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On the day he abdicated, Pope announced canonisation of 800 martyrs slaughtered for their Faith by Muslim troops

The 800 Martyrs of Otranto to be canonized

Muslim massacre of 1480

On Monday, 11 February in Rome the canonization was announced of 800 Christians took place who suffered martyrdom in the 15th Century in Otranto. The elevation to the altars is to be made in the context of an ordinary consistory of the College of Cardinals which was convened by Pope Benedict XVI.

The canonization concerned Antonio Primaldo and his 800 companions. The Christian inhabitants of the town of Otranto in Apulia, in southern Italy were victims of a bloodbath by Ottoman troops during a raid on 29 July 1480. They killed more than 800 fishermen, craftsmen, farmers, merchants, peasants simply because of their faith.

A Turkish fleet appeared off the coast of Puglia in 1480
On that day in mid-summer in the early hours of the morning, a Turkish fleet appeared of 90 galleys and 66 other vessels. The fleet transported an army of 18,000 soldiers under the command of Gedik Ahmed Pasha, a commander of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror, who in 1451 at the age of only 21 years, took over the reign of the Ottoman Empire.

In1453, he was successful at the head of an army of 260,000 soldiers in the conquest of Constantinople and the destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire. The largest church in the "Second Rome" and the entire East, Hagia Sophia was desecrared and turned into a mosque. Since then Mehmed II had pursued the goal of conquering also the first Rome and turning St. Peter's Basilica in Rome into a stable for his horses.

Mehmed II took aim at Rome after the conquest of Constantinople 
In June 1480, he directed his work of conquest against the real Rome after the conquest of the island of Rhodes with the stubborn and heroic resistance of the Knights of St. John (now Malta) had failed The Turkish fleet sailed westwards and targeted Otranto on the southern Adriatic. The southeastern city of Italy with about 6,000 inhabitants at that time was an important port between East and West.

During the attack, the population had to abandon their city and took refuge in the fortified castle, where they simply found only 400 soldiers, who were left to their own devices with the people.

Turkish massacre cost 17,000 lives: men executed, women and children enslaved
After a fifteen day siege the Turkish attackers on 11 August succeeded through concentrated artillery fire to breach the defensive wall, through which they could enter the castle. Gedik Ahmed Pasha ordered the killing of all the male inhabitants over 15 years, while women and children were enslaved. Some of the inhabitants managed to take refuge before the massacre with the clergy in the city's cathedral. There the Turks met Archbishop Stefano Pendinelli with the Cross in his hand raised towards them who asked the attackers to spare the lives of the people in the house of God, and accept Christ as their Saviour. He was killed in a particularly brutal manner, his head cut off, and this was carried on a spear as a trophy through the streets of the city. The commander of the Castle team was sawn in two while still alive.

Archbishop beheaded - 800 Christians found refuge in cathedral
Gedik Ahmed Pasha demanded the at least 800 Christians in the cathedral to convert to Islam, for which he gave them a night to think. On 12 August, all refused, among them the elderly tailor Antonio Pezzulla called Primaldo. He gave Gedik Ahmed Pasha the response of the trapped: "All of us who believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our Savior, are ready to die a thousand times for him."

The Turkish warlord then gave orders to put all in chains. The cathedral was converted into a stable. On 14 August he had all the prisoners taken to a hill outside the city.

For the rest of the article click here:  Catholic Church Conservation

Ask Father Pisut

My question is based upon a conversation with a friend. She and her family are non-denominational/Pentacostal. Her son is attending Mt. Marty in Yankton, a Catholic college. A professor of his, in his religion class, has stated that some of the writings of the Old Testament were not necessarily true but teach the lesson in a fictional manner. They took offense to this and I have been asked about this and I unfortunately don’t know what to tell my friend. What is our belief about this and what exactly are those things that are considered fictional?

 Thank you and have a great day/week!

Patti

Patti,

I know nothing about the nature of the Catholic college or the

orientation of the professor you mention and where they fall on the

scale of faithfulness to the Church. However, even if we presume them

to be orthodox Catholics, chances are your friend would probably still

have difficulty with what was taught. This is because Catholics and

Protestants have a fundamentally different understanding of the Bible.

However, because many Catholics don't know their Faith they by default

assume the Protestant understanding of Scripture which has so

influenced our culture. While different Protestant sects may have

different understandings of the Bible I sense from what you tell me

that your non-denominational/Pentecostal friend has more or less a

fundamentalist or literal understanding of the Bible. This is not the

Catholic understanding.

We recognize that there are many different literary types in the

Bible. There are indeed historical accounts in the Bible (Joshua) but

there are also the Psalms as songs as well as poetry, prose and wisdom

literature. Acts and the Epistles of the New Testament are surely

reliable historical accounts. While the Gospels recount Jesus ministry

with some variance we do believe the accounts, including the miracles,

to  be true. Yet, we also see in apocalyptic literature such

as Daniel and Revelation highly symbolic accounts not meant to be

taken literally. Genesis teaches us the truth of God's creation of the

world outside of the question of if it really happened as written. The

book of Job teaches us about being faithful to God in all

circumstances in a highly literary form.

In sorting through all of this we need recourse to authentic Biblical

scholarship rooted in the teaching authority of the Church. For the

Catholic understanding of scripture, as opposed to Protestant, is that

the the Church gave life to the Bible in it's canonized form and the

Bible, as one it's three pillars along with along with the Teaching

Magisterium and Tradition, gives life to the Church. The Church

authoritatively interprets scripture for us and how to approach it.

This is why as Catholics we need to read from a Catholic Bible with

it's accompanying notes. Your friend more likely understands the Bible

as the sole rule of faith and feels free to interpret it on their own

without recourse to any higher authority. While as Catholics we are

free, and indeed encouraged, to read Sacred Scripture we need to

recognize the Bible in it's authentic place in the life of faith in

the context of the Church. Perhaps your friend would be well served to

read a book on the Catholic understanding of the Bible. One such

choice would be "Inside the Bible" by Fr. Kenneth Baker from Ignatius

Press.

Fr. Pisut

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Going Back on Abortion

February 21, 2013 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker 

Driving down the pike this morning I pulled up behind a little blue two seater with a bumper sticker that said, “Keep Choice – No Going Back – Keep Roe”

Here in Greenville, South Carolina one doesn’t see too many pro-abortion bumper stickers, so it made me stop and think, and as I stopped to think it became clear that the driver of the blue car had stopped thinking.

Somehow or other she had got the idea that abortion was a step forward and not having abortion was a step back. There at the stop light I saw the light and it made me stop. Here was an example of what we call “progressivism”–that heresy that is a subset of “historicism”.

Historicism is the idea that the human choices and events of the past (and present) are conditioned merely by the time period they are in, and that they are otherwise neutral. In Roman times they had slavery. So what. That’s what they did then. Now we do not because now we don’t think that’s very nice. For historicism there is no over arching meaning or purpose to history. Events just happen due to a random sequence of what happens. That’s it.

Progressivism is a strange and contradictory subset of Historicism. The progressivist, on the one hand, believes that history is random because at heart he believe in historicism (even if he is unaware of it) and yet the progressivist also believes that what is new and now is intrinsically better than what was old and then. The progressivist (despite all evidence to the contrary) truly believes that humanity is getting better all the time, and that we must be better than people from the olden times simply because we live at a later date than they did.

The advance of technology has helped to make the progressivist lie very persuasive. We must be better! We have iPhones, WiFi, Google and restaurants with thirty seven flavors of milkshake!

So the girl in the blue sports car imagines that the choice to have an abortion is an advance and having to give birth to a child once pregnant is a retreat to a more primitive time. The reality is exactly the opposite, but to understand how, one must have a broader understanding of history than that usually understood by twenty somethings who drive blue sports cars.

Is abortion an advance and giving birth a retreat?

For the rest of the article click here:  Standing on my Head

4th Reason to be Catholic by Peter Kreeft

Reasons 2 & 3 to be Catholic by Peter Kreeft

Scout Sunday

written by Mary Katherine Laird

The 12th point of the Scout Law is "A Boy Scout is Reverent."  In keeping with that ideal, on Sunday February 3, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, American Heritage Girls, and Venturers celebrated Scout Sunday.  Here in Lucas County, members of Boy Scout Troop 149 and Cub Scout Pack 149 and their leaders wore their uniforms to  their churches.  At Sacred Heart Parish, the boys & leaders  assisted at Mass as altar servers, Rosary leaders, gift-bearers, lector and greeter.

Sacred Heart Parish Scout Sunday Participants in alphabetical order:  Kris Anderson, Tom Anderson, Will Anderson, Carter Donley, Chuck Donley, Ethan Fehrer, Jennifer Fehrer, Ben Lahart, Luke Lahart, Mary Katherine Laird, Austin Metzger and Fr. Christopher Pisut.  Not pictured Scott Metzger

Peter Kreeft's conversion story:

Hauled Aboard the Ark

I was born into a loving, believing community, a Protestant "mother church" (the Reformed Church) which, though it had not for me the fullness of the faith, had strong and genuine piety. I believed, mainly because of the good example of my parents and my church. The faith of my parents, Sunday School teachers, ministers, and relatives made a real difference to their lives, a difference big enough to compensate for many shortcomings. "Love covers a multitude of sins."

I was taught what C. S. Lewis calls "mere Christianity," essentially the Bible. But no one reads the Bible as an extraterrestrial or an angel; our church community provides the colored glasses through which we read, and the framework, or horizon, or limits within which we understand. My "glasses" were of Dutch Reformed Calvinist construction, and my limiting framework stopped very far short of anything "Catholic!' The Catholic Church was regarded with utmost suspicion. In the world of the forties and fifties in which I grew up, that suspicion may have been equally reciprocated by most Catholics. Each group believed that most of the other group were probably on the road to hell. Christian ecumenism and understanding has made astonishing strides since then.

Dutch Calvinists, like most conservative Protestants, sincerely believed that Catholicism was not only heresy but idolatry; that Catholics worshipped the Church, the Pope, Mary, saints, images, and who knows what else; that the Church had added some inane "traditions of men" to the Word of God, traditions and doctrines that obviously contradicted it (how could they not see this? I wondered); and, most important of all, that Catholics believed "another gospel;" another religion, that they didn't even know how to get to Heaven: they tried to pile up brownie points with God with their good works, trying to work their way in instead of trusting in Jesus as their Savior. They never read the Bible, obviously.

I was never taught to hate Catholics, but to pity them and to fear their errors. I learned a serious concern for truth that to this day I find sadly missing in many Catholic circles. The typical Calvinist anti-Catholic attitude I knew was not so much prejudice, judgment with no concern for evidence, but judgment based on apparent and false evidence: sincere mistakes rather than dishonest rationalizations.

Though I thought it pagan rather than Christian, the richness and mystery of Catholicism fascinated me—the dimensions which avant-garde liturgists have been dismantling since the Silly Sixties. (When God saw that the Church in America lacked persecutions, he sent them liturgists.)

The first independent idea about religion I ever remember thinking was a question I asked my father, an elder in the church, a good and wise and holy man. I was amazed that he couldn't answer it. "Why do we Calvinists have the whole truth and no one else? We're so few. How could God leave the rest of the world in error? Especially the rest of the Christian churches?" Since no good answer seemed forthcoming, I then came to the explosive conclusion that the truth about God was more mysterious—more wonderfully and uncomfortably mysterious—than anything any of us could ever fully comprehend. (Calvinists would not deny that, but they do not usually teach it either. They are strong on God's "sovereignty," but weak on the richness of God's mystery.) That conviction, that the truth is always infinitely more than anyone can have, has not diminished. Not even all the infallible creeds are a container for all that is God.

I also realized at a very young age, obscurely but strongly, that the truth about God had to be far simpler than I had been taught, as well as far more complex and mysterious. I remember surprising my father with this realization (which was certainly because of God's grace rather than my intelligence, for I was only about eight, I think): "Dad, everything we learn in church and everything in the Bible comes down to just one thing, doesn't it? There's only one thing we have to worry about, isn't there?" "Why, no, I don't see that. There are many things. What do you mean?" "I mean that all God wants us to do—all the time—is to ask Him what He wants us to do, and then do it. That covers everything, doesn't it? Instead of asking ourselves, ask God!" Surprised, my father replied, "You know, you're right!"

After eight years of public elementary school, my parents offered me a choice between two high schools: public or Christian (Calvinist), and I chose the latter, even though it meant leaving old friends. Eastern Christian High School was run by a sister denomination, the Christian Reformed Church. Asking myself now why I made that choice, I cannot say. Providence often works in obscurity. I was not a remarkably religious kid, and loved the New York Giants baseball team with considerable more passion and less guilt than I loved God.

I won an essay contest in high school with a meditation on Dostoyevski's story "The Grand Inquisitor;" interpreted as an anti-Catholic, anti-authoritarian cautionary tale. The Church, like Communism, seemed a great, dark, totalitarian threat.

I then went to Calvin College, the Christian Reformed college which has such a great influence for its small size and provincial locale (Grand Rapids, Michigan) because it takes both its faith and its scholarship very seriously. I registered as a pre-seminary student because, though I did not think I was personally "called" by God to be a clergyman, I thought I might "give it a try." I was deeply impressed by the caption under a picture of Christ on the cross: "This is what I did for thee. What will you do for Me?"

But in college I quickly fell in love with English, and then Philosophy, and thus twice changed my major. Both subjects were widening my appreciation of the history of Western civilization and therefore of things Catholic. The first serious doubt about my anti-Catholic beliefs was planted in my mind by my roommate, who was becoming an Anglican: "Why don't Protestants pray to saints? There's nothing wrong in you asking me to pray for you, is there? Why not ask the dead, then, if we believe they're alive with God in Heaven, part of the 'great cloud of witnesses' that surrounds us (Hebrews 12)?" It was the first serious question I had absolutely no answer to, and that bothered me. I attended Anglican liturgy with my roommate and was enthralled by the same things that captivated Tom Howard (see his essay in this volume) and many others: not just the aesthetic beauty but the full-ness, the solidity, the moreness of it all.

For the rest of the story click here:  Peter Kreeft

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CELIBACY AND THE PRIESTHOOD

30 Questions and Answers

John Flynn, LC

ROME, January 25, 2013 (Zenit.org).

Why can’t priests marry? It’s a question people often ask and the requirement of celibacy has also been blamed as one of the causes of sexual abuse by priests.

A recently published translation of an Italian book addresses the topic in a question and answer format, “Married Priests? Thirty Crucial Questions about Celibacy” (Ignatius Press). It is edited by Arturo Cattaneo, with contributions from a wide variety of scholars.

We are faced with a great educational challenge in explaining the Church’s teaching on priestly celibacy, admitted Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.

He likened celibacy to marriage. "The underlying logic of priestly celibacy is the same one we encounter in Christian matrimony: the total gift of everything forever in love."

From the historical aspect the book noted that Christ chose celibacy for himself even though among the Jews this state of life was seen as a humiliation. He did not generate children physically but loved his disciples as brethren and shared a common life with them.

Jesus' way of communicating life was not through physical generation but spiritual. Therefore the celibacy of those who follow Jesus in the priesthood must be understood in the perspective of this spiritual transmission of eternal life.

One of the questions deals with the affirmation that celibacy did not become obligatory until the Middle Ages. For a start, the explanation noted, there is considerable Biblical evidence, both in the Gospels and the letters of St Paul, of support for celibacy as a sign of witness.

While it is true that during the early centuries married men were ordained, after their ordination they were expected to practice continence and those who were single at ordination or those widowed after ordination were not permitted to marry once they were priests.

All deacons, priests and bishops, the explanation continued, had to refrain from sexual activity from the day of ordination. "Nowhere in the Church can it be proved that a married cleric legitimately begat children after his ordination."

Over time the Church realized that continence for married clerics was problematic regarding the sacramentality of marriage and so during the Middle Ages this led to the decision of requiring priests to be single.

Vocations

Why not allow married priests in order to attract more vocations? This, the book observed, is one of the most frequent arguments regarding celibacy. There is no evidence, however, "that requiring less of candidates to the priesthood leads to increased numbers of them," the answer replied.

"Experience proves the contrary instead: vocations to the priesthood flourish and multiply when the radical gospel message is welcomed consistently and unapologetically."

For the rest of the article click here: Zenit

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The Bishop’s Role in Fostering The Mission 

Of The Catholic Media

by Bishop Finn

When I was editor of the diocesan paper in St. Louis, my office had a statue of St. Francis DeSales, Bishop of Geneva, and Doctor of the Church. Francis died in 1622. He is regarded as a patron of journalists and of the Catholic Press. His feast day is January 24, and has been observed by the Vatican for many years as World Communications Day. Again this year, the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has used the occasion to give a message to us on Social Communications.

The Forty-Seventh World Communications Day Message is entitled “Social Networks: Portals of Truth and Faith; New Spaces for Evangelization.” Here the Pope speaks about the opportunities for evangelization made possible through social media. He also addresses the moral responsibility we have to use these media in respectful ways. For nearly a half-century these messages have affirmed the value of modern communication in the presentation of the Gospel.

The Church’s Canon law places on the local bishop a particular responsibility to use the media effectively in the work of the Gospel, and to call the media to fidelity in the use of means of social communications.

Canon 747: “It is the obligation and inherent right of the Church, … to preach the Gospel to all people, using for this purpose even its own means of social communication; for it is to the Church that Christ the Lord entrusted the deposit of faith, so that by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, it might conscientiously guard revealed truth, more intimately penetrate it, and faithfully proclaim and expound it.”

Canon 761: “While pride of place must always be given to preaching and catechetical instruction, all the available means of proclaiming Christian doctrine are to be used, … (including) the printed word and other means of social communication.”

Canon 831: “The Christian faithful are not, unless there is a just and reasonable cause, to write in newspapers, pamphlets or periodicals which clearly are accustomed to attack the Catholic religion or good morals.”

Canon 804: “The formation and education provided … through the means of social communication, is subject to the authority of the Church. It is for the Bishop’s Conference to issue general norms concerning this field of activity and for the Diocesan Bishop to regulate and watch over it.”

There is a Canon that deals with the abuse of the media, under the section of the Code – “Offences against Religion and the Unity of the Church.”

Canon 1369: “A person is to be punished with a just penalty, who, at a public event or assembly, or in a published writing, or by otherwise using the means of social communication, utters blasphemy, or gravely harms public morals, or rails at or excites hatred of or contempt for religion or the Church.”

For the rest of the article click here:  The Catholic Key Online

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Communion Rails: Restoring a Sense of the Sacred

Would a change of posture at Holy Communion help to sharpen our perspective, as well?

By Deacon Greg Kandra, January 14, 2013

Okay. I've changed my mind. It's time to bring back the altar rail.
Hey, I'm as surprised as anyone else that I feel this way.
Two years ago, I rhapsodized on the Feast of Corpus Christi on the theology behind standing to receive communion, and defended it. And why not? I've received that way for most of my adult life; I even remember the Latin church's experiment with intinction back in the '70s. Standing and in-the-hand always seemed to me sensible, practical and—with proper catechesis—appropriate.
But now, after several years of standing on the other side of the ciborium—first as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, now as a deacon—and watching what goes on, I've had about enough.
I've watched a mother receive communion, her toddler in tow, then take it back to the pew and share it with him like a cookie.
At least four or five times a year, I have to stop someone who just takes the host and wanders away with it and ask them to consume it on the spot.
Once or twice a month I encounter the droppers. Many are well-intentioned folks who somewhere, somehow drop the host or it slides out of their hands and Jesus tumbles to the floor.
A couple times a year I get the take-out crowd. They receive the host properly, and then pull out a hanky and ask if they can take another one home to a sick relative.
Beyond that, I'm reminded week after week that people have no uniform way to receive in the hand. There's the reverent "hands-as-throne" approach; there's the "Gimme five," one-hand-extended style; there are the notorious "body snatchers" who reach up and seize the host to pop into their mouths like an after-dinner mint; and there are the vacillating undecideds who approach with hands slightly cupped and lips parted. Where do you want it and how??
After experiencing this too often, in too many places, under a variety of circumstances, I've decided: it's got to stop. Catechesis is fruitless. We've tried. You can show people how it's done; you can instruct them; you can post reminders in the bulletin and give talks from the pulpit. It does no good. Again and again, there is a sizable minority of the faithful who are just clueless—or, worse, indifferent.
The fact is, we fumbling humans need external reminders—whether smells and bells, or postures and gestures—to reinforce what we are doing, direct our attention, and make us get over ourselves. Receiving communion is about something above us, and beyond us. It should transcend what we normally do. But what does it say about the state of our worship and our reception of the Eucharist that it has begun to resemble a trip to the DMV?
Our modern liturgy has become too depleted of reverence and awe, of wonder and mystery. The signs and symbols that underscored the mystery—the windows of stained glass, the chants of Latin, the swirls of incense at the altar—vanished and were replaced by . . . what? Fifty shades of beige? Increasingly churches now resemble warehouses, and the Body of Christ is just one more commodity we stockpile and give out.
Can kneeling to receive on the tongue help alleviate some of this? Well, it can't hurt. And for this reason: to step up to a communion rail, and kneel, and receive on the tongue, is an act of utter and unabashed humility. In that posture to receive the Body of Christ, you become less so that you can then become more. It requires a submission of will and clear knowledge of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what is about to happen to you.
Frankly, we should not only be humbled, but intimidated enough to ask ourselves if we are really spiritually ready to partake of the sacrament. Kneeling means you can't just go up and receive without knowing how it's properly done. It demands not only a sense of focus and purpose, but also something else, something that has eluded our worship for two generations.
It demands a sense of the sacred. It challenges us to kneel before wonder, and bow before grace. It insists that we not only fully understand what is happening, but that we fully appreciate the breathtaking generosity behind it. It asks us to be mindful of what "Eucharist" really means: thanksgiving.
I don't see that much today. It's gone. We need to reclaim it. Pope Benedict XVI seems to agree. He has decided he will only give communion at papal Masses to those who kneel and receive on the tongue. He was gently making a liturgical point. Are we paying attention?
After what I've seen, I agree with him. We need to get off our feet, and on our knees.
Bring back the communion rail. It's time.

Deacon Greg Kandra is a Roman Catholic Deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn,
NY, and an award-winning journalist.