The Office of Evangelization and Catechesis for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has assembled a Pauline year web page. You’ll note that it is mostly derivative of efforts already made by other dioceses and organizations. Perhaps the office will add ideas of its own in the coming weeks.
July 5, 2008
Our Sunday Visitor has produced a full color, high quality poster for the Pauline year that is jam-packed with useful information and suggestions. Sections include a brief biography, ideas for celebrating the year in our home, St. Paul’s feast days, and a summary of the plenary indulgence the Holy Father has made available. You can have copies printed by your local FedEx/Kinko’s for around $2 to hang in your parish vestibule or community center. Print one on your home computer for the fridge.
July 4, 2008
Bishop Robert J. Baker of Birmingham has assembled a Year of St. Paul reading list. It begins with the Letter to the Romans. (The list is reproduced in the back of Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s new Bible study, which began as a project of the diocese.)
1. □ Romans 1
2. □ Romans 2:1-3:8
3. □ Romans 3:9-31
4. □ Romans 4
5. □ Romans 5
6. □ Romans 6
7. □ Romans 7
8. □ Romans 8:1-17
9. □ Romans 8:18-39
10. □ Romans 9:1-29
…
You can find Bishop Baker’s pastoral letter on the Pauline year here.
July 3, 2008
Elizabeth Lev’s occasional column for Zenit News Service is a must read for anyone who appreciates philosophy’s “three transcendentals” — truth, goodness, and beauty. Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University’s Rome campus, and she weaves the history and art of Rome into her dispatches. This week she takes notice of the rich surroundings at last Sunday’s Mass for the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul in St. Peter’s Basilica, as Pope Benedict and Patriarch Batholomew drew on the “shared tradition” of sacred images during their homilies.
Over their heads soared Michelangelo’s dome, with the words of Christ to Peter shimmering in the sunlight: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build by Church” (Matthew 16:18).
From one of the piers supporting the massive dome, the statue of St. Andrew by Francis Duquesnoy faced the two men. Brother to Peter and the first to be called, St. Andrew died in Greece after having spent his last years spreading the Gospel through the Eastern Empire.
One could imagine his joy as he saw the spiritual leader of millions from the lands where he suffered and died reunited with the successor of his brother. Following the Liturgy of the Word, Bartholomew I took a seat near the tribune of St. Andrew.
Benedict XVI and Bartholomew I both drew upon the shared tradition of images in the two Churches during the Mass.
Bartholomew I’s homily gave us a glimpse of Eastern art. Speaking of the icons that are part of the celebrations for this feast day, he described an image of Sts. Peter and Paul exchanging a fraternal embrace.
The patriarch commented that the icon reflects the traditional story recounting the martyrdom of the two saints. When sentenced to their deaths, he reflected, Sts. Peter and Paul exchanged the kiss of peace one last time as St. Paul said: “’Peace be with you, foundation of the Church and pastor of the sheep and lambs of our Lord.’
“Peter then said to Paul: ‘Go in peace, preacher of good morals, mediator, leader and solace of righteous people.’”
The patriarch then addressed Benedict XVI saying, “It is indeed this kiss that we have come to exchange with you, Your Holiness, emphasizing the ardent desire and love in Christ, things which are closely related to each other.”
July 3, 2008
In the inaugural address for Pope Benedict’s new cycle of catecheses about St. Paul, the Holy Father calls particular attention to the Stoics and their influence on first century culture.
We must recall in particular the Stoic philosophy, which prevailed in Paul’s time and also influenced, though marginally, Christianity. In this connection, we cannot but mention the names of Stoic philosophers, such as the initiators Zeno and Cleanthes, and then those chronologically closer to Paul, such as Seneca, Musonius and Epictetus. Found in them are very lofty values of humanity and wisdom, which were naturally received in Christianity. As a scholar on the subject writes masterfully, “Stoicism … proclaimed a new ideal, which imposed on man duties toward his fellowmen, but at the same time freed him from all physical and national ties and made him a purely spiritual being” (M. Pohlenz, La Stoa, I, Florence 2, 1978, pp. 565ff).
Who were the Stoics and what were there beliefs? The old Catholic Encyclopedia breaks them down into three groups spanning around 700 years. The third of these, lasting until the fifth century, would have been prevalent during Paul’s era. By this time Stoicism was “ethical and didactic.” Unlike during earlier periods, “[s]cience is no longer the knowledge of nature, but a kind of theological summa of moral and religious sentiments.”
A U.K. group called “Early Church” has a short entry about the Stoics that concludes with the following comparison: “Despite their differences, Stoic and Christian ideas of creation both were agreed on one matter: the universe did not come about by chance. As Cicero’s Stoic declares: ‘Nothing that is without mind can generate that which possesses mind.’”
You can read more about the Stoics at the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Stoicism was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held. Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins. The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics’ teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so. Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the soul). Their views in logic and physics are no less distinctive and interesting than those in ethics itself.
July 3, 2008
Which of St. Paul’s thirteen epistles has “pride of place”?
Romans comes first because it is the longest and also the most important for two reasons: (1) it was written to Christians in Rome, the capital of the world; and (2) it is the world’s first systematic, logically organized Christian theology. Ever since, every orthodox Christian theologian has elaborated the same two essential themes as Romans: sin and salvation, the “bad news” and the “good news.” Chapter 8 is, I think, the very best news, the most exalted and joyful chapter ever written.
Peter Kreeft, You Can Understand the Bible
July 3, 2008
From Pope Benedict’s remarks during First Vespers of the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter & Paul, 28 June 2007:
From his Letters, we know that Paul was far from being a good speaker; on the contrary, he shared with Moses and Jeremiah a lack of oratory skill. “His bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (II Cor 10: 10), his adversaries said of him.
July 3, 2008
The Year of St. Paul commenced last weekend with the celebration of the Solemnity of Ss. Peter & Paul, June 29. This new site will share news of events surrounding the Pauline year and circulate resources to help Catholics and other Christians gain a better understanding of Christ through the writings of His “thirteenth Apostle” Paul.
For the source of this site’s name, click on the “Why ‘Man of Three Cultures’?” link above the header.
