What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

It was a thoroughly awful day today, long and difficult.  There have been a lot of reasons to be "down" (not a few of them on this blog, as it turns out).  I actually got myself a little bit of "comfort food" on the way home this evening, and then looking at it lost my appetite – that’s the sort of day it has been.

Then, out of the blue, I got an e-mail note that a kind reader had made a donation using the button on the left bar.  Then I got a phone call via my WIFI internet phone from my editor who had with sharp-eyes found a really tricky typo, thus demonstrating that the system really works.  Then, well, a couple other small things.

Not world-changing things perhaps, but in their own moments helpful. 

As a follow up to my comments on schism in another entry, I found this in the blog of First Things (my emphasis):

I will take up this distinction a bit further below, but I first need to take up the case of Lefebvrism, which can perhaps illuminate my point better than I have so far been able to do. On that issue, I see no substantive difference between myself and Stephen Barr, as he too declines to tar them with the charge of heresy, and for reasons he too can’t quite put into words. For those like me and Dr. Barr, who don’t quite know how to categorize Lefebvrism, Pope John Paul II comes to our rescue here. In his officially promulgated Apostolic Letter, Ecclesia Dei, given on the occasion of Archbishop Lefebvre’s unlawful and schismatic ordination of four bishops on June 29, 1988, in Écone, Switzerland, the pope magisterially declares:

The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, “comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on.” (Emphases in the original.)

Ironically, it is out of precisely that defective understanding that the Lefebvrists were led to accuse the popes of heresy. But their own positive assertions of doctrine are not so much wrong per se (the way Haight’s are) as they are defective. In that regard, there are also many crypto-Lefebvrists inside the Catholic Church, among whom I would include–and their name is legion–any and all self-styled traditionalists who haven’t bothered to learn the tradition they claim to be defending. They take a snapshot, so to speak, of some period of church history and then judge all that follows as heretical.

But history always defeats them; and I mean by that not just the movement of history forward in time but also the study of past history. In a famous observation in his Essay on Development Cardinal Newman said that “To be deep into history is to cease to be a Protestant.” Whether or not he was being fair to the Protestantism of his time, I cannot judge. So let me revise his line for the contemporary intra-Catholic scene: To be deep into history is to cease to be a Lefebvrist, a crypto-Lefebvrist–or a Pitstickian.

St. Josephine Bakhita is a truly amazing saint.  I wrote about here last year and represent that entry here with changes.  Check out a biography of her here. 

Let’s get right into a primary text.

Here is a quote from St. Josephine about her life as a slave:

"One day I unwittingly made a mistake that incensed the master’s son. He became furious, snatched me violently from my hiding place, and began to strike me ferociously with the lash and his feet. Finally he left me half dead, completely unconscious. Some slaves carried me away and lay me on a straw mat, where I remained for over a month. ...

A woman skilled in this cruel art [tattooing] came to the general’s house…our mistress stood behind us, whip in hand. The woman had a dish of white flour, a dish of salt and a razor… When she had made her patterns; the woman took the razor and made incisions along the lines. Salt was poured into each of the wounds… My face was spared, but 6 patterns were designed on my breasts, and 60 more on my belly and arms. I thought I would die, especially when salt was poured in the wounds…it was by a miracle of God I didn’t die. He had destined me for better things."

About her tormentors she would say:

"If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and Religious today…"

Can we know what God has in mind for us through the sufferings he permits us to endure?  From the fall of our first parents we were given a Redeemer who would not only take our human nature into a bond with His divinity, who would not only teach us His images who we are by His words and deeds among us, but would also die upon the Cross and then rise gloriously to new life. 

Some of you might not have access to the proper prayer for this wonderful modern saint.  Here is the …

COLLECT:
Deus, qui beatam Iosephinam a servitute abiecta,
ad dignitatem filiae tuae et Christi sponsae adduxisti,
da nobis, quaesumus, eius exemplo,
Dominum Iesum crucifixum constanti dilectione prosequi
et in caritate ad misericordiam propensos perseverare.

The prayer is clearly a modern composition and lacks the austere concision of ancient collects.  It is still a nice prayer. 

The tricky word here is propensos from propendeo.  If we can’t get this word right, nothing happens correctly in the last part of the prayer.  Propendeo basically means "to hang forth or forward, hang down".  However, it comes also to mean, "to be well disposed, favorable", "to be inclined".  This gives us the adjective prō-pensus , a, um.  This means that we are asking God to make us to be people who are propensi.  This is the tricky part.  We must have here something like "grant to us… (to be) well-disposed (nos esse propensos) to persevere…".   

LITERAL RENDERING:
O God, who brought blessed Josephine out of abject servitude
unto the dignity of Your daughter and a spouse of Christ,
grant us, we beseech You, by her example,
to follow the crucified Lord Jesus with constant love
and to be well disposed to persevere in charity unto mercy.

Our sometime poster "Don Marco" had his version, posted elsewhere on this blog:

O God, who led Saint Josephine
from abject slavery
to the dignity of being your daughter and the bride of Christ,
give us, we beseech you, by her example,
to follow after Jesus the Crucified Lord with unremitting love
and, in charity, to persevere in a ready mercy.

If anyone one else wants to jump in on this, feel free to do so.

I tip my biretta to participant Steven  o{]:¬)  for the link to an article in Die Tagespost.  Regina Einig interviewed His Eminence Darío Card. Castrillón Hoyos.  The text is in German.  I don’t have time to translate it for you, but here are some observations.

The interview doesn’t give us anything new or concrete about details or dates of an Indult.  You must read between the lines to get the little that is here. 

Einig, the interviewer, asks pointed questions which assume that there is an Indult coming. Card. Castrillón dodges answering the questions directly.  What you can get out of Card. Castrillón’s non-answers is that the Indult exists and that Benedict XVI wants to do something.

For example, Einig asks pointedly about the Indult several times.  The Cardinal answers without in any way saying that there is no Indult.  He accepts the word Indult each time, but then says precisely nothing about it.

On the other hand, His Eminence does make a few puzzling statements toward the end. 

He states fairly strongly that, while Archbishop Lefebvre committed a schismatic act by consecrating bishops without permission of the Holy See, the bishops, priests and faithful of the SSPX are not schismatics. 

With all due respect to His Eminence, I would like to be instructed about how accepting ordination from a bishop (consecrated during an act of schism) who is suspended and excommunicated, taking orders from him and receiving money from him for your service is not, in fact, adherence to schism. 

Adherence to schism incurs excommunication.

Yet, Card. Castrillón says that priests and faithful are not excommunicated.

I remain bewildered.

I don’t think we can easily work out under what circumstances lay people adhere to schism, but I think it is somewhat easier to work that out in the case of their clerics for the reasons I mentioned.

In any event, while His Eminence says there is no schism, he does fear schism, and thinks there is danger of one: "Die Gefahr eines Schismas ist groß, etwa durch systematischen Ungehorsam gegenüber dem Heiligen Vater oder durch Leugnen seiner Autorität."  So, if you do not submit to the Roman Pontiff, you are in schism?

This begs a question: can we erase what John Paul II wrote in the 1988 M.P. "Ecclesia Dei adflicta" just because we are trying to change the tone?  Apparently.  Pope John Paul II thought it was a schism.*  Was it or wasn’t it? Benedict XVI has not pronounced anything new on the issue. 

Maybe that is what is holding up the documents we look forward too: if you are writing to prevent a schism you write one thing, but if you are trying to heal one that exists, you write other things.  Fundamental starting points must be hammered out before you can craft the proper response.  You don’t treat gangrene as if it were a sprain.

All in all the interview does not give us new information, but it signals Card. Castrillón’s desire to resolve the situation as soon as possible.  The fact that he is speaking to the press is very positive.

*"In itself, this act [the consecration by Lefevbre] was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience – which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act." ["Ecclesia Dei adflicta" 3.]