Friday, October 17, 2008

Catholic Vote

 

Here is an EXCELLENT video which SHOULD be broadcast on every television station (cable and satellite).  BRAVO to the producers.

Yesterday I attended the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation Banquet in Harrisburg.  The keynote speaker was Michael Clancey, a photographer who took pictures of an in utero operation to correct Spina Bifida in an unborn child (21 weeks old, since conception).  During the procedure, the 'fetus' as he was called by the secular media, literally reached out and grabbed the surgeon by his little hand.  Baby Samuel was no blob of tissue nor was he merely a fetus or embryo.  He was then what he is now, a human person who reaches out to others.  This photo was originally taken for USA Today.  It is VERY graphic but it is also poignant. No one can view this and doubt that we are dealing with a WHO and not a WHAT when it comes to the unborn.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Bishops Conference

The Pennsylvania Conference of Catholic Bishops (PCCB) issued a very good statement this week and of particular note are these pertinent paragraphs:

We wish to reiterate that the intentional destruction of innocent human life, as in abortion and euthanasia, is not just one issue among many. Time and time again, we bishops have taught that the right to life is the most basic and fundamental human right and must always be defended. Intrinsic evils can never be supported. Catholic teaching does not treat all issues as morally equivalent. The protection of human life from conception until natural death is the preeminent obligation of a truly just society.

The Catholic Church teaches a consistent ethic of life which includes important teaching also on issues of war and peace, economic justice, care of the needy and vulnerable, education, stewardship of the Lord’s creation, etc. We have a moral obligation to defend human life and dignity, to protect the poor and the vulnerable, and to work for justice and peace. At the same time, however, we must never forget the words of our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. He wrote, “Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights – for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture – is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.” (On the Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful, no. 38)

We encourage the Catholic citizens of Pennsylvania to study carefully the Church’s teaching as they prepare for Election Day. We bishops do not endorse any candidate or party. Our role is to teach and form consciences. Above all else, we seek to ensure that the message of the Gospel is heard and upheld. Many of the issues facing our nation and our Commonwealth have important moral and ethical dimensions. We urge our Catholic faithful to be informed and guided by the moral truths of our faith and to exercise faithful citizenship.


The Bishops of Dallas and Fort Worth, TX, issued a similar and equally well written
statement

Monday, October 13, 2008

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY

      

To the right of Admiral Christopher Columbus is a picture of the Columbus Chapel in Boalsburg, PA, just outside of Penn State University.  The Boal Family (founders of Boalsburg) married a direct descendant of the legendary discoverer. 

When the Quincentenary occurred in 1992, Father Ken Brighenti and I had the distinct honor and privilege of celebrating a Latin Mass (Ordinary Form) on the altar in that museum, just a few hours from my parish.  Here is what the brochure we picked up said:

Colonel Theodore Davis Boal was married to Mathilde de Lagarde, a French and Spanish woman, and a niece of the family of Christopher Columbus.  One of Mathilde's ancestors had participated in the conquest of Peru and Ecuador after Pizarro's expedition in the 16th century.  His descendants settled in Cuba, and Mathilde's mother, also named Mathilde, was born in Cienfuegos, near which the family had extensive sugar plantations.  The elder Mathilde and her sister Victoria went to stay with their relatives in Madrid, where she married Count Ludovic Denis de Lagarde and Victoria married Don Diego Columbus, direct descendant of Christopher, Discoverer of America and possessor of the family chapel, its relics and heirlooms.  When the younger Mathilde married the young American architect, Theodore Davis Boal, she brought into the family many family heirlooms.  Her aunt, Dona Victoria Columbus, died widowed and childless and left part of her estate to her niece Mathilde, notably Don Diego Columbus' Chapel.      Colonel Boal decided to bring the inheritance to the United States.  He constructed a stone chapel building on his estate, and brought from Spain to Boalsburg the entrance door and the interior of the Columbus Chapel with everything it contained--fine paneling and woodwork, the choir loft (with a great escutcheon of the Columbus family on the railing, its colored panels showing the castle of Castile, the lion of Leon, the Admiral's anchors, the islands of the Indies, and the colors of Spain with an eagle), reredos, the altar draped with fine Spanish linen and lace, the massive silver crucifix, silk and brocade vestments (one maniple is over five hundred years old), sacred church vessels, including large candlesticks, a tabernacle, chalices and a monstrance, paintings attributed to Ribera and Ambrosius Benson among others, handcarved Saints, and family swords.

Of all these heirlooms, the greatest treasure of the Chapel is contained in a silver reliquary: it consists of two pieces of the True Cross which was presented to the Columbus family by the Bishop of Leon, as certified by his signed and sealed document dated 1817, which is on display in the Columbus Family Chapel at the Boal Estate.

For Christopher Columbus buffs, the history of the original Chapel within the family is of interest.  Christopher Columbus's son and heir Diego, Admiral and Viceroy of the Indies, was better situated at court than his father, enjoyed more continuously the royal protection of Ferdinand and Isabella, and married a granddaughter of the Duke of Alba.

To the Discoverer's son fell the wealth his father had earned.  Some of the gold that began to flow from the Indies was transmuted into estates and castles--the trappings of nobility for the Columbus family.  One of the castles was in northern Spain, in the bleak mountains of Asturias, high tide of the Moorish invasion.  Amid these mountains the Moors had built a fortified round tower, which went by the name of "Llamas del Moro" (Flames of the Moor).  When the Moors had been driven out, the Spaniards added to thus rugged structure a large stone castle, two stories high, with higher square towers at each corner.

In the castle was set aside a place of devotion.  There family relics and heirlooms were kept--furnishings and family swords among religious paintings and statuary--dedicated to the glory of God and to the patron saints who had protected the Columbuses from the perils of the sea and of the New World.  Fine wood was carved and gilded, silver was wrought, and each generation added something to what might already have been preserved
there from the days and voyages of Christopher and his son Diego: the little painted statues of saints, carved of wood and embellished with glass eyes, suitable to the narrow chapel-places of the ships of discovery; the small painted wooden crosses which could be used for processions or slipped onto pikestaffs to be planted on the beaches of islands taken in the name of the Sovereigns; the admiral's desk studded with gilt cockleshells, emblematic of St. James of Compostella--a saint particularly revered by Christopher Columbus.  Such a desk could be securely locked with its great key to protect the logs of the voyages; carried ashore or from ship to ship by its strong gilded handles; or open, would provide a surface on which to write those letters the explorers and administrators sent to encourage and reassure their royal patrons.  All of these items, including the desk purported to belong to Christopher Columbus, are now located in the Columbus Family Chapel in Boalsburg.

The Chapel also contains 165,000 pages of Columbus and related family archives dating from 1451 to 1902 which have been catalogued by faculty of the Pennsylvania State University.  At the foot of the stairs to the choir loft is an intricate family tree of the descendants of Christopher Columbus.  There are also some Columbus-period memorabilia in the Boal Mansion, including a painting of Columbus' grandson, Luis Columbus, and a painting of
Queen Isabella.

 

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