What if the pope was overwhelmed by his job?

A film about a newly elected pope overwhelmed by his responsibilies is a hit in Italy, but drawing a mixed response from Catholic leaders.

The Associated Press has the story:

Director Nanni Moretti’s movie about a panic-stricken pope who can’t cope with the enormity of his task is a hit across Italy. Within the Catholic Church, the film has drawn some criticism, though not the anathema that “The Da Vinci Code” has incurred, and even a little praise.

“Habemus Papam” — Latin for “We Have a Pope,” the expression with which the election of a pontiff is announced to the world — opened April 15 to a strong showing at the Italian box office. The movie will be shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival next month.

Avvenire, the influential newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops’ conference, printed a letter by a Vatican expert last week calling for a boycott of the movie, saying “hands off the pope” and asking readers “Why should we finance those who offend our religion?”

But no such call has come from Vatican officials. And Avvenire itself said in its own review that the film is well-made and clever, though it faults Moretti for representing “the death of an old and confused church” and missing the crucial point of the church’s faith and communion with Christ.

Some Catholic commentators praised Moretti for offering a humane portrayal of a troubled pope, played by the 85-year-old French actor Michel Piccoli.

“There’s no sarcasm, no caricature,” wrote Vatican Radio.

The movie opens with scenes of a papal funeral — including footage from the real funeral of John Paul II in 2005 — and subsequent conclave. Upon his election as pontiff, the cardinal played by Piccoli panics, shouting desperately and running away as soon as the words “Habemus Papam” are pronounced from a St. Peter’s balcony to an awaiting crowd.

“A quality is seen in me which I don’t possess,” the pope tells a psychoanalyst, played by Moretti, who is brought inside the Vatican to help the paralyzed pontiff. “I can’t do it!” he screams at another point, under mounting pressure. Before long, the pope, whose identity is not yet public, escapes the Vatican and starts roaming the streets of Rome looking for answers.

Much more here.

‘The greatest temptation of my life’

Dominican Father Carleton Parker Jones (CR/Owen Sweeney III)

Dominican Father Carleton Parker Jones calls it the “greatest temptation” of his life.

It happened 21 years ago in the library of the Anglican Centre in Rome, where Father Jones was completing research for his doctoral dissertation on Blessed John Henry Newman.

Blessed Newman, an Anglican priest who was received into the Catholic Church in 1845, was one of Father Jones’ greatest heroes. Inspired by Blessed Newman’s writings, Father Jones had followed in the Englishman’s footsteps – leaving the Anglican priesthood to become a Catholic priest in 1982.

Deep in the stacks of the acclaimed library, Father Jones pulled out a first-edition of Blessed Newman’s “On the Development of Christian Faith.” It was the very work that had most inspired Father Jones to become Catholic.

As soon as the Dominican opened the volume, a letter fell from its pages. Father Jones, then a student at Rome’s Angelicum University, stooped down to pick it up. His eyes widened as he read the old letter and realized it was a hand-written, signed note from Blessed Newman to a reviewer who had written some kind words about his book.

No one was watching and no one knew the letter existed.

“I could have simply taken it and put it in my pocket and no one would have known the difference,” remembered Father Jones, now the pastor of Ss. Philip and James in Baltimore. “It’s not that I was looking to sell it and make a lot money. It was just that Newman had become so dear to me that it would have been a wonderful keepsake to have – a kind of relic.”

Father Jones stood still in the library for about a minute staring at the letter and thinking, “shall I or shan’t I?” The temptation was overwhelming.

“I can still feel it now,” the priest remembered. “I can feel the tingling in my spine as I looked at it. I wish I could have seen the expression on my face.”

Honesty triumphed and Father Jones turned the letter over to the librarian. He was rewarded with a gift of 10 books.

“I overcame the temptation by the grace of God,” Father Jones said. “I thought at the time, ‘If I steal this, it undermines all the graces I had received that brought me there.’”

Father Jones said it would have been ironic to steal something of the man who had led him into the church.

“Oh, but I struggled,” he said with a laugh. “I stood there looking at it – coveting it. I went through the whole thing!”

Click here to read about what Father Jones and the Dominicans are up to at Ss. Philip and James.

Carney parish explores Bach’s St. Matthew Passion

“Monumental” is the word often used to describe Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

Written to be performed at Good Friday services, the spiritually haunting work retells the story of Christ’s arrest, trial, crucifixion and burial as presented in St. Matthew’s Gospel. It also incorporates other poetry and chorales. 

Unveiled in 1727 at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, the composition is believed to have been performed only three other times while Bach was alive. The masterpiece was then lost to virtual obscurity until a young composer named Felix Mendelssohn revived it in 1829.

Katherine Scott, a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore who now serves as the very talented music director of St. Isaac Jogues in Carney, will lead a small faith-sharing group over the course of the next few Sundays that will explore the St. Matthew Passion. Participants will listen to and discuss the sacred music, and Scott will provide the full text and translation.

Scott said she plans to look at how Bach uses musical devices to bring out the text’s meaning.

“If you have never heard this work,” she said, “prepare to be floored!”

The discussion group will meet Sundays March 13, 20, 27, and April 3 from  7-8:30 p.m. at St. Isaac Jogues’ Cronin Center, 9215 Old Harford Road.

Gervais goes ‘nearest the knuckle’ on faith

When Ricky Gervais signed off from his caustic performance at the recent Golden Globe Awards, God was among those he thanked.  

“ Thank you to God for making me an atheist,” the comedian quipped. 

On his new CNN show, Piers Morgan challenged his fellow Brit on the comment – arguing that the joke was “nearest the knuckle” for Americans who hold faith dear. 

Check out the conversation that followed between Morgan (a self-professed Catholic) and Gervais (a self-professed atheist).

Two cuts of the interview:

Cardinal Bernardin on the silver screen

A Jesuit priest is turning the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s bestselling “The Gift of Peace” into a movie. Chicago Catholic News has the story:

After sex abuse allegations were recanted against Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in the mid-1990s — and before the cancer that would claim his life was detected — he led a powerful retreat in Mundelein.

“He was emotionally very vulnerable, and somewhat euphoric,” recalled the Rev. Michael Sparough, a Jesuit priest who attended the spiritual gathering.

“He just talked about the trauma and the nightmares he had, and how tremendously stressful this whole thing was, but how the truth was ultimately triumphant.”

“That retreat had a tremendous impact on my life.”

Now, Sparough is leading an effort to bring Bernardin’s story to the silver screen. The 60-year-old priest, who helps run a Barrington retreat center and has written a number of books, is working with two Hollywood script writers to turn Bernardin’s bestseller, The Gift of Peace, into a mainstream feature film.

It’s certainly no done deal, but Sparough said Bernardin’s successor at the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, has given him permission to turn the book into a screenplay. And Sparough believes the public is ready for a story like this.

“It’s a classic hero’s journey, and I think it’s a story that needs to be told in our time — and my hope is it’s a healing story for those who have been wounded by the Church, and a story that will remind us of some of the best parts of our Catholic tradition,” Sparough said.

In recent years, the Church has been mired in scandal over its handling of clergy sex abuse cases in the United States and around the globe. Pedophile priests were transferred rather than stripped of their duties, and allegations that children were molested often weren’t taken seriously.

The irony, Sparough said, is that Bernardin was considered by many to be ahead of his time in developing policies for dealing with problem priests. And that was before he was accused of abusing a man named Steven Cook when Cook was a student years earlier in Cincinnati.

It’s how Bernardin handled those accusations — made in 1993 and later recanted — that really define “the man, and his story and his life is really a parable of contemporary sanctity,” Sparough said.

Read the rest here.

World’s most coveted painting

Hubert Eyck/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images

NPR has an intriguing story about what might be the world’s most coveted painting.  Completed in 1432 by Jan van Eyck, the Ghent Altarpiece features panels depicting biblical themes and pilgrims adoring the Lamb of God. Throughout the centuries, it was stolen or faced the threat of theft many times. NPR spoke with Author Noah Charney, who has a new book out on the subject.

A snip:

The altarpiece was painted for the cathedral of St. Bavo, in Ghent.  And during the first century of its existence, nothing much happened.

Then, in 1566, all hell broke loose. Protestant militants broke down the cathedral doors with an improvised battering ram, intending to burn the altarpiece, which they considered to be an example of Catholic idolatry and excess. But alert Catholic guards had disassembled the enormous work and hidden it in the cathedral tower, where it survived unscathed.

Over the next few centuries, the Ghent Altarpiece was taken as booty in the Napoleonic Wars and then returned to Ghent.  Parts of it were stolen by a vicar at St. Bavo and ended up, after several sales, in a Berlin museum.

When World War I broke out, a brave cathedral canon hid the painting away in a junkman’s wagon for safety. It took the Treaty of Versailles to finally reunite all the panels in their original home.

Enduring Mystery

The Ghent Altarpiece didn’t stay safe for long. Thieves broke into the cathedral one night in 1934 and made off with the lower left panel.

“This is the enduring mystery that really is part of the popular cultural awareness of the people of Ghent still to this day,” Charney says.

The theft has never been solved. Visitors to St. Bavo Cathedral today will see a copy of the missing panel, painted during World War II. The copy is so good that many people thought it might be the original, hidden in plain sight, though recent conservation work has disproved that theory.

Raiders Of The Mystic Lamb

Missing panel and all, the Ghent Altarpiece was stolen one last time during World War II, on the orders of Nazi Gen. Hermann Goering.

“This may sound very silly,” says Charney, “but in fact, the Nazis and Hitler in particular were absolutely convinced that the occult and the supernatural was real,” and the Ghent Altarpiece was thought to be a sort of mystical treasure map showing the location of relics of Christ’s passion.

The altarpiece ended up hidden with thousands of other looted artworks in a converted salt mine in Austria. The local SS commander had wired the mine with dynamite, determined to destroy all the art as the Allies began closing in.

Charney says the Ghent Altarpiece was eventually saved through the heroism of salt miners who disabled the bombs, and the work of local Austrian resistance fighters and Allied “monuments men” whose job it was to hunt for stolen art.

Read the full story here.

A special Polish Christmas carol



If I’m counting correctly, tonight’s Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Hope in Dundalk will mark the 20th time I’ve had the honor of serving as organist for the joyful Christmas liturgy. People of all ages will crowd into the contemporary-styled church, which is usually dimmed slightly and illuminated with flickering candles and glowing Christmas lights. The effect is warm and almost otherworldly.

In front of the ambo, figures of Joseph and Mary will stand next to a hay-strewn manger bearing the newborn Christ child. The Magi statues will be placed on the other side of the church, symbolically traveling toward the holy scene before arriving on the Epiphany. 

Tonight, there will be a certain formula we dare not break in the singing of the carols. Expect to hear ”O Come All Ye Faithful,” ”Away in a Manger,” “Silent Night,” and “Joy to the World” – in that order.

But there’s another, less familiar song I’ve added to the repertoire.

As a postlude, I always pull out the stops and fill the massive worship space with a lilting Polish carol, “Dzisiaj w Betlejem” – “Today in Bethlehem.”  Nearly every year I’ve played the charmingly simple song, a gentleman approaches me after Mass and thanks me for highlighting his favorite Polish carol. He presses a $20 bill into my hand despite my protests.

“Dzisiaj w Betlejem” holds a special place in my heart, too.

Growing up in a Polish and Czech family, it was one of the kolendy – carols – we heard every Christmas season. It became an even more important song more than a decade ago when my mother was battling the last stages of cancer.

On the Christmas of 1998, my mom only had a few weeks left to live. She slept almost constantly in the hospital bed we set up in her bedroom, relying on morphine to manage the pain. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she would speak of seeing long-gone relatives and would sometimes talk in the Polish tongue she remembered from her youth.

On that Christmas Day, I set up a speaker in her room to let her hear an album of kolendy that included “Dzisiaj w Betlejem.” I don’t know if she was aware of the music, but I like to think it may have lifted her spirits in some way and brought her some sense of peace.

When I play that tune tonight, I will be thinking of my mom and all those who have lost loved ones this year. My prayer is that no matter what you are going through in life, the Prince of Peace will bring you comfort.

In the words of Dzisiaj w Betlejem’s refrain:

Angels are singing, Kings gifts are bringing, Shepherds are praying, Cattle are kneeling; To the little Jesus, To the Son of Mary who this day is born to us!

Have a blessed Christmas, everyone!  Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia!

Sister Wendy speaks

Ever since she appeared in a BBC documentary on the National Gallery 19 years ago, Sister Wendy Beckett has taken the art world by storm. A familiar face on PBS, the surprisingly straight-talking contemplative nun is well-known for her unique insights into art and art history. 

Sister Wendy is the author of more than 25 books, including one on the Nativity containing more than 40 paintings that illustrate events leading up to and including the birth of Jesus. The book also highlights moments from Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

The Telegraph has an interesting Q&A with the 80-year-old nun.

Some snips:

Solitary life: This is the greatest imaginable bliss. It wasn’t only that I wanted a contemplative life; I needed it. I am one of those inadequate people who can’t sustain the level of prayer and self-sacrifice that religious life asks, unless I have hours alone with God. But I am not totally alone. Once a day the sister who looks after me brings my post and gives me any messages. If there are practical matters to be seen to (I am a sadly impractical woman), she solves them. The day is surely coming when age and infirmity will make it impossible to live alone. I don’t worry about this because it’s all part of God’s plan.

Television career: Nuns have to earn their living and I earned mine by doing medieval Latin translation. But I became unwell and asked the Mother Prioress if I could look at art until I felt better. Then I realised there are no livings to be earned by merely looking, so I decided to write a book, which drew the attention of the BBC. This is how my television career began.

Christmas: My Christmas is a deeply privileged one and I spend it in silence marvelling at God’s goodness. I don’t put up decorations, wrap presents or attend a Christmas dinner (though I delight in giving and receiving cards). The high point is the high point of every day – attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist. This sacrament is Christmas in essence: God giving Himself, us receiving Him and being changed.

Read more here.

John Philip Sousa couldn’t say no

A tapestry at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore commemorates a performance by John Philip Sousa in the 1880s. The concert benefitted a new Baltimore hospital built by the Sisters of Mercy. (Mercy Medical Center Photo/Kevin Parks)

Nuns with a good cause are generally unstoppable.

Consider this fascinating story I learned Dec. 9 while on a media tour of Mercy Medical Center’s new $400 million Mary Catherine Bunting Center in Baltimore.

Back in the 1880s, when the Sisters of Mercy were building a new hospital in Baltimore, someone suggested they book John Philip Sousa and his U.S. Marine Band for a fundraising fair. The famed composer and “master of the march” was the Bono of his day, drawing huge crowds across the country for concerts.

The nuns hatched a plan to travel to Washington, D.C., where they intended to meet President Grover Cleveland and ask his permission for Sousa and his band to appear at the fair.

Sister Mary Borgia Leonard, one of the nuns who traveled to the capital, wrote in a letter that the sisters departed from Calvert Station in Baltimore without a clue as to how they would secure a meeting with the president.

The sisters somehow managed to get into the White House, where Sister Mary Borgia reported that a “liveried brass-buttoned official” informed them that the president was “out riding” and that it would be impossible to see him. Another official later suggested they consult the Secretary of the Navy, helping them set up the meeting.

Sister Mary Borgia wrote that the secretary “listened attentively to our story and responded to our request without the least hesitation.”

Sousa performed on the opening night of the Baltimore fair, helping the sisters raise an astounding sum of $20,000 – the equivalent of about $440,000 in today’s dollars.

Sousa once said that “sincere composers believe in God.” Sounds like they also believe in God’s nuns.

‘Christ has no hands but ours’

It is said that after German bombers destroyed an English cathedral during the Second World War, dedicated volunteers worked to repair one of the church’s broken statues of Christ. Rather than restore the figure’s missing hands, the artisans left Christ handless – replacing the artwork’s “Come unto Me” inscription with “Christ has no hands but ours.”

While the authenticity of that popular story is a matter for debate, the message it conveys is not: Christians are called to be Christ’s presence in the world today.

Priests carry out that call in a special way – celebrating Mass, anointing the sick, absolving sins, helping the poor and serving in ways that often go unnoticed and unappreciated.

Stephen Golder Photo

Stephen Golder, a photographer who lives in Georgia, recently completed a powerful project focused solely on the hands of priests.

With the blessing of leaders of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Catholic convert devoted seven months to following priests in northern Georgia, photographing their hands as a project for the recently completed Year for Priests.

Stephen Golder Photo

As you can see from the photos posted in this blog, the results are stunning.

Here’s how Golder describes the effort:

Stephen Golder Photo

Photographing these hands, especially focusing in detail on the movements and images of the Eucharist, has left us properly awestruck at the incredible beauty of our faith.

It is our hope that these images will remind the faithful of the enormous gifts our priests bring to us: not only Christ in the Eucharist, but Christ in all they do.

 

Deacon Greg Kandra, author The Deacon’s Bench, was probably the first to call national attention to this innovative effort. He met with the photographer, who convinced the good deacon to allow his own hands to be photographed as well.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote a prayer that seems to fit perfectly with Golder’s design:

Christ has no body now on earth , but yours,
No hands but yours,
No feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now. Amen.

Stephen Golder Photo