St Maximilian Kolbe Was a Rocket Scientist and Other Lesser Known Facts

Today is the Feast Day of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Most Catholics know him as the Polish priest who died on August 14, 1941 in Auschwitz, after he offered his own life to prevent another prisoner from being killed. Less well known is the zealous faith-filled way he lived his life beforehand, which I believe prepared him well for the final sacrifice for which he is primarily remembered. Because of all the things he did, this article tells us that "Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners and the pro-life movement. Pope John Paul II also declared him the 'Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century.'" Along with all of these accomplishments, he was a rocket scientist, about which you'll learn more, if you read on.

A Conventual Franciscan friar, St. Maximilian Kolbe had also been a zealous evangelizer, with a great devotion to Our Lady, not only in Poland but also in Nagasaki, Japan. The works he did in Japan have had a seminal importance in the history of the Church in Japan. In his zeal, St. Maximilian drew many friars to work with him in his use of the latest technologies to help bring people to conversion. Following is a partial list of things that are not well known about St. Maximilian Kolbe from the article mentioned above and from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Kolbe.html.

• He was born in 1894, so he was 47 at the time of his death.
• At 13, he illegally made a border crossing between the Russia and Austria-Hungary with his brother and entered the junior seminary of the Conventual Franciscans in Lvov, Poland.
• His father was killed by the Russians, his mother became a religious sister, and his one brother who lived to adulthood became a priest.
• St. Maximilian was sent to study in Rome in 1912.
• He earned a doctorate in philosophy and in theology.
• He took his final vows in 1914 in Rome and was ordained in 1918.
• He was a rocket scientist! His interest in astrophysics and space flight led him to design an airplane-like spacecraft, similar to the present-day space shuttle, and he tried to patent it.
• While still in seminary, he organized the Militia Immaculatae (Army of Mary) to work for the conversion of sinners, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary.
• He used the latest printing presses and the relatively new technology of radio for outreach of the Army of Mary. Circulation of his publication grew to over 750,000.
• He founded two friaries in Japan and a seminary near Nagasaki and put out a Japanese newspaper that reached 65,000.
• From the article mentioned above: "Kolbe decided to build the [first] monastery on a mountain side that, according to Shinto beliefs, was not the side best suited to be in tune with nature. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Kolbe’s monastery was saved because the blast of the bomb hit the other side of the mountain, which took the main force of the blast. Had Kolbe built the monastery on the preferred side of mountain as he was advised, his work and all of his fellow monks would have been destroyed."
• After he was recalled to Poland, he became superior of a monastery that grew to number 762 friars.
• During the war, the friary provided shelter to 3,000 refugees 2/3 of whom were Jewish. As an amateur radio amateur he attacked Nazi activities in his reports.
• He was eventually sent to Auchwitz after he was arrested on February 17, 1941 as a journalist, publisher, and 'intellectual.'

Response to National Non-Catholic Fishwrap Article That Puts Fear in the Hearts of Liberal Catholics About the Liturgy

"Cardinal Burke boosts lavish, Latin liturgy" is the title of an article at National Catholic Reporter, a newspaper that is not-to-fondly referred to by Father Jeffrey Keyes and others as The National Non-Catholic Fishwrap.

The National Catholic Reporter blogger, Robert McClory wrote: "I think all Catholics should be required to view this video released by the Catholic News Service.

"It reveals in vivid color an ideal form of the Mass, as explained by Cardinal Raymond Burke, outgoing prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. In my opinion, it reveals more clearly where the institutional church is heading and what can be expected from Rome in the forseeable future as "abuses" of the liturgy are corrected, Burke says.

"The pomp, the color, the splendor, the lavishness, the gold -- especially the impossibly gold vestments, the gold candlesticks, the gold statues -- is just overwhelming. This, Burke explains, is the sort of worship Jesus wants. The video is titled "The Call of Beauty." I wonder what the reaction of thoughtful Catholics might be."

Well, I'm a thoughtful Catholic, although I know McCrory probably would not agree. I suspect his definition would be something along the lines of "A thoughtful Catholic is someone who has rejected the doctrines that were taught before Vatican II [Ed: And which were never contradicted by Vatican II, I might add] and is someone who believes exactly what I, Robert McCrory believe, which is a rubber stamped set of liberal beliefs [Ed: The rubber stamp set of beliefs boil down to a perceived need for the Church to adapt to the "wisdom" of the world]."

One commenter, bucking the others' scorn for the gold and the vestments, wrote, "Look! A church that actually has people in it! Maybe the cardinal is onto something...."

So I replied to his post with the following comment. Don't know if it will pass moderation. If I was a betting woman, I would bet it won't pass.

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I believe that when the enthusiastic adopters of the Novus Ordo Mass stripped the churches they threw much of the mystery and reverence out along with the marble altar rails.

On vacation [in Massachusetts] last summer, after a long time of attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form at home, I attended a Mass at a [Leicester] parish I used to attend as a child. My gorgeous niece attended with me, and I was uncomfortable that she chose to wear short shorts and a sleeveless blouse. The few other people there were dressed in beach casual clothes, so nobody seemed to mind but me. Some were overtly enthusiastic. A deacon practically ran me over as he rushed by me to hug my niece when we came in.

When I used to go to that parish as a child, they offered multiple Masses every Sunday, and the pews were full of families with young children, all dressed up as the people still dress up where I attend the traditional Latin Mass. In contrast, the NO church I attended last summer with the casually dressed congregation was practically empty, with one Mass only every Sunday.

I believe that the tolerance of American Catholics for birth control, the watering down of doctrine and a loss of reverence all have to do with the emptying of churches like that. At home, we have a small building for our Latin Mass oratory, and we don't have room for all the people who want to attend the multiple Masses every Sunday. Most Sundays there are about a dozen or more people kneeling out in the tiny vestibule.

I have read documents that record that the expressed intent of the creators of the Novus Ordo form of the Mass was to remove all elements that a Protestant would find offensive. I personally am offended by the abuses that became prevalent after the change away from the traditional Latin Mass. If you use gold vessels for the consecrated Body and Blood of Christ, you are reminded of the mystery and majesty of God, that a miracle of Transubstantion has occurred, and that you are not only participating in a community meal of bread and wine when you receive Christ in the Eucharist.

The traditional orders of priests and religious are accepting and turning away many applicants because young people want solid doctrine and respect for the mysteries. They want the plain Truth as taught by the Magisterium to believe in and the reality of Christ in His Church to give their lives for. They don't want to go to a worship service where bad improvisation in liturgical practices and in doctrine is the norm. Women with vocations don't want to wear pantsuits and fight to change the Church; they want to wear habits and obey. If God is not to be feared and obeyed in His Church, why bother getting up for Mass on Sunday anyway?

Personally, my taste is scandalized by banners that look like laundry that replaced the beautiful church decorations, and the polyester vestments in dayglow colors that replaced treasured hand-made precious, embroidered vestments. You can't even find the tabernacle in most churches these days, in case you are an odd believer who wants to genuflect. Part of what has been lost is the sense that we are offering up our treasures in our worship of the infinite God. When I was child in a poor family, I enjoyed coming to a beautiful church and feeling it be mine too. There was no velvet or mahogany or lace or stained glass in our family's crowded apartment around the corner, but we had the privilege to be able to enjoy worshipping in the midst of these beauties as often as we cared to attend "our church."

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My comment did pass moderation. When I went back this morning to check, I saw the following comment. Below the new comment is my new reply.

I've often wondered how much Submitted by LFA (not verified) on Jul. 18, 2012.

I've often wondered how much of this obsession with vestments, incense, liturgical accoutrements and Gregorian chant is a by-product of men who never completed their childhood....I wonder how many of these members of the Church use it as an opportunity for cross-dressing without giving it a second thought? Seriously, why stop at the middle ages, for truer perspective return to the first century and wear a toga for God's sake something more like the apparel of Jesus Himself. This is an embarrassment and someone needs to put Burke in Gammarelli's store window and leave him there!

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Ad Hominem Alert. LFA, to me, your reply is a prime example of the know-it-all practice of amateur psychoanalysis that immature people were so fond of in the 60s.

To imply that every priest who wants to celebrate the Mass in a beautiful vestment instead of in a polyester day-glo monstrosity is a cross-dressing department store window dresser is a gross example of ad hominem argumentation. When you don't have any good way to answer the arguments of the other side, do you really think it is appropriate to mock them?

Your remarks show no respect for the well-considered beliefs of a good Cardinal. Even though you disagree with him, it would be much more thoughtful to address the points he is making on their merits. A good Catholic does not slander anyone. Or do you think that kindness along with respect for those who have given their lives to serve Christ in His Church were thrown out after Vatican II and buried under the parking lot along with the altar rails?

He Lifted Up the Lowly: Musings about St. Joseph of Cupertino The Reluctant Saint

I watched The Reluctant Saint a few nights ago, after Emma, who attends the Traditional Latin Mass at the Oratory where I go, loaned me a VHS tape of the film. It had recently been shown at one of Canon Avis's movie nights in the basement of St. Margaret Mary's Church in Oakland, but I had missed it.

As I stuck the tape into my out-of-date TV (which has both a tape player and a DVD player built in), since I didn't look closely at the tape sleeve, I thought I might be in for one of those earnest, pious bioflics of Catholic saints that are so often produced these days. But soon I found to my surprise that I was enjoying a well-done Hollywood film from 1962*, with major stars, Maximillian Schell (Judgement at Nurenberg), Ricardo Montalban (Star Trek: Wrath of Khan), and several lesser known character actors in well-turned supporting roles. The saint's mother is played to comic perfection by Lea Padovani, a former smouldering-Italian-actress type who was 42 at the time the movie was made.


As it turned out, the movie is a very good, sometimes very funny, albeit strongly fictionalized portrayal of the life of 17th century St. Joseph of Cupertino. By the way, because of the saint's penchant for levitating, I had the random thought that the movie could have been subtitled The Flying Monk, but I found that (even better) he has been called by others The Flying Friar.**

Even though the opening credits say that the elements of the story are true in their essential details, St. Joseph of Cupertino's life was not much like the movie. Just for one example, he didn't have a drunken shiftless father; his father died before Guiseppe was born.

I never knew much about this saint before. Just knowing that he is the patron for the nearby city of Cupertino***, where a church is also named in his honor, I couldn't have imagined that he had been despised and abused as an idiot, as I learned in this movie.

This movie is very affecting, and I recommend it heartily, partly because I believe it could well be a source of hope and understanding for anyone who is looks with pity or dismay on someone who is considered slow or backward. As this movie shows and the Scriptures**** often state, God exalts humble people who often have no value in the world's eyes.

One thing about this saint that especially charms me, which I learned by research after I saw the movie, is his obedience. It is recorded that nothing could bring him out of his ecstasies except a command from a superior.

His life was now one long succession of visions and other heavenly favours. Everything that in any way had reference to God or holy things would bring on an ecstatic state: the sound of a bell or of church music, the mention of the name of God or of the Blessed Virgin or of a saint, any event in the life of Christ, the sacred Passion, a holy picture, the thought of the glory in heaven, all would put Joseph into contemplation. Neither dragging him about, buffeting, piercing with needles, nor even burning his flesh with candles would have any effect on him — only the voice of his superior would make him obey. Catholic Encyclopedia Online

With heavenly assistance, this so-called idiot was able to join the Franciscan order, pass stringent theological exams, and master enough Latin to eventually be ordained a Catholic priest and say Mass. His miraculous levitations were viewed by all and sundry, even Pope Urban VIII, making his story more strongly corroborated than most stories of the saints.

When he bent down to kiss the Pope's feet, he was suddenly filled with reverence for Christ's Vicar on earth, and was lifted up into the air. Only when the Minister General of the Order, who was part of the audience, ordered him down was Joseph able to return to the floor.

It is amusingly appropriate that St. Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of aviators, air-travelers and students.

Prayer card for students and test takers, front(R), and prayer on back (L). Click to see larger images.

I believe this dear saint was raised above his human limitations, not only spiritually but physically, because of his humility and obedience and his rapt and loving contemplation of the mysteries of the Catholic faith. As the Bible says, God lifts up the lowly and in this case, the lifting up was literal.

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*This 1962 movie provides a flashback to an era, within my lifetime, when Hollywood used to make respectful movies with Catholic themes.

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**"Cupertino first appears in the recorded history of the Spanish expedition of 1776 led by Don Juan Bautista de Anza. Leaving the majority of his party in Monterey, De Anza, his diarist and cartographer, [Franciscan Friar] Petrus Font, and eighteen other men pressed on into the Santa Clara Valley in March of that year. Encamped in what is now Cupertino, Font christened the creek next to the encampment the Arroyo San Giuseppe Cupertino in honor of his patron.... The Arroyo is now known as Stevens Creek."

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***St. Joseph of Cupertino was called "the Flying Friar" because of his frequent levitations. Famed illustrator Tomie de Paola did illustrations for a book about him called The Little Friar Who Flew.

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****

"Be humbled in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you" [James 4:10].

"But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise: and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong"[1 Corinthians 1:27]. "That, as it is written: He that glorieth may glory in the Lord [1 Corinthians 1-29].

This passage and many others say that the foolish are chosen so that no one can boast that any work of God has been done by the power of any man, but only from the power of God.

Mary's Magificat, "He has put down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly." [Luke 1:52].

Response to "Should Catholics Marry Young?"

Response to National Catholic Register blog:

Should Catholics Marry Young?

by Pat Archbold Sunday, June 26, 2011

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/should-catholics-marry-young/#ixzz1ouut8Saa

Posted by Roseanne Sullivan on Sunday, Dec 11, 2011 9:41 PM (EST):

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/should-catholics-marry-young/#ixzz1ouumi7Mm

After I left the Church at 18, I got married and had my first baby at 24. I remember thinking even at that age I already was set in my ways. I have a hunch that early marriage and early mothering might be better for women’s psychological health and make it easier for them to bond with their husbands and their babies. One reason is the one I mentioned, the habits of having your time to yourself aren’t as deeply embedded. Girls intuitively love babies and love to play with them. Another reason is that girls are not protected in the home any more and are allowed (almost forced) to spend lots of unchaperoned time with members of the opposite sex, which can be full of stimulation and fraught with temptation. Girls also start falling in love early with boys. Disappointment at attempted seductions with no prospect of marriage has a daunting effect on a girl’s sense of worthiness. I believe that the dating scene forces a woman to develop a habit of guarding herself and saying no to her natural impulses if she wants to remain chaste. This habit of self-protection can cause difficulties later when she should be able to be open to her husband and to her children. One comment pointed out that the desire for intimacy was one of the main motivators back when premarital relations weren’t the norm. The goal of the preservation of chastity in the young would seem to suggest that marriage should not be delayed. Just some thoughts. I hope no one jumps all over me because I stepped on one of their pet theories. :-) These are thoughts from a woman who remembers when you were considered at risk of never marrying if you graduated from high school without being engaged. If you didn’t meet a husband in college, you were probably doomed to spinsterhood. Marriage meant children, and there were lots of married student housing on campuses. Only nonconformists fornicated. Girls took a big risk of not being considered marriage material if they strayed, and there was a definite double standard that was unfair to women. Men wanted to marry “nice” i.e. chaste girls, and girls wanted to be married. The norm was early marriage. My how things have changed.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/should-catholics-marry-young/#ixzz1ouuXOuVo

A Shocking Occurrence in the Confessional

I need to start by telling you that today I reread with great enjoyment (and with many peals of long loud laughter) The Thurber Carnival, which is one of the books that David Webb's sister let me take home from her brother's extensive book collection when she and her husband and the Heys were finishing the Sisyphean task of cleaning out David's apartment last week. David is a fellow choir member who died January 7th.

I apologize about the rapid shift among the topics of laughter to death and back to comedy here, but I'm am leaving out the wonderful funeral that people chipped in and arranged for David last week, because I need to skip to to another topic, which is the funny thing that happened to me in the confessional box last Sunday.

In case you don't know, James Thurber wrote hilarious stories for the New Yorker, many about misadventures in his family. I wonder what kind of a comic masterpiece Thurber might have been able to make of this little misadventure of mine that I'm about to relate.

My mishap occurred when I went to sing last Sunday at Five Wounds Portuguese National Church a few minutes from my house in San Jose. Canon Fragelli, who is our current rector at the Oratory of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Santa Clara, had arranged to say a special Mass at Five Wounds at 7:00 p.m., in honor of the feast of St. Francis de Sales, who is the patron of Fr. Fragelli's order, the Institute of Christ the King.

We were happy to be back at Five Wounds, because the former pastor, Fr. Donald Morgan, had allowed us to celebrate a sung Traditional Latin High Mass there every Sunday for a year, and we miss the church now that we are back at the little Oratory.

The Oratory used to be a German Protestant worship space, and the proportions are wrong for Catholic liturgy to my eye. Besides, the Oratory doesn't have the space needed for the children of the large families that attend traditional Latin Masses to run around and not enough room for their parents and singles to socialize after Mass.

Five Wounds is a unique and strikingly beautiful church built early in the 20th century with a marble high altar, mahogany altar rails, and a saint's statue in every nook and cranny. My friend, Rita Hey, told me that many of the architectural elements were brought down on wagons along the Camino Real from San Francisco from the Portuguese Pavilion after the Panama-Pacific Exposition closed at the end of 1915.

I think that grand building is perfect for the reverent celebration of the extraordinary form of the Mass. When the Mass started last Sunday, Fr. Morgan processed in with the long line of altar servers ahead of the celebrant, Fr. Fragelli. Fr. Morgan was not vested in a chasuble, but instead he was dressed in an alb. After a while, Fr. Morgan left the altar for the confessional.

That ornate mahogany confessional is of the traditional-style, which was designed to allow the identity of the person confessing to be hidden. The priest sits behind a door facing towards the church, and the penitent kneels facing the side of the priest in a separate compartment behind a heavy burgundy velvet curtain.

Fr. Morgan pulled back the sliding door across the screen between us while I was still trying to lower myself onto the kneeler. I have trouble getting down onto my knees these days. The original kneeler must have been removed at some point in time, and unbeknownst to me, the movable kneeler now in the confessional was tucked in at an awkward angle so that I wasn't able to get my knees onto it on my first attempt. I had to stop partway down, hoist myself up again, move the kneeler, and gingerly lower myself again. All while Father waited for me to settle down and begin.

Meanwhile the Mass was going on and a number of other people had started lining up for confession.

My whole kneeling and hoisting myself up and kneeling back down again exercise was complicated by the fact that I was trying to hold the heavy velvet curtain against the door frame at the same time. In retrospect I realize that all these shifts in position may be partly to blame for the extreme wardrobe malfunction that occurred later, but I'm jumping ahead.

So it came about that before I even got to say, "Bless me Father for I have sinned," I had to say, "Father, the curtain won't close." The curtain was partly unhooked at the top, and even though I held the curtain shut as best I could, a shaft of bright light shone into the confessional through the gap above where my left hand was holding the curtain, like a spotlight right into Fr. Morgan's face. Fr. Morgan is a small man around 60, with neatly trimmed grey hair and a florid, mild, intelligent face. He is a former Christian brother, who became a diocesan priest about five years ago. He is diffident, but you can sense a stiff backbone behind the quiet demeanor.

I started my confession. When I was finished, he gave me a penance and prayed the prayer of absolution. I said the act of contrition, then I hoisted myself back up off the kneeler so I could get up to the choir. When I let go of the curtain, I could see some people kneeling in the nearby pews. To my surprise, Fr. Morgan got up too, I think he was going to try to fix the curtain. That's about the time when my skirt fell down.

I told this "most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me story" to friends at the Oratory at the weekly potluck held after the 10 a.m. Thursday Mass this week. Although Fr. Morgan usually celebrates the Tuesday Mass as a visiting priest, he had been filling in for our usual Thursday priest and had eaten with us at the potluck, but he had already left when I started talking with the others about what had happened. One friend tried to be helpful. "Maybe he doesn't know it was you. Maybe he didn't see your face?"

Not likely, I thought. "Yeah," I said sarcastically, "Maybe he had been focusing on my skirt down around my ankles." Then the friend got thoughtful, "Maybe that's why Father's face was red today when he was eating with us. Did you notice how red his face was?" No, I hadn't. Father had been asking for details about the recipe for the simmered Chinese chicken I had brought to the potluck, and I didn't see anything unusual in his looks or actions.

"What did you do next?" somebody asked. "I pulled my skirt up and left. … Come to think of it, there was a woman in one of the pews who was looking at me funny, so maybe she saw what happened too. Oh no. Maybe others saw too." My friends had to agree that I was probably right. How dismaying a thought that one is! What thoughts must have run through those people's minds, after the kinds of scandals that have been blared all over the headlines? "What's that woman doing in the confessional with her skirt down around her ankles?"

Actually, if you take it literally, that's a good question.

Some have asked me how my skirt could fall off. To this I reply that with my current shape, trying to get a waistband to stay in one place without slipping down is similar to what it must be like to try to securely cinch a string around the middle of a beach ball. Spend a few seconds imagining trying to perform that task. Maybe you could get it cinched, but once the beach ball started being moved around, the odds are that the string would quickly slip to a part of the ball with a smaller dimension, and just as quickly fall off.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that this is not the first time I've had a skirt fall off.

My friend, Rita Hey, when she heard about this latest and most shocking occurrence told me firmly that I have to get suspenders.

At the thought of wearing suspenders, I hesitated, fashion slave that I am, and I offered, "Maybe I'd wait until they come into style." "No," Rita said, "do it now. Wear them inside your other clothes." Maybe that's what I'll have to do. I'm seriously thinking about it. In the meantime, tonight when I dressed for the First Friday Mass where we also had our throats blessed on the Feast of St. Blaise, I put on a dress.

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About the end of the year of Traditional Latin Masses at Five Wounds in September 2010

How the building materials for Five Wounds were brought from San Francisco

One Thing One Good Priest Has in Common with the Wife of Bath: Review of Discovering the Camino de Santiago by Rev. Greg Markey

If you only have a short time or short attention span, try this three-paragraph review (if you have more time or interest, see the longer article that follows below):

I recently read Discovering the Camino de Santiago after an autographed copy was sent to me by Mary Rose Garych, one of the parishioners of Fr. Greg Markey, who wrote the book. Mary Rose is a Facebook friend, and she thought I might be interested after she had read a lukewarm review I had posted about The Way, a recent movie by Emilio Estevez about the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. In my review, I had found the movie lacking because it tries so hard not to be religious that it falls short of being the powerful movie it might have been.

In contrast, Fr. Markey’s book describes a devout Catholic pilgrimage. I already had a great deal of admiration for Fr. Markey, who I'd met along with some of his parishioners at a Sacred Music colloquium in 2007. He is a zealous, comparatively young priest pastor who wears a cassock and a Roman collar and who also offers Traditional Latin Masses in the Extraordinary Form and supports a high-quality sacred music program at his parish in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Fr. Markey’s account of his pilgrimage is a perfect book for a Catholic to read, whether or not you are planning to try to walk the Camino yourself. He provides background information about the history of the Apostle St. James the Greater that you need in order to understand why pilgrims have been trekking to the northwest corner of Spain to honor the saint for centuries. All we learn in the Scriptures is that St. James lived in Israel. Fr. Markey’s book presents the evidence for the traditional beliefs that St. James evangelized Spain, that he returned to Jerusalem and later died as the first martyr among the Apostles, and that his body was brought back to Spain for burial. And Fr. Markey’s own journey to the shrine of St. James is humbly told, reverent, and inspiring. From a comment I posted to the National Catholic Register review of the book.

If you have time for or interest in pondering the history of pilgrimages in general and the Camino de Santiago in more detail read on.

Probably the most famous of all pilgrimage stories is Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which recounts a series of predominantly raunchy tales that are exchanged by a group of men and women to amuse themselves as they travel together on a pilgrimage in April of 1387 to the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury, England. Even if you haven’t heard of Canterbury Tales, you probably have heard of the movie Becket, which starred Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton, and dramatized the murder of St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his cathedral. St. Thomas Becket was killed because he had stood up against his friend and king, Henry II, to support the autonomy of the Church. St. Thomas Becket was canonized as a martyr only two years after his death, in 1173. And his tomb has been a pilgrimage destination ever since.


William Blake’s 1 ft. x 3 ft. engraving of the Canterbury Pilgrims

Canterbury Tales was written about two hundred years after St. Thomas of Canterbury’s death. Chaucer’s work is full of references to Catholic practices and saints, to Christ and His Mother. Among the thirty-odd pilgrims are both male clerics (a prior, a monk, three priests, a parson, a pardoner, and a summoner), and women religious (a prioress, and a nun). At the end after the raucous tales were over, when Chaucer was nearing death, he added a retraction, repenting for any harm he might have done out of ignorance by writing down lewd tales and asking for forgiveness for any parts of his work that “sownen unto sinne” [lead readers by bad example towards sin].

From the characteristics of the characters as portrayed by Chaucer and by the stories they told, it’s obvious that even back in the 14th century most people made pilgrimages more for fun than for penance. True, Chaucer’s pilgrims were on their way to the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket but the pious destination for many seems to have been a pretext for a lark. In an era before cruise ships, travel agents, and package tours, people in Chaucer’s time traveled for many of the same reasons people travel these days, to see new places, to escape their ordinary lives, to get out in the open air in the springtime, to meet new people and to have adventures to boast about when they returned home. You didn’t have many choices back then if you wanted to see the world, you either went to war (if you were a man), or you went on a pilgrimage.
Aside from the knight in Chaucer’s story, who is travelling to give thanks for his survival during the Crusades, and who is a “a verray, parfit gentil knight,” the only other truly inspiring member of the company is the parson, a poor priest who Chaucer describes as rich “of hooly thoght and werk.”

But then, you might consider the five–times-married conniving Wife of Bath to be inspiring (as I once did during my feminist days when I admired her independent ways). Chaucer wrote that the Wife of Bath knew much about wandering by the way and had “passed many a strange strem.” Chaucer was making ironic digs about the much-mated woman’s indiscretions, but this bawdy 14th century character had wandered much and had passed many strange streams also because she had made an astounding number of pilgrimages: three times to Jerusalem, another time to Rome, and other times to other major pilgrimage sites, Boulogne in France, Cologne in Germany, and most apropos to this review, she had also gone to Santiago, in Spain.

The ancient Christian world had many pilgrimage sites. And before them, the Jews had the Temple at Jerusalem that they were bound to visit several times a year, until it was destroyed. It’s intriguing to realize that the roads in the Judeo Christian world have been tramped by pilgrims for thousands of years, and that people have been traveling a lot longer distances and for many more years than we can probably even imagine.

Santiago [Sant Iago] means St. James. Santiago de Compostela is the short way to refer to the Cathedral Shrine of St. James at Compostela where the Apostle St. James the Greater is buried. And the Camino de Santiago is the short way to refer to the road (camino=road) that pilgrims take to St. James’s Shrine.


Discovering the Camino de Santiago, by Rev. Greg Markey, is a much more humble work than Canterbury Tales, and it was written in our era, which is for the most part no longer even nominally Catholic and which knows little or nothing about pilgrimages. Fr. Markey started writing this brief (75 page) book as he travelled prayerfully and contemplatively on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela during a sabbatical, from late June to late July in 2009. The book is not a work of literature, and it is not a guide for someone who plans to check off “Walk the Camino” on his or her bucket list.

Hundreds perhaps thousands of books have been written about the Camino. When asked why he wrote yet another book about it, Fr. Markey replied that very few Americans know about the Camino and that misinformation abounds.

He describes the significance of St. James the Greater whose bones are credibly believed to be entombed at the cathedral in Compostela. He quotes from significant Church documents about the shrine and provides some of the rich history of the Camino. And then he describes how he walked along the road with both a Vatican flag and an American flag hanging on his backpack and a rosary in his hand, handing out blessed Miraculous Medals as the opportunity presented itself, among a shifting stream of people who came from all around the world for many and varied reasons.

No bawdy tales are recorded in this good priest’s book and nobody’s foibles are parodied. Fr. Markey wrote in his introduction that he wanted to write about the Camino “from the perspective of a believer” both because the Camino is rich in Catholic history and because the great contribution of the Apostle St. James to the evangelization of Hispanic peoples deserves to be better known. Devotion to St. James was the original motive for the pilgrimages to Compostela that began to be made about thousand years ago, and a record of widespread devotion to the great Apostle remains in Europe, the Caribbean, and in Central and South America in the scores of cities and towns and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of churches, that bear Saint James’s name.

The distance from where Canterbury Tales began in Southwark in London to where it ended in Canterbury is about 58 miles, and the journey took four days for most people mounted on either a horse or mule. In contrast, Fr. Markey walked 496 often-pain-filled miles of the popular portion of the Camino called the Camino Frances, which extends from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port near France’s border to Compostela, and his pilgrimage took him a month. He walked the Camino to offer thanks to God for his ten years as a priest, with the resolution to offer up any sufferings he might experience along the way.

This French map shows the vast network of Compostela pilgrimage routes across Western Europe and England. Four of the major routes converge in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, where Fr. Markey began his pilgrimage

How many of us could imagine that hundreds of thousands travel on the Camino and converge on Compostela every year? As was true in Chaucer’s tale, only a scant few of Fr. Markey’s fellow travelers could be said to be on the Camino for pure motives of performing penance and showing sorrow for sins.

Fr. Markey greatest camaraderie occurred during the times when he fell in with a pious and joyful group of Catholic young people who are members of FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) and who seemed to be on the Camino for all the right reasons. After they kept running into each other, they decided to join forces, and from that point on they read the Liturgy of the Hours, said the Rosary, and participated at Mass with Fr. Markey, until the end of the pilgrimage.

Fr. Markey’s goal was to arrive at the shrine by the Feast of St. James on July 25, and in spite of setbacks from “Brother Ass” that put his plan at risk, he made it--the day before the feast. He concelebrated with the archbishop and many other priests on the feast day, and a day later he was able to say a private Mass with the FOCUS group at the tomb of St. James.

The experience of the Camino has been exhausting—perhaps the most physically demanding thing I have ever done in my life—yet filled with many graces. The Camino beats you down, wears you out and purifies you.

I met Father Markey, along with his parish choirmaster and organist, David Hughes, and a number of their parishioners, at the 2007 Sacred Music Colloquium in Washington D.C. (Above)

Fr. Markey is pastor of St. Mary Church in Norwalk, CT. One of his parishioners who attended the colloquium, a dear young woman named Mary Rose Garych, sent me an autographed copy of Fr. Markey’s book, after she read my review on Facebook of the recent movie about the Camino de Santiago, called The Way.

Father Markey wears a cassock and a Roman collar, which I believe makes a much-needed statement about the special calling of a priest. I especially admired him when I first met him because he seems to do all that he can to foster reverent worship at his parish, as he wrote on the parish website, “to simply bring St. Mary Church into conformity with the norms of the Church.” Now, after reading his pilgrim story, I admire him even more. Since the book was published, Fr. Markey has become sought after as a speaker about pilgrimages, justifiably so.

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Fr. Markey at Midnight Mass at St. Mary’s Norwalk (December 25th, 2011). The parish offers a Traditional Latin High Mass daily and offers the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin on Sunday mornings
Another reader who commented on the National Catholic Register review of this book remarked that pictures would have added a lot. Here is a photo from the web of the Virgin of Orisson, a beautiful statue that Fr. Markey encountered soon after he had entered Spain on the Camino Frances and started climbing in the Pyrennes

The Main Catholic Creeds: Apostles, Nicene, Athanasian

This post includes the wording of three main Catholic Creeds: The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, which I referred to in a recent blog called Speaking of Creeds.

Apostles' Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Amen.

Nicene Creed

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.

Athanasian Creed

Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith.
For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever.
This is what the Catholic faith teaches: we worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity.
Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, equal glory, and coeternal majesty.
What the Father is, the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is.
The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated.
The Father is boundless, the Son is boundless, and the Holy Spirit is boundless.
The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, and the Holy Spirit is eternal.
Nevertheless, there are not three eternal beings, but one eternal being.
So there are not three uncreated beings, nor three boundless beings, but one uncreated being and one boundless being.
Likewise, the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent.
Yet there are not three omnipotent beings, but one omnipotent being.

Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.
However, there are not three gods, but one God.
The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord.
However, there as not three lords, but one Lord.
For as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge every Person singly to be God and Lord, so too are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords.
The Father was not made, nor created, nor generated by anyone.
The Son is not made, nor created, but begotten by the Father alone.
The Holy Spirit is not made, nor created, nor generated, but proceeds from the Father and the Son.

There is, then, one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.
In this Trinity, there is nothing before or after, nothing greater or less. The entire three Persons are coeternal and coequal with one another.
So that in all things, as is has been said above, the Unity is to be worshipped in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity.
He, therefore, who wishes to be saved, must believe thus about the Trinity.

It is also necessary for eternal salvation that he believes steadfastly in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both God and man.

As God, He was begotten of the substance of the Father before time; as man, He was born in time of the substance of His Mother.
He is perfect God; and He is perfect man, with a rational soul and human flesh.
He is equal to the Father in His divinity, but inferior to the Father in His humanity.
Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ.
And He is one, not because His divinity was changed into flesh, but because His humanity was assumed unto God.
He is one, not by a mingling of substances, but by unity of person.
As a rational soul and flesh are one man: so God and man are one Christ.
He died for our salvation, descended into hell, and rose from the dead on the third day.
He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
At His coming, all men are to arise with their own bodies; and they are to give an account of their own deeds.
Those who have done good deeds will go into eternal life; those who have done evil will go into the everlasting fire.
This is the Catholic faith. Everyone must believe it, firmly and steadfastly; otherwise He cannot be saved.

Amen.

Speaking of the Creeds

This blog is a branch post from my recent review of Dorothy Sayers's collection of essays called, "Creed or Chaos." I'm pulling this topic out of the original post to make it easier to provide a slightly closer look at Catholic Creeds.[1] The text of each of the Creeds mentioned below is in Main Catholic Creeds: Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian.

Over the centuries, the Church has used several Creeds to teach true doctrine to converts and to clarify certain teachings (dogmas) that were disputed. Many of the Protestant and Orthodox denominations still use the same Creeds. Interestingly, most of the denominations that still use the Creeds even keep use of the credal phrase "I believe in one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church," even though they no longer consider themselves Catholic, at least with a big "C."Others have changed "Catholic" to "Christian."

The word Creed comes from the Latin "Credo," which means "I believe." The meaning of the words "I believe" includes intellectual agreement. In addition "I believe" in this context implies that I not only agree in my mind, but that I also trust the source. Catholic believers believe that the source for the Catholic Creeds ultimately is Jesus Christ, who through the Holy Spirit created the Scriptures and guides the doctrinal definitions of His Church, which is His Body on this earth.

Many writers have pointed out that when we say "Credo" or "I believe," the roots of the word "Credo" carry even more meaning, not only agreement and trust, but also both love and commitment.

This means that the fullest implication of the words "I believe" when a Catholic says the Creed is something like "I give my heart-felt commitment to these truths because I not only agree with them but I also trust and love the Creator who revealed them to us and the Catholic Church that defined them."

Catholics are mostly familiar with two Creeds that are recited during Masses: The Apostles Creed, and the Nicene Creed. Less well-known is the Athanasian Creed.

The Apostles Creed, was also called the Symbolum Apostolorum (Symbol of the Apostles). It was a kind of passphrase among Christians in the early Church, like a password given out by a military leader to the troops. You would know that someone was a Christian, if that person knew the Creed.

The purpose of a creed is to act as a yardstick of correct belief, or orthodoxy. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and deniers of a particular doctrine or set of doctrines. For that reason a creed was called in Greek a σύμβολον (Eng. sumbolon), a word that meant half of a broken object which, when placed together with the other half, verified the bearer's identity.[2]

Tradition with a small "t" divided the statements of the Apostles Creed into twelve articles, it was believed that each of the Apostles contributed one of its articles:

1. I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
2. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
3. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
4. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
5. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again.
6. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
7. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
8. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
9. the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,
10. the forgiveness of sins,
11. the resurrection of the body,
12. and life everlasting.
Amen.
The twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed were put as questions to candidates for baptism. "Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?" And so on.

The Nicene Creed was created in response to heresies that denied that Jesus Christ was God. To combat those errors, articles were added to affirm the correct doctrine that Jesus is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father ... ."

Although it is now commonly referred to as the Nicene Creed, it is more accurately referred to as the "Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed", because the creed defined at the Nicene Council in A.D. 325 was revised in the First Council of Constantinople in 381.

The Athanasian Creed is the first creed that stated the equality of the three persons of the Trinity, and it includes anathemas, or condemnations, of those who disagree with the truths expressed in that Creed. (Anathemas were also part of the original Nicene Creed.) This creed was attributed to the great St. Athanasius for a long time, but modern scholars (who I can't say Credo to) disagree.[3]
The portion of the Athanasian Creed that concerns the Trinity reads: "The Father is God, The Son is God, The Holy Spirit is God; God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy Spirit; The Father is not the Son, The Son is not the Father, The Father is not the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit is not the Father, The Son is not the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit is not the Son." These truths about the Trinity are illustrated in the image known as the Shield of the Trinity.


More colorful is the shield of the Trinity shown painted on the shield of a soldier going into battle.




The important thing to take away from this brief discussion is that the Creeds contain essential beliefs for a Catholic Christian. The Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds are used in various liturgical settings in the Catholic Church, and each was created for the purpose of teaching what we need to believe in order to be Christians.

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[1] The Creeds are discussed in much more detail at Creeds and linked articles you can find there about the liturgical uses of the creeds and about the individual creeds. Remember the online version is from 1932, and that things changed enormously after 1962 and the Vatican II. Also see Wikipedia article called Creed, where the posts include much more recent information.
[2] Found in a Wikipedia article titled Nicene Creed\
[3] I can't say "Credo" to most modern scholars, who seem to me to have an agenda of trying to make their careers as debunkers of the truths that we hold most dear. But I digress.

Les Visages d'Enfants: A Fine French Family Movie from the 1920s

On Turner Classic Movies Silent Sunday Nights last week, I saw Les Visages d'Enfants (The Faces of Children). I like this movie very much, partly because it is about a family's life in a village whose daily life is permeated with a deep Catholic faith and because the story is portrayed without a hint of the usual movie concupiscence (or condescension for that matter).

This article has photos from the movie. In it, the reviewer says correctly that the movie is about "the wildness, and the meanness, that children are capable of." But this fine French film is about much more than that.

For one good thing, this story of events in the life of a Swiss family is presented without the kind of elaborate overacting and melodrama you find in American silent films of the same era, which is in itself enough to recommend it.

It would be a great movie for a family to see together, once you adjust your expectations to the slower pace of a silent film. The suspense is masterfully generated. And the emotions are portrayed movingly mostly through the actors' faces, especially the faces of the children (a good thing for a movie whose title is Visages d'Enfants, I might add).

One film critic said that it was the one French movie of the 1920s that he would recommend for everyone to see.

Warning: Spoilers follow
Some things about the movie that stay with me are how kind the village priest was to his godson after the boy's mother's death, how he took the distraught boy along on his yearly visit with an old friend for a few weeks to prepare the boy for his father's remarriage. A scene of the two priest friends playing a game together shows them to be charming and innocent in their amusements in their spare time.

I also admire the way the boy is portrayed as devastated by his mother's loss.
At the start of the movie, the removal of the boy's mother's coffin from his home and the procession to the graveyard are frequently shot from the boy's point of view, so we experience right along with him a dolorous combination of grief, dismay, confusion, and vertigo, until he falls to the ground in a dead faint.

Here is a short clip from the beginning of the funeral.

The drama heightens when after his father's remarriage, the boy becomes progressively so nasty to his stepsister that he finally almost causes her death.

Some other aspects of faith-filled life in the village are well shown when the family and women neighbors pray together with the priest for God's help while the stepsister is lost. Meanwhile, while the village men start a search, the lost girl herself prays in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin in a small chapel where she had been able to find refuge from the avalanche not a moment too soon.

After a search in the mountains, the men finally discover the chapel engulfed in snow up to the cross on its rooftop. They frantically dig through the snow, pry up some roof beams, and the father looks down to find his stepdaughter sleeping, seemingly under the protection of Our Lady, in front of Her altar.

In a suspenseful climax, the boy apologizes and kisses his stepsister and then almost kills himself from shame. The movie goes on to show how he comes to be redeemed and to love and trust the woman who took his mother's place in his home.

This You Tube clip shows some of what followed.

Creed or Chaos by Dorothy L. Sayers

Creed or Chaos: Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster (Or, Why It Really Does Matter What You Believe) is a collection of essays by Dorothy L. Sayers that was first published in 1949.

I first heard of this collection by Sayers at a Sunday dinner at the home of my friends, the Garton-Zavesky family, in 2011. When the conversation came around to the Athanasian creed, and they discovered I didn't know it, the oldest son, fifteen year old Nicholas, fetched me the book of Sayers's essays, which has the Athanasian creed printed on the last page. The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed are on the front pages. These creeds are appropriate framing for a book about the necessity of sharply defined dogma to counteract the threat of chaos, the much-to-be-deplored fuzzy thinking so common among many of today's Christian believers.[1]

Remember the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, who told Alice that she could believe six impossible things before breakfast? Equally preposterous to me is the idea that Christians should preach only a religion of love without teaching the actual doctrine that is central to the Christian beliefs.

In case you haven't heard about Sayers before, I'll give you a brief introduction. She was a versatile and brilliant British academic, author, and translator in the early 20th century. Her works range from a translation of The Divine Comedy (that effectively used the terza rima[2] of Dante's original Italian) to the Lord Peter Whimsey mysteries, which are charming and well-written in an entirely different kind of way.

The introduction to Creed or Chaos is ironic because it credits Dorothy Sayers with having led the author of the introduction and his wife from atheism to Catholicism. Converting people to Catholicism is an odd accomplishment for a writer who was a "high Church" Anglican who never joined the Catholic Church. The conversion began when the wife was struck by Sayers's insistence in her introduction to her translation that The Divine Comedy "can only be understood as 'the drama of the soul's choice' between good and evil, revealing 'the terror and splendor of Christian Revelation'" After pondering this, the wife made a choice of her own, and joined the Catholic Church, where her husband followed her and joined too.

As an example of the topics in these essays, in the chapter titled, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged is the Official Creed of Christendom," Sayers examines the Church's teaching about Jesus Christ as God made man and contrasts the historical facts about Jesus as described in the Gospels against a popular idea that dogma is boring, and that preachers who preach dull dogma are driving people away. Apparently the idea that a church should be doctrine-free had wide currency in her era.

I believe it's a lack of these solid teachings that provide Truths that are worth believing in and giving one's life for that is driving people away. Here are a interesting couple of sentences that indicate Sayers thought so too, which contain a rather reluctant bit of praise for the Roman Catholic Church:

I shall and will affirm that the reason why the Churches are discredited today is not that they are too bigoted about theology, but that they have run away from theology. The Church of Rome alone has retained Her prestige because She puts theology in the foreground of Her teaching.

Two other essays of special note from this collection are "Why Work?," and provocatively, "The Other Six Deadly Sins."'' Apropos of the latter, I've observed that for many, including many priests, the only significant sins are related to the sin of Lust. Not so.

All sins can be deadly, and even if venial, all sins diminish and weaken the Christian life. The seven deadly sins are also commonly called the seven capital sins, because they are the source (capital comes from the Latin "capus," which means "head") of all other sins. Here is one example. Just this past Sunday, our fine new rector, Canon Fragelli gave a good sermon on the sinfulness of talking about others. He said that when people come to him and say, "Father, God doesn't answer my prayers," he says to them, "Stop gossiping." I don't think he has any special knowledge about that person's failings in that area. It's just that gossiping is such a common vice. He knows that prayers are only answered when a person is righteous[3], and that righteousness includes not just chastity, but also abstinence from all other evils, including the specifically mentioned hateful sins of backbiting (slanderously revealing another's faults to someone who has no business knowing about them), and calumny (lying about another person), which in their turn are due to the cardinal sin of Pride and Envy, the latter of which St. Thomas Aquinas refers to as sorrow for another's good.

Summing up, I can't say this is close to my favorite Sayers book, mostly because the issues of her day are not the same as the arguments of our day. But the essays are interesting because her writing is always interesting. And although the issue of keeping dogma out of the Church is not spoken about so much now, the belief that one can believe whatever one wishes is rampant today.

Thanks be to God, we have the sure and certain teachings of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, which still teaches us what we need to know about the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man.

Check out Creed or Chaos by Dorothy Sayers if you have a chance.

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[1] Speaking of Creeds, here is a blog I wrote about the Christian creeds and what it means to say "Credo," "I believe."
[2] If you like digressions (I sure do), you might like this article, which is a discussion about the many various attempts to translate The Divine Comedy into English, using terza rima, other rhyming schemes, or no rhyming at all.
[3] I learned the King James Version of this verse (James 5:16): "The effective fervent prayers of a righteous man availeth much." But this other translations from the Revised Standard Version may make it more clear: "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." Not righteous, then your prayers are either not going to be powerful or not effective, or both, right? Righteousness means abstaining from all the deadly sins. Therefore, gossip not, and sin not in other ways if you want your prayers to be heard. And don't think I'm being holier than thou. The finger points also back at me.