Monthly Archives: June 2017

Pope: make sure heart pulsates with Holy Spirit

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By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) –  Never speak, act or make a decision without first listening to the Holy Spirit, who moves, troubles and inspires the heart, Pope Francis advised.
A cold and calculating heart that is closed to the Holy Spirit results in a faith that is “ideological,” he said May 29 during a morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
Knowing God and his commandments, and being good are not enough, the pope said. One must also receive God’s gift of the Holy Spirit and let him “trouble” the heart.
If people were to get a “spiritual electrocardiogram,” the pope asked, would it be flatlined because the heart is hardened, unmoved and emotionless or would it be pulsating with the prompting and prods of the Spirit?  
“Am I able to listen him? Am I able to ask for his inspiration before making a decision or saying something or doing something? Or is my heart serene, without emotion, an immobile heart,” much like the doctors of the law had, he asked.
“They believed in God, they knew all the commandments, but the heart was closed, immobile, they didn’t let it become troubled,” the pope said.
A Christian cannot just listen to their head and calculated reason, he said. They must learn to listen and discern what the Holy Spirit is saying to their hearts, too, “because the Holy Spirit is the master of discernment.”
“A person who does not have this movement in the heart, who doesn’t discern what is happening, is a person who has a cold faith, an ideological faith,” he said.
The pope asked people to reflect on their relationship with the Holy Spirit and pray that the Spirit guide them in the choices they make. “I ask that he give me the grace to distinguish the good from the less good because good can be distinguished from evil easily,” the pope said.
At morning Mass the next day, May 30, Pope Francis reflected on how pastors and bishops must be ready to leave their flock and follow God’s call to head somewhere completely unknown.
A real pastor, he said, knows how to let go of the church he once served because he knows he is not the protagonist or “central focus of the story.”
He must see his life as having no importance to himself, and do everything to serve God and his people “without compromise” and with courage, the pope said.
Priests and bishops must be open to and obey the Holy Spirit because “the pastor knows that he is on a journey.”
Ministers will be like Paul, who was called to leave the church at Ephesus and head to Jerusalem, where “what will happen there I do not know,” except that he had been warned hardships and trouble would await him.
Every apostle of Christ must guide his flock without compromise, being ready to leave everything behind and head into the unknown, the pope said. He always must serve the people without ever misleading or improperly using them by making them think he is the “central focus of the story.”
A pastor who does not learn to leave his post well does not have a good relationship with his flock and has formed “a bond that is not purified by the cross of Jesus,” the pope said.

Death as ‘going on ahead’

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IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“I go on ahead to prepare a place for you!” Jesus speaks those words to his disciples on the eve of his death as he sits at table with them and senses their sadness as they grapple with his dying, his going away. His words are meant to console them and give them the assurance that they aren’t being abandoned. It’s just that he is going on ahead to prepare a place for them to come and join him later.
That story speaks to me very personally because of how one of my sisters died. She was young, the mother of a large family and seemingly too young to leave her young children behind. She was dying of a cancer that, while relentlessly doing its deadly work, mercifully left her relatively pain-free and clear in mind and heart to the very end. The cancer eventually took her to a point where she could no longer eat, but could still be nourished for a time by intravenous transfusions. But these too eventually no longer worked and, once unhooked from the intravenous needles, she was told that she had roughly a week still to live. She chose to spend those last days in a hospital rather than at home, with her family having easy, 24-hour, access to her hospice bed.
The days leading up to her death were a sacred time. I took her communion several days before she died and, with her head still very clear, she told me what I should say at her funeral liturgy. She had chosen that exact text where Jesus, on the night before he dies, tells his heavy-hearted disciples that he is going ahead, to prepare a place for them. She shared how, before every one of her children was born, before she went to the hospital to give birth, she had carefully prepared everything at home for the new arrival, the crib, the diapers, the clothing, the room. She brought each of her children home to a place she had carefully prepared. And now she was going on ahead of them again, to prepare another place for them.
I preached those words at her funeral and despite our grief and despite the fact that in moments like these there is nothing really that can be said that takes away the pain, her raw testimony of faith left us with an image that placed us all, not least her husband and children, inside a bigger story, a faith-narrative, that highlighted two things.
First, the image of her going on ahead of her children awakened our grieving faith to the truth that a mother can go on ahead to prepare a place for her children in much deeper ways than simply bringing a new-born home from a hospital. Second, her “going ahead” was also showing her children and the rest of us, how to die, how to do that act that we all someday must do. After you watch a good person die, you become less afraid to die yourself because you see how it can be done in an ordinary way, by an ordinary person, in a way that you can also do. In her dying, she prepared a place for us.
But this isn’t a lesson only about dying. This image, I go on ahead to prepare a place for you, is a metaphor which defines the essential task of our adult, mature years. Our task as “elders,” whether that be as a mother or father, an older brother or older sister, an uncle or an aunt, a teacher, a clergyman, a nurse, a worker, a colleague or a friend, is to live in such a way so as to create a place where the young can follow. Our task as adults is to show the young how to live at a place where they’ve never been as yet.
And it is both a noble and humble task. Most of us cannot live up to the lofty ideals we see lived out in the lives of the great saints, though their lives have created an ideal place for us. However, while not everyone can live as Mother Teresa did, perhaps they can live like you do and your life can be their exemplar for meaning, wholeness, anonymous sanctity and dying without unnecessary fear.
I’ve been graced to be at the deathbed of a goodly number of ordinary people who died very ordinary-looking deaths, with no choirs of angels silently chanting in the background, no alleluias on their lips, with pain and thirst dominating their concerns, with their hands being tightly grasped by loved ones and their hearts still very much focused on the pain of leaving this world. And that’s not a bad way to die. In how they managed their deaths they prepared a place for me. Looking at how they died, I am far less fearful and can more readily say: I can do this!
What a grace to have someone go on ahead to prepare a place for you!
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

BISHOP KOPACZ SCHEDULE

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Monday, June 12 – 17 – USCCB Spring Assembly Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana
Sunday. June 18, 8:30 a.m. – Sister Anne Brooks of Tutwiler 60th Anniversary Mass of Thanksgiving and reception, Clarksdale Immaculate Conception Parish
Friday, June 23, 5 p.m. – Mass to celebrate Feast of the Sacred Heart – Sacred Heart Southern Missions 75th Anniversary, Southaven, Christ the King
Saturday, June 24, 11 a.m. – Mass orf Thanksgiving – 60th Anniversary Father Tom Delaney, Crystal Springs, St. John
Sunday, June 25, 8 a.m. – Mass, Natchez, Holy Family
Sunday, June 25, 11 a.m. – Mass and Parish Picnic, Fayette, St. Anne
Only public events are listed on this schedule and all events are subject to change.
Please check with the local parish for further details

Words for our Confirmandi

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By Bishop Robert Barron

Bishop Robert Barron

One of the greatest privileges I have as a bishop is the opportunity to preside at the sacrament of Confirmation. A drawback, however, is that I am obligated to conduct more than 40 Confirmations in roughly a two month period — which means that I become tired, rather quickly, of my own homily! As a result, I’m frequently shifting gears, trying out new ideas, looking at the complex phenomenon of Confirmation from a variety of angles. I want to share with you in this article some of the key ideas in the latest iteration of my Confirmation sermon.
Immediately prior to the prayer, which calls down the Spirit on the candidates, the bishop leads them in a re-affirmation of their baptismal promises. I tell the young people that parents and godparents made these promises for them when they were babies, but that now they will have the responsibility of making them in their own name and while they stand on their own two feet.
The first promise is negative in form, which is only natural, for to set one’s face is necessarily to set one’s back. And so the confirmandi declare that they renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises. These empty promises, I tell them, can be heard everywhere in the popular culture. They are in practically every movie they watch, every song they listen to, every casual conversation in which they engage: “you will be happy if you just get enough wealth, enough pleasure, enough power, and enough honor; if you fill up the empty heart with a sufficient amount of these worldly goods, you will find satisfaction.” At this point, I usually ask them to consider the image of the crucified Jesus, prominently displayed in the church. Notice, I say, that we don’t have an image of Bill Gates or Donald Trump or Beyonce on the central axis of the room, but rather that of a man being tortured to death, someone devoid of all wealth, pleasure, power or honor.
The remaining promises assert what the confirmandi are for. The first of these positive formulations is the simple assertion of belief in God. This is much more than a statement of intellectual conviction; it is, instead, an affirmation of the meaning and direction of one’s life. To believe in God, is to know, I tell the young people, that your life is not about you. A baby’s life is all about himself, the meeting of his immediate needs. But as the child matures, he realizes, increasingly, that he has obligations and connections beyond himself — to his family, his community, his culture, his country, and finally to God. The central narrative of the Bible — repeated again and again — is that people find who they are precisely in the measure that they hear and follow the voice of God inviting them on mission. To say, therefore, that you believe in God is to break out of the shell of a self-regarding egotism and to launch out into the deep, to go on a spiritual adventure.
Next, the confirmandi are invited to announce their belief in “Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” I ask them to concentrate on the word “Lord.” The Lord is the one who has mastery, who controls, who literally dominates, (from the Latin word Dominus). Everyone in the world has a Lord. It might be a person, a country, an ideology, a political party or an institution, but everyone is beholden to something or someone.
As Nobel laureate Bob Dylan memorably put it: “You gotta serve somebody/ It may be the devil or it may be the Lord/ But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” To claim the Lordship of Jesus is to acknowledge that every aspect of one’s life belongs to him and comes under his sway. It is to be branded as Jesus’ own. I remind the confirmandi that Confirmation, along with Baptism and Holy Orders, is a “character” sacrament, meaning that it permanently marks the one who receives it, and that, appropriately enough, the word “character” is derived from a Greek term meaning “brand.”
After declaring their belief in the Son, the confirmandi are invited to affirm their belief in the “Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.” The Holy Spirit, I explain, is the love that obtains from all eternity between the Father and the Son. Gazing at one another, the first two divine persons breathe forth their mutual love, and this holy breath is the Spiritus Sanctus. Therefore, the Spirit is the love that God is. Now in the first promise, the confirmandi announce what they are against, namely, the claim that wealth, power, pleasure or honor will make them happy; in this promise, they unambiguously declare what alone is sufficient to satisfy the infinite longing of their heart: the infinite love that God is. Don’t worry, I tell them, about whether you are rich or poor, famous or forgotten, powerful or powerless; worry, instead, about whether you are growing in your capacity to love. For love is what your heart finally cares about, and love is what you will carry with you into heaven, when you leave all the rest behind.
Finally, the young people are invited to affirm their belief in “the holy catholic Church.” In an anti-institutional, anti-authority time such as ours, this is a hard promise to make, but they have to remember, I tell them, what the Church is. The Church of Jesus Christ is not an organization or a club. From such a voluntary society, one can legitimately withdraw. But as Paul told us long ago, the Church is not an organization, but an organism, a living body, of which Christ is the head and all of the baptized are cells, molecules and organs. The Church is the mystical body that the Logos has taken to himself, just as surely as he took to himself a physical body in Palestine two thousand years ago; accordingly, it is the vehicle by which he continues to do his work in the world.
To withdraw from it, therefore, is to block the flow of grace. Many of the confirmandi, at least here in Los Angeles, wear red gowns that look very much like graduation robes. I emphatically tell them that these are not graduation gowns, but gowns of initiation, for Confirmation is not an end but a beginning. Renouncing Satan, believing in God, the Lordship of Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit, fully initiated in the Church, they are now ready to start.  Just a few months ago, Pope Francis made the same point when speaking to a group of Italian students approaching Confirmation. Remember, he said, Confirmation is not the sacramento di arrivaderci! (the sacrament of “see ya later”).
I always assure those I confirm that I will remember them in prayer. Could I invite anyone who reads these words to pray for the army of fully-initiated members of Christ’s mystical body who have been confirmed this year?
(Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.)

Blessed Mother honors fatherhood through Fatima

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Guest Column
By Sister Constance Veit, lsp

Sr. Constance Veit

Last month we watched Pope Francis travel to Fatima for the centenary of Our Lady’s apparitions to the three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos and Jacinta and Francisco Marto. Much has been said and written about Fatima this year. I’ve learned a great deal about how the Fatima message encapsulates the essential elements of Christian life – prayer, sacrifice, redemptive suffering and holiness of life.
I also discovered is that the last apparition at Fatima, which took place on October 13, 1917, is the only approved apparition in the history of the Church in which the Holy Family appeared together. While the immense crowd that day witnessed the miracle of the sun, the children saw Our Lady standing with St. Joseph and the child Jesus, both of whom were blessing the world.
Lucia, the oldest of the visionaries, became a Carmelite and spent her life spreading the message of Fatima. She felt that through the vision of the Holy Family, God wished to remind us of the true purpose of the family in the world.
“In the message of Fatima, God calls us to turn our eyes to the Holy Family of Nazareth, into which he chose to be born and to grow in grace and stature, in order to present to us a model to imitate, as our footsteps tread the path of our pilgrimage to Heaven,” Lucia wrote in her book entitled “Calls from the message of Fatima.”
Lucia wrote that parents’ greatest mission is to instill in their children the knowledge of God and his commandments. “Nothing can dispense parents from this sublime mission,” she wrote, for God has entrusted it to them and they are answerable to God for it. “Parents are the ones who must guide their children’s first steps to the altar of God, teaching them to raise their innocent hands and to pray, helping them to discover how to find God on their way and to follow the echo of his voice.”
What remains most engraved in the hearts of children, Lucia wrote, is what they have received “in their father’s arms and on their mother’s lap.” These words touched me in a very personal way as I paused to recall the memories of my parents most deeply engraved in my heart, especially those of my dad.
As a stay-at-home mother who was outgoing and talkative by nature, my mom played the more prominent role in the life of my family, but my father was a quiet, strong and faithful presence as well. For this I am very grateful.
My father fulfilled what Pope Francis wrote in his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (n. 177), “A father helps the child to perceive the limits of life, to be open to the challenges of the wider world and to see the need for hard work and strenuous effort.” These words remind me of the quiet yet consistent way my father helped me to succeed in math and science and of the efforts he made to help me explore college and career possibilities.
God sets the father in the family, Pope Francis wrote, “to be close to his children as they grow – when they play and when they work, when they are carefree and when they are distressed, when they are talkative and when they are silent, when they are daring and when they are afraid, when they stray and when they get back on the right path. To be a father who is always present.”
When I read these words I remembered the time my father showed up, silent and stern, at a cast party my sister and I were attending following our high school musical. He had come to bring us home rather than let us ride with another teen in the middle of a blizzard. Although we were quite embarrassed at the time, I later appreciated the fact that my father cared enough to inconvenience himself.
Finally, I thought of my father when I read these words from Pope Francis: “Some fathers feel they are useless or unnecessary, but the fact is that children need to find a father waiting for them when they return home with their problems. They may try hard not to admit it, not to show it, but they need it.”
How often, over the years, my siblings and I tried to assert our independence, trying hard to hide the fact that we needed dad’s help or advice, yet he was always there to share his knowledge, skills and wisdom with us.
As we continue to honor Our Lady during this centenary year of her apparitions at Fatima, let’s also thank God for St. Joseph and for our own fathers, who faithfully fulfilled their vocation in the heart of our families, whether they are still with us or have already passed on from this life to the Father’s house.
(Sister Constance Veit, LSP, is director of communications for the Little Sisters of the Poor.)

Sacrifice in thanksgiving

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Seminarian REFLECTION
By Deacon Aaron Williams

Aaron Williams

When I was a student at St. Joseph School in Madison,  each year I volunteered to serve the Baccalaureate Mass which Bishop Joseph Latino would celebrate for the graduating class. After a few years, I noticed that his homily each year had a common theme: thankfulness for Catholic education, for parents and for God’s many blessings.
Of course, all of us have much for which we may be thankful, but principally among these blessings is that of the extreme love of God – a love which is in a small way mirrored by the love of parents who make many sacrifices so that their children may have a good education, or even so that they may have what they need to live healthy and holy lives. Yet, the gift of God’s love, which was made Incarnate in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, is so generous that humankind, unaided, is incapable of rendering to him the true thanksgiving he deserves.
The paradox is that, in Christ, we are capable of giving proper thanks to God because he has blessed us with the proper means –”our thanksgiving is itself [his] gift,” as is said in one of the prefaces used at Mass. In the Old Testament, God commanded the chosen people to offer daily the Todah offering (cf. Leviticus 7:12). This was not a bloody offering like the sacrifices offered to atone for sins, but was an offering of unleavened cakes and oil.
The Hebrew word todah translates as ‘thanksgiving’ and thus this offering, unlike the sin offerings of flesh, was a purely sumptuous expression of man’s thankfulness to God.
It is interesting, therefore, that the apostles, when considering how they were going to refer to the daily offering of the Lord’s supper, chose to call it the Greek word eucharistia, which literally translates as ‘thanksgiving.’ The apostles recognized that the offering of bread and wine in the New Covenant was a continuation of the todah of the Old Covenant. But, unlike the Old Covenant, which required separate offerings for thanksgiving and for sin, this new sacrifice was not merely bread but also flesh.
It was not merely an offering in thanksgiving but an offering that atones for sins as well. In essence, Christ took the entire gambit of sacrifice from the Hebrew Temple system and refined it into his one sacrifice: i.e the Eucharist is at once the todah, the sin offerings and the Passover (Paschal) sacrifice.
This could not be the case unless this bread and this wine which are offered daily in the Mass were not more than mere food, but truly flesh as well. St. Thomas Aquinas summarizes this beautifully in the sequence he wrote for the feast of Corpus Christi – the Lauda Sion. He says: On this altar of the King this new Paschal Offering brings and end to ancient rite…Here beneath these signs are hidden priceless things, to sense forbidden; signs, not things are all we see. Flesh from bread and Blood from wine, yet is Christ in either sign, all entire confessed to be. And whoever of Him partakes, severs not, nor rends, nor breaks: all entire, their Lord receive.
As many young people are celebrating their own high school and college graduations, they would do well to take the advice of Bishop emeritus Latino and be thankful for the gift of their education, but I would add that they may best express their thankfulness through their continual participation in the supreme act of thanksgiving we have in the Mass – which means that as they leave their parents’ homes, they need to ask themselves where they will go to Mass this coming fall. How will they continue to offer Eucharistia to God for all his many gifts and blessings?
(Deacon Aaron M. Williams is preparing to begin his eighth year of seminary formation. For the next few months, he will be serving in a diaconate internship at Meridian Saints Patrick and Joseph parishes. During the summer, Aaron also participates in a program at the Liturgical Institute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake near Chicago where he is pursuing a masters degree in liturgy. He and his classmate, Deacon Nick Adam, will be ordained priests for our diocese on May 31, 2018)

Pope Francis names bishop for Pensacola-Tallahassee

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By Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) –  Pope Francis has named Holy Cross Father William A. Wack, who is a pastor in Texas, to be the bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee.
Bishop-designate Wack, 49, has been pastor of St. Ignatius Martyr Parish in Austin, Texas, since 2009. He succeeds Bishop Gregory L. Parkes, who was named last November to head the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida.
The appointment was announced in Washington May 29 by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.
The date of Bishop-designate Wack’s episcopal ordination has not yet been determined.
“Now I know for sure that God is merciful, having called this sinner to serve in this capacity,” Bishop-designate Wack said May 29 in a statement about his appointment. “The first words which came to mind when I heard of the appointment were, ‘Lord I am not worthy … but only say the Word … .’ With joy and zeal, I accept this appointment, and I am thrilled to begin service to God’s people as a bishop.”
“While I am very sad to be leaving the parish of St. Ignatius Martyr in Austin … I couldn’t be more excited to move in and get to work here in the diocese,” he added.
He said he has always loved being a priest. “For me there is nothing higher than the privilege of celebrating the Eucharist and the other sacraments,” Bishop-designate Wack said. “Over the past 23 years I have grown tremendously in my faith, through the very mysteries I have served.”
As a Holy Cross priest, he continued, “I know of the power of the cross of Christ, and the hope that it brings to all creation. We in Holy Cross strive to be ‘educators in the faith’ wherever we go, and I am happy to continue to do this in the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee.
Bishop-designate Wack added: “While I embrace a leadership position in the church once again, I believe that I stand to learn much from the very people I will serve. We are all God’s children, for we have been given God’s Spirit. It is our sacred duty to celebrate and practice our faith together, and to make God known, loved and served in all that we do.”
“Father Wack is an exemplary priest who is well respected by his brother priests and loved by those he serves,” Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin said in a statement. “Father Wack has been of great help to me, and I express my deep appreciation to him for his years of service in the Diocese of Austin.”
“As the people of Pensacola-Tallahassee come to know him, they will see his love for the church and his desire to serve his flock with warmth and compassion,” he added.
Holy Cross Father Thomas O’ Hara, provincial superior of the U. S. province of the Congregation of Holy Cross, called Bishop-designate Wack “a gifted pastor and administrator who possesses an extremely welcoming personality.”
“He is quick to reach out to all, is strong enough to lead and humble enough to listen. Above all, he is an outstanding priest who is passionate in his faith and absolutely dedicated to serving the people of God,” Father O’Hara said.
Bishop Parkes said he shared in the joy of Catholics of Pensacola-Tallahassee getting a new shepherd, who with the diocese “will be in my prayers during this time of transition.”
Since Bishop Parkes’ appointment to St. Petersburg, Msgr. James Flaherty has served as Pensacola-Tallahassee’s diocesan administrator.
Born June 28, 1967, in South Bend, Indiana, Bishop designate-Wack is the second-youngest of 10 children. His younger brother also is a Holy Cross priest, Father Neil Wack.
William A. Wack entered the novitiate for the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1989. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in government and international relations from the University of Notre Dame in 1989. He earned a master of divinity degree in 1993, also from Notre Dame.
He professed his final vows in 1993 and was ordained a priest April 9, 1994. His assignments after ordination included associate pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from 1994-1997. He was associate director of vocations for his congregation from 1997-2002 at Notre Dame; at that time, he also was with the Holy Cross Associates, 1998-2002.
He then spent six years, from 2002 to 2008, as director of Andre House of Hospitality in downtown Phoenix, which is ministers to the city’s poor and homeless. It runs a soup kitchen, which serves more than 200,000 meals per year, and provides a small transition shelter for men and women; clothing and blanket distribution; and showers and lockers for its clients.
The Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee covers about 14,000 square miles in Florida’s panhandle. Out of a total population of 1.46 million people, about 5 percent, or 67,316 people, are Catholic.

Ecumenical leaders call for context, nuance in Catholic-Lutheran dialogue

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By Colleen Dulle
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, renowned for his ecumenical efforts, addressed a Washington gathering of Catholic and Lutheran leaders striving for unity.
Cardinal Koch’s speech took place May 30 at “The 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s Posting of the Ninety-Five Theses Conference: Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition,” held at The Catholic University of America.
In his address, Cardinal Koch called for a new understanding of Martin Luther that takes into account his historical and religious context.
The cardinal, who leads the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, outlined how Luther was grounded in the monastic and mystical traditions of late medieval Catholicism, like Christ-centered theology.
He also pointed out that the reforms Luther called for were not extraordinary in their time: similar reforms were gaining traction elsewhere, like the “devotio moderna,” or “modern devotion,” movement in the Netherlands that called for humility and simplicity in the church, or the first multilingual edition of Scripture that was published in Spain in 1515.
Luther, the cardinal said, never intended for his reforms to divide the church, just as medieval reformers such as St. Francis and St. Dominic never intended to found new religious orders. They only intended to reform the church from within.
Cardinal Koch said the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was partly to blame for the division.
“If Martin Luther’s call for reform and repentance had found open ears among the bishops of the time and of the pope in Rome, the reform intended to be initiated by him (Luther) would not have become the Reformation. For the fact that the original reform of the church became instead a church-dividing reformation, the Catholic Church of the time must bear its share of the blame,” Cardinal Koch said.
He pointed out that it wasn’t until later in his life that Luther began to call into question the role and structure of the church. Because of this, he said, it isn’t fair to see the posting of Luther’s theses as the moment the church split into Lutheranism and Catholicism.
Koch stated that political leaders in Germany were largely responsible for the formation of a distinct Lutheran Church about 100 years after Luther wrote his theses.
Still, he said, Luther’s essential question about the role of the church remains important and must be addressed in the dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans going forward.
Additionally, reconciliation must be a guiding theme in the conversation, the cardinal said, referencing Pope Francis’ words in Sweden last year.
Cardinal Koch said that Catholics must continue to apologize for their sometimes-violent offenses, like wars, against other religious groups, just as Lutherans must apologize for the way it has painted the pre-Reformation Catholic Church over the years.
The cardinal also called for a consensus between Catholics and Lutherans on Luther’s doctrine of justification –  the idea that a person is saved through faith rather than actions. “After 500 years of division,” the cardinal said, “we must strive for a binding communion and put it into effect already today.”    
Retired Lutheran Bishop Eero Huovinen of the Diocese of Helsinki responded to the Cardinal Koch’s address, saying he agreed with everything the cardinal had said.
Bishop Huovinen focused his response instead on the 2015 Catholic-Lutheran joint “Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry and the Eucharist,” which attempts to reach common theological ground between the two groups.
Both speakers praised the progress already made to reconcile Catholics and Lutherans. They called for the 500th anniversary of the theses to be a jumping off point for a more nuanced effort toward reconciliation going forward.
The May 30-June 1 conference at Catholic University was co-sponsored by Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Catholic University’s School of Theology and religious Studies, the Vatican’s Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, and the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Martin Luther, a German monk, is depicted in this painting at a church in Helsingor, Denmark. The issue of papal authority was the one point that led Luther to break from the Catholic Church, according to a Catholic University of America professor who will speak at a May 30-June 1 symposium on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation co-sponsored by the university in Washington. (CNS photo/Crosiers)

Restorers unveil frescoed chambers in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla

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By Carol Glatz
ROME (CNS) – Under a mown hayfield, whose dried-out stalks crunch underfoot, lies the four-level labyrinth of the early Christian Catacombs of St. Domitilla.
Ten miles of tunnels, carved out of soft volcanic tuff rock, snake and fork out in a dizzying number of different directions. Luckily, capsule bulbs of lights strung sparsely overhead work like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs leading to the sought-after destination: two newly restored burial chambers not yet open to the public.
The sprawling catacomb complex has about 70 burial chambers, or cubicula, but only 10 have been restored, said Barbara Mazzei, who oversaw the restoration of the chambers’ frescoes.
She led a group of reporters to see the finished results May 30. They were unveiled by the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which oversees the upkeep and preservation of more than 100 early Christian catacombs scattered all over Italy.
The Catacombs of St. Domitilla are believed to be the world’s oldest existing Christian cemetery and are among the largest in Italy with a total of some 150,000 burial spots.
The majority are small niches carved into the tunnel walls for poorer Christians; the niches were sealed with a slab of marble or walled up with brick. The round and sumptuously decorated cubicula rooms were built by wealthier families and trade cooperatives, whose members pooled their money for a more dignified resting place.
The newest restoration work was done on the chambers for the city’s bakers, who ran a lucrative state-supported industry of ferrying grain into Rome and making and distributing bread, which was considered something every Roman had a right to with a daily ration.
Bernardino Bartocci, president of the modern city’s association of bread makers, told Catholic News Service he attended the unveiling as a sign of how bakers continue to be and “have always been united as a group, like a big family.”
The importance and spiritual significance of bread is evident throughout Christian beliefs, he said, and the early Christian bakers proudly displayed the glories of their craft on the ceiling’s frescoes.
Pagan symbolism, such as depictions of the four seasons or a peacock representing the afterlife, together with biblical scenes are integrated without contradiction, Mazzei said.
The unifying motif is salvation and the deliverance from death as is underlined by the varied depictions of Noah in his ark welcoming back the dove, Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac, Jonah and the whale, and the multiplication of the fishes and loaves, she said.
Restorers used lasers to send pulses of precise frequencies to selectively remove specific substances –soot, algae and calcium carbonate – without damaging the color pigments and underlying surfaces, she said.
Despite the seven years of meticulous work to reveal the frescoes’ original splendor, restorers intentionally left the graffiti and autographs penned by visitors from the 1600s and 1700s.
The most prolific selfie-signature seen throughout the complex was “Bosio,” left by Antonio Bosio, a Maltese-born lawyer and scholar who discovered this and many more abandoned catacombs in Rome.
His intense exploratory spirit and stunning discoveries earned him the name, “the Christopher Columbus of the catacombs,” Mazzei said.
He also struck a new path for modern archaeology in which the focus switched from discovering pieces for collectors to understanding what those objects could have meant and disclosed about the past.
He also inadvertently revealed an abundant source of bones to feed the “martyr-mania” raging at the time, she said. He mistakenly believed the dead were all early Christian martyrs, when instead, they were simply devoted faithful who sought to be buried close to the site’s original two martyrs: Sts. Nereus and Achilleus.
While the bakers’ cubicula were to remain closed to the public, a small museum by the catacombs’ main entrance was to open in June to showcase marble busts, ornately sculpted sarcophagi and simple slabs marking the daily lives and legacies of some of the church’s early Christians.

Frescoes of birds are seen during the unveiling of two newly restored burial chambers in the Christian catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome May 30. The Catacombs of St. Domitilla are believed to be the world's oldest Christian cemetery. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)

Fragments from the Catacombs of St. Domitilla are seen in a new museum at the catacombs in Rome May 30. The Catacombs of St. Domitilla are believed to be the world's oldest Christian cemetery. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)

Bernardino Bartocci, president of Rome's bread makers' association, is pictured during the unveiling of two newly restored burial chambers in the Christian catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome May 30. The Catacombs of St. Domitilla are believed to be the world's oldest Christian cemetery. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)

A fresco showing Noah releasing doves, lower right, and other scenes representing salvation are seen during the unveiling of two newly restored burial chambers in the Christian catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome May 30. The Catacombs of St. Domitilla are believed to be the world's oldest Christian cemetery. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)

Jonah is spit out of the whale in this fresco seen during the unveiling of two newly restored burial chambers in the Christian catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome May 30. The Catacombs of St. Domitilla are believed to be the world's oldest Christian cemetery. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)