Richard Chonak – Page 3 – Catholic Light

Heraldic question

This evening I took a look at heraldist Fr. Guy Selvester’s blog Exarandorum, which shows examples of heraldry in the coats of arms of bishops, parishes, and dioceses.

To start with, the posts tagged with the label “Bad Heraldry” are particularly educational for an uninstructed person such as myself, and some are a bit amusing. They remind me of the classic site “Web Pages That Suck”, which helped readers learn good design by looking at examples of bad design.

The most recent posting by Fr. Selvester is not a case of Bad anything. It is the noted artist Marco Foppoli’s rendering of a new coat of arms for Bishop-elect Steven Lopes. He was recently appointed by Pope Francis to lead the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, the diocese-like structure for Catholics of Anglican heritage in the United States.

It took me a minute or so to get the symbols: the wolf for the surname, because “Lopes” (a Portuguese name) is derived from Latin lupus; and the crown for his Christian name Steven, since a crown is a stephanos in Greek. A tidy use of symbols!

Are there any readers with an interest in heraldry who could tell me what are the objects to the left and right of the crown?

While Bishop-elect Lopes is a worthy candidate for the office, I do think that some bishops ought to depict a wolf on their coats of arms, whether it’s historically justified or not, just as a matter of Truth In Labeling.

The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod

In 2010, Pope Benedict spoke these words as part of his homily at Holy Mass for the conclusion of the Year for Priests:

“Your rod and your staff – they comfort me”: the shepherd needs the rod as protection against savage beasts ready to pounce on the flock; against robbers looking for prey. Along with the rod there is the staff which gives support and helps to make difficult crossings. Both of these are likewise part of the Church’s ministry, of the priest’s ministry. The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod, the rod with which he protects the faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the flock astray. The use of the rod can actually be a service of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted and chipped away, as if it were something that we ourselves had invented. As if it were no longer God’s gift, the precious pearl which we cannot let be taken from us. Even so, the rod must always become once again the shepherd’s staff – a staff which helps men and women to tread difficult paths and to follow the Lord.

At a time when some proposals would falsify the faith, when the faith is chipped away, and when some shepherds are tempted to leave the flock to the wolves without warning them, this counsel from Benedict XVI seems worth recalling.

Lots of blame for the Pope, but no praise

Where are the praises? Where are the bouquets?

The other day we heard from people who blew their stack over the Pope Francis spoken-word-with-pop-music recording made by some record producer.

One Catholic writer reacted on Facebook with one word: “Sick.” A non-Catholic musician heard a Latin Gregorian chant text sung over some drab rock music, and wrote to me to call it “satanic”, and to say that it put a stop to his interest in joining the Church. Other people insisted that this horrible thing was an “official Vatican project” and that the Pope was personally responsible for it.

Really, it was no big deal: adding pop music to papal speeches is just something goofy that happens every few years over in Italy. Here you can listen to samples of the big-name Sony Classical recording of Pope John Paul II’s words similarly adorned with pop music.

But what will the overreacting critics say now? The Sistine Chapel Choir — a real institution of the Holy See — has issued a recording of Renaissance sacred music with some Gregorian chant, and the launch event included the presence of the prefect of the papal household. Following their own logic, those critics ought to be walking on air, saying that Pope Francis is personally responsible for fostering this worthy project. (Audio samples here.)

But they’re quiet now.

The thing that is really a bit sickly is when people are so dispirited about the Pope that they overreact to trivial news stories and jump to ridiculous conclusions.

A hymn for marriage cases

In the wake of Pope Francis’ two motus proprio reforming the procedures for annulment cases, I realized that what this topic needs is a good hymn. Or a bad hymn. Something.

A colleague supplied the first line (a bit irreverent in its wording, admittedly) and chose a tune (ABBOTS LEIGH):

Frank, you give the great annulment;
Loose the bond and set me free
My old marital involvement
Kept me in captivity
Once a wedding, now a burden
Doubtful in validity
By your new procedures promise
Judgment of its nullity.

Once I was her perfect hero,
Once she was my perfect peach:
Now our love has gone to zero;
We found lawyers, one for each.
Civil courts dissolved our contract
setting us at liberty:
By your new procedures promise
Judgment of its nullity.

[At this point, modulate up a half-step, please, and add a treble descant:]

Change, I’m told, is always nifty,
And applying isn’t hard:
Fees are but a dollar-fifty
while the form fits on a card.
Past constraint will be forgotten
When that e-mail comes to me;
By your new procedures promise
Judgment of its nullity.

Has CDF decided?

Vatican-watcher Gianluca Barile says that CDF has held a meeting and reached conclusions about the Medjugorje case, to be presented to Pope Francis. How reliable this is: we don’t know yet. (The translation is mine.)

Medjugorje: the Vatican rejects the apparitions and isolates the seers
by Gianluca Barile
http://www.gianlucabarile.it/?p=518

The only concession, for Medjugorje, recognized as a place of prayer, is because God knows how to reap where he does not sow, explained the Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, during the Plenary of the Congregation which met yesterday to express itself on the alleged apparitions of our Lady to the six “seers” of this little locality in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who say they have received messages periodically from the “Gospa” for 34 years in a row. As for the remainder, the judgment of the former Holy Office, which expressed itself on the basis of the final report of the “Ruini Commission”, established by Benedict XVI to shed light precisely on this phenomenon, was absolutely negative. For the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, indeed the “apparitions” do not consist of anything supernatural, so the faithful have been forbidden to take part in the “ecstasies” of the six “seers” and the latter have been prohibited to disclose the texts of the messages which they might receive from our Lady. Another NO regards the parish of Medjugorje, under the title of St. James, which will not become a Marian shrine, as the six “seers” themselves apparently had wished. But that’s not all: Bishops may not welcome the “seers” into their dioceses for public meetings and testimonies, as has happened up to today, but are limited to providing accompaniment, by a priest, for pilgrims who travel to Medjugorje. Pilgrims themselves who go to Medjugorje, will not be permitted to recognize, by their presence, the authenticity of the apparitions and are to avoid any contact with the “seers”, concentrating only on prayer and approaching the Sacraments. But why so much severity on the Vatican’s part? First of all, due to the theological inconsistency of the messages, then because of the economic interest of the “seers” who have invested in inns and travel agencies, and hence due to the rivalry which has divided some of them, and for the disobedience shown both toward the bishop of Mostar, their Diocese, and toward the Pope who, by means of the “Ruini Commission”, ordered them in vain to present the ten secrets which they allegedly received from the “Gospa”. One of the key aspects which impelled the Vatican to use the iron fist, is precisely that of money: true seers have never been seen making money from their own apparitions. On this point, it’s only right to ask: do the six “seers” of Medjugorje maintain that they see and speak with our Lady because the alleged apparitions are real, or only to attract a greater number of pilgrims to travel with their agencies and make reservations in their inns? The last word is waiting for Pope Francis, who will shortly issue an appropriate decree, but it is hard to think that the Pontiff could change the conclusions of CDF, especially because he himself, several times, has shown, more or less evidently, his own scepticism about the goodness of what is happening at Medjugorje. So things are headed toward a noisy signal of black smoke.