmer said the Church in Germany at present suffers from an unhealthy combination of “dwindling spiritual influence and major financial clout.”

“On the one hand, the official figures paint a stark picture of continuing decline in terms of Church membership, Mass attendance and participation in the sacraments,” he said. “On the other hand, the German Church is enormously wealthy and continues to wield significant influence both at home and abroad, not least in the Vatican.”

According to the German Bishops’ Conference, 160,000 Catholics left the Church in 2016, while only 2,574 converted. The number of priests fell by 200 to 13,856. The numbers of people receiving the sacraments of confirmation and marriage is also in decline. Although the bishops’ conference does not count the number of confessions, Wimmer said the sacrament has “to all intents and purposes disappeared from many, if not most, parishes.”

While one might expect the Church to use its wealth to evangelize secular society, Wimmer commented, “this is the one thing that appears to elude the Church in Germany, so flush with money: its core business of spreading the Gospel and watching over the sheep, helping a growing flock better to know, love and serve God.”

The numbers of Germans at Sunday Mass in the 1950s and 1960s were stable at 11.5-11.7 million per year, attendance dropped to 2.5 million in 2015. The overall population of Catholics in Germany is 23.8 million.

The Church is one of the largest employers in Germany and the churches can still be maintained is because of its financial wealth. Germany’s tax system means that registered Catholics pay eight or nine percent of their income tax to the Church. This totaled almost $7.1 billion in 2016, a record.

The tax helps fund the salaries of bishops, which often exceed $11,700 per month, as well as educational institutions and other activities, like hospitals, schools and meals on wheels activities. The tax also funds the Church’s large network of charities, which give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and assistance each year, at home and abroad.

“Thanks to the booming German economy, the departure of many thousands of Catholics every year has not (yet) put a dent in the ecclesial coffers,” said Wimmer.

Church attendance is lowest in historically Catholic regions along the Rhine, with the dioceses of Aachen and Speyer reporting only 7.8 percent of Catholics attending Sunday Mass. Mass attendance is high in diaspora communities in former East Germany, Saxony or Thuringia, where attendance is closer to 20 percent. Some parts of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI’s home, also show “signs of life.”

“The faith has evaporated,” Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, Archbishop emeritus of Munich and Freising, told Wimmer.

Would-be reformers have many proposals.

“Some propose that the Church tax should be abolished. They seem to assume that if money will not solve the problem, then the absence of it will,” said Wimmer, who suggested that this idea has some merit but is rarely thought through.

Another proposed solution is “an appeal for more heterodoxy” and advocacy to abolish priestly celibacy, admit women to the priesthood, and other changes.

Instead, Wimmer endorsed the recommendation of Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, who spoke about true renewal on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation:

“The first and foremost step on this path is the daily struggle for sanctity, listening to God’s Word and being prepared to start the reform of the Church with oneself. For that is what reformation means: renewal from within the faith, restoration of the Image of Christ, which is imprinted in us in baptism and confirmation,” the bishop said.

“Where that is granted to us, by the grace of God, where this succeeds, we will also make the people of our time once again curious about the faith that carries us. And then we will also be able to bear witness to the hope that fulfills us.”

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Belfast, Northern Ireland, Aug 10, 2017 / 04:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Recent changes in U.K. politics have meant a renewed push against Northern Ireland’s pro-life laws, advocates say.

“It is so incredibly important to lobby for life at thi… […]

Granada, Spain, Aug 10, 2017 / 12:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Spanish state prosecutor has dismissed a ‘hate crime’ complaint against the Archbishop of Granada after an LGBT activist group claimed he had preached hate against transgender peop… […]

Rome, Italy, Aug 9, 2017 / 03:04 am (Church Pop).- As Iraq and surrounding areas face the destruction of many of the region’s archaeological treasures, one priest and his fellow Dominicans are preserving the area’s history and culture throu… […]

Lourdes, France, Aug 8, 2017 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A government proposal in the United Kingdom to set up an anti-extremism commission could unjustly affect faithful Christians, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury has warned.

The present is “a time when our own country faces uncertainty about its calling and struggles to define arbitrary values which might preserve society now confronted by aggressive ideologies and homicidal terror,” Bishop Davies said during his homily at a July 31 Mass.

He was speaking to English pilgrims at Lourdes, and addressed the proposal by Prime Minister Theresa May’s Consverative minority government to establish a Commission for Countering Extremism.

This commission, meant to counter Islamist extremism, is to “stamp out extremist ideology in all its forms” and identify extremisms which undermine British values.

May has said that “there is clearly a role for government in tackling extremism where it involves behaviour that is or ought to be criminal. But there is also a role for government to help people and build up organisations in society to promote and defend Britain’s pluralistic values.”

A similar effort by David Cameron’s Conservative government to promote “British values” in schools was received by Catholic Voices UK as a potential harm to sincere religious believers and to Catholic schools. Bishop Davies at that time warned, “our values cannot be arbitrarily formulated by any passing generation of politicians even if they have the best intentions.”

In his homily at Lourdes, the bishop noted that there is confusion in the UK over what constitutes extremism, citing a recent poll that found “1 in 3 Britons now regard the claims of Christianity and even the person of Jesus Christ as representing extremism.”

“It is even possible that the very faith in Christ on which our nation was built, might become a focus of the Government’s counter-extremism agenda,” he lamented.

In the face of this, Christians are called to acknowledge that “we know of no moderation … in our following of Christ and in all that contributes to the good of society, recognising how we are all called to the extremes of charity; of virtue; of grace; of unswerving adherence to goodness and truth, to the high goal of holiness in which lies our ultimate happiness.”

This, he said, is the heart of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching:”an utterly inclusive message, that we are all called to holiness which is the perfection of love, the complete happiness of becoming a saint.”

“This was the first calling of the English people and it is the divine vocation which can now shape our lives, our families and the whole future of our society.”

The bishop did warn against a “destructive extremism” which seeks to de-construct marriage, family, and human identity, and which “calls for medical experimentation with no reference to ethical boundaries; that decrees the unborn may live only to terms fixed by man, demands legal protections be removed from the sick and the aged.”

“It is such extremism which surely threatens the foundations of society.”

The “extreme agenda” of Christ and the Church is “the call to the perfection of charity and the fullness of the Christian life which today we share,” he concluded.

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Motherwell, Scotland, Aug 7, 2017 / 04:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A chaste life and closeness to Christ is the vocation of every Christian, Bishop Joseph Toal of Motherwell has said in response to questions about ministry to people with same-sex attractio… […]

Cardiff, Wales, Aug 7, 2017 / 04:19 pm (CNA).- How does a pub make up for mistakenly trying to kick out a group of celebrating seminarians? By naming a beer after them and calling it the “Thirsty Priests.”

Tim Lewis is the PR Manager for Brains, the company which owns the City Arms Pub in Cardiff, Wales.

He said that re-naming one of the seminarian’s favorite beers was a small thank you for the group’s good humor in being mistaken as a bachelor party and nearly kicked out of City Arms Pub.

“We wanted to do something as a ‘thank you’ to the priests for taking the misunderstanding in such good spirits,” said Lewis, according to Wales Online.

Described as a “rich, warming ale with a clean, rewarding finish,” The Rev James beer was renamed the “Thirsty Priests,” with the added slogan “saving souls and satisfying thirsts.” It was added to the pub’s tap this past weekend.

While celebrating the July 29 ordination of Father Peter McClaren, a group of seminarians dressed in their cassocks entered the City Arms Pub, only to be turned away by staff members who mistook them for a bachelor party.

“The staff thought they were a stag. We do have quite a few issues on the weekends with parties wearing fancy dress so it is our policy to turn them away,” said assistant manager Matt Morgan, according to the BBC.

But as the seminarians were about to leave the bar, the manager overheard them praying, and, realizing the establishment’s mistake, invited the men back in for a round of beers on the house.

The seminarians took the error in good humor, and were warmly received by staff and customers for the rest of their time at the pub. The whole affair was amusing, noted the seminarians, and the men were encouraged by the positive interaction with the community – which also enabled the locals to engage the seminarians in questions about the Church.

Archbishop George Stack of Cardiff, who is also a fan of City Arms Pub, said he was happy to hear about the seminarians’ interaction with the community, noting that “Priests are of the community and for the community they serve.”

Adding to the amusement of the evening, one member of the group, Reverend Robert James – who was ordained a deacon last June – was partial to a beer resembling his own name. The Rev James, a popular ale on the bar’s menu, is now rebranded at the establishment in honor of the seminarians.

The Archdiocese of Cardiff applauded the pub for its good humor over the viral news, jokingly adding that “a number of our clergy, including the Archbishop of Cardiff, frequent your bar so don’t turf any more out please!”

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Venice, Italy, Aug 6, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- While Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” echoes in concert halls and elevators around the world, for some, his greatest masterpieces are not the scores resonating spring, summer, fall and winter, but rather his sacred music.

Although less known, Vivaldi’s sacred music compositions, according to a researcher and expert on the musician’s life, is probably his greatest contribution to music – featuring an altogether unprecedented combination of deep spirituality and the contemporary trends of the time.

And this profound personal spirituality was rooted in what is likely a little-known fact for many: Antonio Vivaldi was a Catholic priest.

“I’m going to give you the most bizarre idea. Think of the Pope, who represents priests, spiritual things, and then you’ve got Jimmy Hendrix, a superb guitarist. You put them together and you’ve got Vivaldi,” British researcher Micky White told CNA Aug. 1.

It’s a combination altogether “bizarre,” she said. “Vivaldi the priest, deeply spiritual, comes out in his music. Jimmy Hendrix Vivaldi you’ve heard in the Four Seasons; it’s the most bizarre piece of music.”

“It’s timely, a priest wrote it,” and it’s meshed with the modern style of the day –  a combination of two things that are essentially “polls apart,” she said. “That’s what makes him stand out among anybody. Bach wasn’t a priest, Mozart wasn’t a priest, nor was Beethoven, but Vivaldi was.

In listening to Vivaldi, it’s obvious that he was a very faith-filled man, she said, “you hear it in his music, you listen to it.”

White, who left a thriving greeting card company in England and moved to Venice to pursue an increasing interest in researching Vivaldi’s life, has become an expert and point of reference on the musician.

Not only has she published a book, “Antonio Vivaldi: A Life in Documents,” as the fruit of her research, but she was a consultant for a new display on his life called “Viva Vivaldi: The Four Seasons Mystery.”

The exhibit, located just behind St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, provides attendees with an indoor video-mapping show done with immersive HD images, surround sound and scent special effects such as scent and wind. It opened to the public May 13 at the Diocesan Museum, and will stay open during 2018.

One of the most famous Baroque composers, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, affectionately known by many in his time as “the Red Priest” due to his auburn locks, was born in Venice in 1678.

His father, who was an instrumental figure in his life (pun intended), was a professional violinist, and taught his son how to play as a young child. The two then went on tour together throughout Venice, giving Vivaldi an extensive knowledge and even mastery of the violin from a young age.

In 1693, at the age of 15, he began studying for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1703 at the age of 25, and shortly after was appointed chaplain and Violin Master at a local orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pieta, or the Devout Hospital of Mercy.

The orphanage, called the “Pieta,” was founded in 1492 by a poor friar as a home for abandoned babies. Young children were typically raised by older girls already at the center, and while the boys were taught a specific trade and ousted at the age of 15, the girls were trained as musicians if they had the ability. If not, they were taught a different trade, such as reading or sewing.  

The most talented of the girls stayed on and became members of the hospitals renown orchestra and choir. Vivaldi worked at the hospital from 1703-1715, when he was voted off the faculty. He was voted back in 1723, and remained until 1740, composing some of his most famous works during that time.

However, after just a year of being a priest, Vivaldi requested a dispensation form celebrating Mass due to his poor health. From birth he had been afflicted with a serious, unknown, health condition thought to be a form of asthma.

All that is known about the mysterious illness comes from the letter Vivaldi wrote asking for the dispensation, in which he referred to it as a “tightness of the chest.”

According to White, “it would have been very hard for Vivaldi to give up saying Mass. It would have been his own decision, a decision of nobody but himself, and he also gave up a good salary.”

She pointed to rumors alleging that he had been kicked out of the priesthood or even excommunicated, saying they “are so ignorant and so stupid,” because if one actually looks to the facts, the rumors are “not proven.”

She also addressed rumors that Vivaldi had abused the choir girls as the reason he was kicked off the Pieta faculty in 1715. These rumors, she said, “not only are they not true, they’re impossible.”

Not only would Vivaldi have never been welcomed back in 1723, but many of the girls who remained in the orchestra stayed until they were 70 or even 80 years old. The hospital was also overseen by several governors, so had there been abuse, Vivaldi would have been kicked out right away, “so that doesn’t add up,” White said.

People often make assumptions about the past or judge by their opinions, telling others that “’it must be like this’ or ‘so and so said that,’” White said, adding that when this happens “you go from bad to worse.”

But when she first started digging into her research on Vivaldi and putting the information into context,  “then everything made sense,” she said, because “research is a matter of fact, it’s not a matter of opinion, and it’s not a matter of ideas, it’s fact.”

She insisted that his priesthood was likely an essential element of his music. Even after stepping down from his liturgical duties, Vivaldi never stopped being a priest, White said. “Once a priest always a priest.”

“He was ordained, he was a priest his whole life (and) his spirituality comes out in his music, all you have to do is listen and you’ll hear it.”

Although in poor health, Vivaldi made great strides in his musical career. He continued to write a variety of compositions, and received many commissions from all over Italy and Europe, for which he traveled frequently.

During one jaunt in 1722, Vivaldi moved to Rome, where he was invited to play for Pope Benedict XIII before moving back to Venice in 1725.

The various pieces he wrote throughout his career include several different types of concertos – from violin to orchestra – arias, sonatas, operas and sacred music.

But according to White, while the Four Seasons, written around 1721, and his many operas are what made Vivaldi rise to fame in his day, “sacred music is on another plane compared all the other compositions. It’s the empire of composition itself that comes from faith.”

Among the sacred scores written by Vivaldi are the Gloria, the Credo, the Stabat Mater, the Magnificat, Dixit Dominus and Laetatus sum, among others. The “Laetatus sum,” specifically, was written by Vivaldi at the age of 13 in 1691.

White said that while these are the known liturgical and sacred works, “there’s a lot, lot missing.”

Given his 38 year career at the hospital, there are likely many, many works of Vivaldi that have never been discovered, she said. For example, “I’m sure that he wrote full Masses, absolutely positive,” but they are likely all lost.

Despite the success he enjoyed during his career, Vivaldi died in poverty in Vienna July 28, 1741. He had moved to the Austrian country after meeting Emperor Charles VI, to whom he had dedicated his Opus 9 work, in 1728.

The emperor was so impressed with Vivaldi’s work that he gave the musician the title of Knight, a gold medal and an invitation to Vienna. However, the emperor died shortly after Vivaldi’s arrival several years later, and with no royal connection or steady income, Vivaldi became impoverished and died from an infection at the age of 63.

According to White, the greatest legacy that Vivaldi left can be summed up in one word: “music.”

“Music comes out of him, it doesn’t come out of his brain, it just pours out of him. It’s like a waterfall,” she said.

While his sacred and classical music might seem outdated in a society enthralled with artists such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber, White said Vivaldi is so versatile in his style that he can mesh with well with contemporary music as well as the older

“Vivaldi could do a rock concert quite easily, and Vivaldi can appeal to everyone,” she said. “Vivaldi, he’s alone, he’s absolutely unique. You talk about the Baroque style, and the romantic style…Vivaldi cuts that whole suede.”

With the “tremendous energy” present in his music, Vivaldi is truly one of a kind and is difficult to imitate, she said. “He doesn’t fit anywhere, and he fits everywhere.”

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