Almighty Questions ... and Answers

The Edinburgh Catholic Chaplaincy blog is open again to anybody who wants to 'corner a cleric' and put a question. See what it is about at

http://almightyanswers.blogspot.com/

We are told by Father Bruno Clifton, assistant chaplain, that people can also email questions to

almighty.answers@gmail.com

Year of the Priest - Polish Friar Honoured

Armistice Day is also the day that the Polish nation commemorates the anniversary of Poland's assumption of independent statehood in 1918, after 123 years of partition by Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia. This year the square in front of St. Giles Church in Krakow was dedicated in honor of fr. Adam Studzinski, O.P., a late friar of the Polish Province.

Born in 1911, fr. Adam was ordained in 1937 and served as a chaplain to the Polish Army during the Second World War, first in Palestine and then in the Italian campaign, including the infamous Battle of Monte Cassino. His courage and service led to him being awarded several Polish and British state and military honours, including the Cross of Valour, the Virtuti Militari, Cross of Merit with Swords, and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Reborn Poland.

After the War he returned to Krakow and coordinated the renovations of the Dominican monastery and St. Giles Catholic Church. During the years he remained active in veterans' organizations and in Polish scouting. In 2006, he was promoted to the rank of general in the Polish Army. Fr. Adam died in 2008 at the age of 97. H/T to our brothers in the Province of St. Joseph

Adam Studzinski O.P. (1911-2008)

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed,

through the mercy of God,

rest in peace,

Amen.

Saints This Month - 16 November: St Lucia Brocadelli of Narni

A few years ago I was on a retreat at a monastery where the martyrology was read in Latin during lunch. On my second day there one of the names read was Lucia De Narnia, which resulted, due to my appreciation of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles, in me choking on my leek and potato soup! Saint Lucy, of course, did not hail from the mythical land Narnia but from Narni, a town in Umbria, Italy. My confusion however is not just a question of falling foul of a homonym. It has been suggested that this saint was a source of inspiration for Lewis and that the character Lucy, a girl that believes and can see many things that other people cannot see, is a tribute to this Dominican saint.

For Lucia had many visions and they began at an early age. When she was only five years old, she had a vision of the Virgin Mary. Two years later, she had another vision, this time of the Virgin Mary accompanied by Saint Dominic. Dominic is said to have given her the scapular at this time. When she was twelve years old, Lucy made a private vow of chastity, and determined to become a Dominican nun but her path to the cloister was certainly not easy.

Her father died when she was thirteen and she was entrusted to the care of an uncle. This uncle determined that the best course of action would be to get Lucia married as quickly as possible.He made several attempts to do so. One of these included holding a large family party. He had invited to the party the man he had chosen as Lucia's husband, with the intention of having the couple publicly betrothed. However he had not informed Lucia of his intentions. The suitor made an attempt to put a ring on her finger, only to be slapped repeatedly for his efforts by Lucia.

Later, Count Pietro de Alessio of Milan began to seek the hand of Lucia. She was rather taken by him but felt her earlier vow to become a nun did not allow her to enter into a marriage. She then had a vision of the Virgin, St Dominic and St Catherine in which they advised Lucia to contract a legal marriage to Pietro, but to explain that her vow of virginity would have to be respected and not violated. Pietro agreed to the terms, and the marriage was formalized.

As the new mistress of the Count's household Lucia had to manage many servants and a busy social calendar. She however made a great effort to instruct the servants in the faith and carry out acts of charity for the poor. The servants claimed that SS Catherine, Agnes, and Agnes of Montepulciano helped her make the bread she gave to the hungry. Her quirks became too much for her husband and he had her locked away for the bulk of one Lenten season. She was only visited by servants who brought her food. When Easter arrived, however, she managed to escape from Pietro back to her mother's house and on May 8 1494 she became a Dominican tertiary. Pietro expressed his disapproval of this in a rather dramatic form, by burning down the monastery of the Prior who had given her the habit!

The following year she joined a house of Dominican tertiaries in Rome and was then sent by her superiors to Viterbo. During her time here she received the stigmata. Lucia did her best to hide these marks but was frequently in spiritual ecstasy. This resulted in a steady stream of visitors who came to speak to, and often just look at her. The other nuns became concerned about her, and at one point called in the local bishop who watched Lucia go through the drama of the Passion for twelve hours straight. The bishop would not make a decision on Lucia and called in the local Inquisition who found no case against her. Her husband came to make a final plea with her to return to him but she declined and he finally accepted her will. He himself would later enter the Franciscan order and become a renowned preacher.

Lucia however was still at the centre of conflict. The Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d'Este I, was determined to build a convent in Ferrara and was determined that Lucia would be its prioress. In the summer of 1497 he invited her to be the founder of this new monastery. Lucia, the Dominican order, and the Pope all agreed quickly to the new proposal. The municipal council of Viterbo, however, objected, not wanting to lose Lucia. Lucia had already been praying for some time for a way to create a new convent of strict observance and agreed to go to the new convent but once again this would not be an easy ride.

On April 15 1499 Lucia escaped secretly from Viterbo and was officially received in Ferrara on May 7 1499. Thirteen young girls immediately applied for admission to her new community. The Duke petitioned the local bishop for some help for Lucia in governing her new community and he sent ten nuns from another community to join Lucia's convent. Unfortunately, these ten nuns were members of the Dominican second order, who were canonically permitted to wear black veils, something Lucia and the members of the Dominican third order community were not allowed to do. Tensions were heightened when one of these veiled outsiders, Sister Maria da Parma, was made the prioress of the convent on September 2 1503.

When Duke Ercole died on January 24 1505, the new prioress quickly found Lucia to be guilty of some unrecorded transgression, most probably of support for Savonarola's Church reform, and placed her on a strict penance. Lucia was not allowed to speak to any person but her confessor, who was chosen by the prioress. The local provincial of the Dominican order would also not permit any member of the order to see Lucia. There are records that at least one Dominican, Catherine of Racconigi, did visit her, evidently by bilocation, and that Lucia's earlier visits from departed saints continued. In response to Lucia's insistent prayer, her stigmata eventually disappeared, which caused some of the other nuns to question whether they had ever been there at all. When Lucia finally died in 1544, many people were surprised to realise that she had not died years earlier.

Suddenly everything changed. When her body was laid out for burial so many people wanted to pay their last respects that her funeral had to be delayed for three days. Her tomb in the monastery church was opened four years later and her perfectly preserved body was transferred to a glass case. When Napoleon suppressed her monastery in 1797 the body was transferred, first to the cathedral of Ferrara and, on May 26 1935, to the cathedral of Narni. Lucia was beatified by Pope Clement XI in 1710.

Fra Bartolomeo O.P.

Born in 1483 in Tuscany the young Bartolomeo di Pagholo displayed a keen eye and skill as an artist. He impressed the sculptor Benedetto da Maiano, who recommended him to the painter Cosimo Rosselli. Rosselli accepted Bartolomeo as an apprentice in his Florence workshop. During his time in Florence Bartolomeo was attracted to the teachings of the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced much of the art of the time as corrupt, indulgent and vain, and stated that the main purpose of art was to educate the illiterate in the faith. Bartolomeo painted the most famous portrait of Savonarola before the latter's downfall in 1498. In 1500 Bartolomeo renounced his craft and entered the Dominican priory of San Marco in Florence, which less that fifty years before had been the home of Bl. Guido di Pietro, more commonly known as Fra Angelico.

He would not lift a brush again until 1504, when under obedience to the Prior, he headed the convent's workshop and began to work on a piece for the Bianco family chapel showing the vision of St Bernard. In 1507 the young Raphael befriended him and taught him perspective. Between 1508 and 1513 he travelled from Florence to Venice, Lucca and Rome to work on numerous commissions, including some fine altar pieces at St. Martin's Cathedral in Lucca.

He returned to Florence and created what is considered his masterpiece, St Mark the Evangelist at Palazzo Pitti. He also did some frescoes at the Dominican house of Pian di Mugnone. He died in 1517 in Florence.

Another Use for Baseball Grounds

As the Baseball World Series is played out between the Yankees and the Phillies and the season come to an end, Pat McNamara, the Church historian and archivist, has just concluded his "Baseball Picture of the Week" series on his excellent blog. His final picture shows a Holy Name Rally from the 1940s taking place at Ebbets Field, the old Brooklyn Dodgers stadium, in New York.

From its earliest days the Order of Preachers has had a devotion to the Holy Name. In 1274 Pope Gregory X asked the Order to preach devotion to it. It was ordained that in every Dominican church an altar of the Holy Name should be erected, and that societies or confraternities under the title and invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus should be established. St. Peter Martyr, John of Vercelli, a successor of St. Dominic, Blessed Ambrose of Siena and Blessed Henry Suso were all great propagators of this devotion.

In the twentieth century this zeal continued as can be seen in this picture. The rally pictured was an annual event often attracting over 100,000 people. The event was organised by the Province of St. Joseph and it is very apt that one of the friars should lead Bishop Thomas E. Molloy into the field to begin the rally.

Beware the Litanies of the Dominicans!

On the twenty-first of February 2009 an email was circulated from Father Augustine Di Noia OP, then under-secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asking all Dominicans to pray the Litany of Dominican Saints from February 22 (the Feast of the Chair of St Peter) through March 25 (the Solemnity of the Annunciation) for an at-the-time undisclosed intention. On the twenty-first of October this email was sent by Archbishop Di Noia (as he is now):

Today there was announced -- at press conferences in Rome and London -- the forthcoming publication of an apostolic constitution in which the Holy Father allows for the creation of personal ordinariates for groups of Anglicans in different parts of the world who are seeking full communion with the Catholic Church. The canonical structure of the personal ordinariate will permit this corporate reunion while at the same time providing for retention of elements of Anglican liturgy and spirituality.

When I asked the members of the Dominican family to pray the Dominican litany from 22 February to 25 March earlier this year, the intention was that this proposal would receive the approval of the cardinal members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which was necessary if the proposal of some structure allowing for corporate reunion was to go forward. Our prayers at that time were answered, and now that the proposal has become a reality we can tell everyone what we were praying for then.

Fraternally,
+Abp. J Augustine Di Noia, OP

This is not the first time that the Dominican Litany of the Saints has proved a powerful prayer. In 1254 the Order came into conflict with Pope Innocent IV, after it would not give up the Priory in Genoa for the Pope's family to build a fortress on the site. The Pope was angered by the perceived ingratitude of the Order, as he had defended it against attacks from certain members of the secular clergy of the time and had entrusted it with missions to the Mongols. Encouraged by some anti-mendicant Cardinals, the Pope began to restrict the work of the Order in France, including removing friars from the University of Paris. Fearing the suppression of the entire Order, the friars began to pray the litany for the protection of the Order and its work.

On November 21, 1254, Innocent IV signed a decree rescinding all the privileges of the Order of Preachers, and instead forbidding all Dominicans to receive any lay person in their churches on Sundays and holidays, to preach in their churches on other days before the Solemn Mass in the local diocesan parish church, to preach in an episcopal town if the bishop was to preach there that day, or to hear anyone's confession without the permission of the penitent's pastor.

On that same day, one of the Cardinals, who had been instrumental in the formation of the decree and sought further restrictions, fell down some stairs and died of his injuries. That night Pope Innocent IV suffered a stroke and was paralysed. He died sixteen day later and was succeeded by Alexander IV, who on December 24, the 38th anniversary of the Order's approval by Honorius III, removed all of the restrictions on the Order.

The Friars had been obedient to the Pontiff throughout this trial, yet they put their faith in the Lord and continued to pray the litany. The rather sudden demise of their opponents and the fast reversal of policy, led to the emergence of the following expression: "Beware the Litanies of the Dominicans!" The Litany is recommended as a Novena in especially critical circumstances and can be found here.