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January 29, 2010

March for Life Picture

Our Br. John Paul, OSB, Postulant Joshua, and Br. Peter Totleben, OP, who is a Penn State Graduate (St. Vincent Archabbey provides the Catholic Campus Ministry at State College) at the 2010 March for Life.  Thank you to Fr. Boniface, OSB for this picture.  Please remember in your prayers all young men studying for the priesthood and the religious life.

CU Pittsburgh Flyer

Please get the word out about the next Catholic Underground by printing and getting out this flyer to your parish, family, and friends...more information here: www.catholicundergroundpittsburgh.org

January 28, 2010

Angelic Doctor educated by Benedictines

By: Fr. Bernhard Thomas Blankenhorn, OP
From: http://www.opwest.org/

St. Thomas Aquinas, "The Angelic Doctor," is perhaps the most influential theologian in the history of the Catholic Church and is widely considered the greatest theologian in the history of Order of Preachers. He was born around 1225 and died in 1274. His life was one continual offering to God and neighbor, a gift of prayer, study, writing, teaching and preaching.

Thomas was born into an Italian family of nobility, subjects of Emperor Friedrich II on his border to the papal territories. Thomas was educated from an early age by the Benedictines of the neighboring abbey at Monte Cassino as a their likely future abbot. Understandably, they would have wanted the most humane abbot possible, and all the evidence is that they invested all the resources of what is arguably the most humane monastic rule in the church to form this oblate, who was given to them roughly at the age of five and stayed with them for the next ten years or so, into a pious, but also a humanly savvy man. This was surely one of the main sources for the intimate and largely benevolent insights of the later theologian into what makes humans tick, into their passions, hopes, and fears, into how their lives can succeed and where they sometimes fail. What was going to make Thomas a cherished theologian over centuries was the fruit not only of the new Aristotelian learning, but also of ancient Benedictine "humanitas." 



Thomas nevertheless took the Dominican habit around the age of 18, while he was a student at the University of Naples in Italy. We don't know what precisely moved Thomas to prefer a novel group of migrant preachers and teachers to the prospect of becoming the Benedictine abbot of the most venerable abbey in Christendom, but the immediate attempt of the Dominicans to send him directly to Albert the Great let us suspect that Thomas looked forward to collaborating with this friar who was becoming a well-known expert on the Aristotelian, the Neoplatonic, and the Arabian traditions. Thomas had gone to Naples with the other students from the abbey when tensions between papal and imperial forces had engulfed Monte Cassino. There he met the new Aristotelian learning made possible by the translations and reception sponsored by Friedrich II. Thomas' early works already betray the key idea which Thomas will develop throughout his work: how this acute Aristotelian sense of human animality and human finitude can be in harmony with the Gospel of hope.


Thomas' own family members were opposed to his joining this new and unconventional band of begging friars, with its papal privileges and its often anti-imperial leanings, and they soon kidnapped him. But his mother Theodora and Thomas' brothers eventually realized that their initial plans for family control of the Aquino-Monte Cassino area under imperial protection had become impractical, and they seem to have arranged for Thomas' release.


Thomas was sent first to Paris and then on to Cologne, where he studied under the famous Dominican St. Albert the Great, as he opened a General House of Studies there in 1248. Thomas served for a while as Albert's research and teaching assistant. Recommended by Albert, Thomas, somewhat under aged and academically under qualified, returned to Paris in 1252 to take up the work required for becoming a master of theology. In 1256, in the midst of a larger controversy about mendicant professorships at the University of Paris, generally acknowledged as the greatest university of its day, Thomas had attained there against continuing opposition the degree and eventually also the recognition as master of theology. After serving as professor of theology in Paris for three years, Thomas became conventual lector in Orvieto, in close collaboration with the papal court. He then served as regent professor at a new Dominican Studium in Rome. In 1268, he returned to his old post in Paris. His last teaching assignment was in Naples (1272-1274).


As a master of theology, Thomas had three responsibilities: to lecture on Scriptural and patristic texts, to preach, and to hold public disputations. The lectures and disputations were held in a fashion which made it more easily possible to publish them in a somewhat amended version. The volume of Thomas' writing was extensive, eventually leaving three great syntheses of theology (of which only the first, the Commentary on Lombard's Sentences, reflects more or less directly his classroom work), numerous volumes of disputed questions, a dozen commentaries on Aristotle, along with other theological, philosophical, and topical writings. By the end of his life, and with generous support from fellow Dominican secretaries and academic assistants, Thomas' output must have reached roughly fifteen pages per day.



His thought may be characterized roughly as a synthesis of the Christian tradition, as found in Sacred Scripture (with which Thomas had an intense familiarity), the (often very Neoplatonic) Church Fathers, especially St. Augustine, with the thought of Aristotle, the latter system having come under increasing attack as corrosive of the belief in human dignity. Yet Thomas did not simply combine existing systems. He brought to philosophy and theology new insights, especially by reconciling the evident finitude of human life with the call to supernatural beatitude.


Later to be recognized as a genius of theology and philosophy, Thomas was a humble, simple friar, whose life was focused on Christ. He would begin his typical day by going to confession. He then celebrated Mass with a fellow friar as altar minister and then served at the Mass of the priest who had ministered at his own. He lectured on scriptural or patristic texts in the morning, and he joined the friars for lunch and later for Compline (night prayer). The remainder of his day would be spent in prayer, study, and writing, as well as the periodical afternoon "disputationes" in front of his students or even the faculty as a whole. Thomas was said to be of large build and, despite his early death, generally healthy. He was praised as being good-spirited in his dealings with others, more patient than, say, his Swabian mentor, usually quiet and focused, not without a sense of humor, usually forthcoming when answering frequent requests for expert advice, sometimes writing small theological treatises in answer to queries by the brethren or by political leaders. These opinions, too, were prepared for publication.


Thomas maintained affectionate ties with his family. Returning to Naples around 1272, Thomas was appointed by Charles of Anjou to a chair of theology in Naples, and Thomas had occasion to renew his own family contacts in the vicinity. Thomas showed a similar affection toward his students and his Dominican brothers, maintaining and in one case founding Studia for them and, as in some cases, defending them against undue critique (as with Peter of Tarentaise, who after Thomas' death would become Pope Innocent V. for several months)


Thomas' prayer, like his personality, seems for all its depth to have been simple. He is said to have had particularly strong devotion to St. Paul and St. Agnes. Convinced that the latter had been instrumental in the cure of his ailing Dominican socius, Reginald, Thomas arranged for the funding of a yearly celebration by the brethren in her honor. Thomas was said to have prayed intently before every significant endeavor. His prayer displayed three main traits: it was linked with his apostolate of study, it was notably Eucharistic (Thomas would play a central role in re-working the liturgy of Corpus Christi), and it was often focused on the symbol of the crucifix (where the supernatural and human finitude intersect).




Thomas was not just a man of great intellect and simple prayer. He also may be counted among the great mystics. Toward the end of his life, though he often appeared absent-minded, even in public, he also seems to have experienced something ecstatic while celebrating Mass. Finally, on December 6, 1273, during the time in which he was completing the section on sacraments in his great Summa Theologiae, he experienced a transforming vision during Mass. He stopped writing on his works in progress. Some three months later, he died.


His secretary and socius, Reginald, will report the much quoted phrase, "All that I have written seems like no more than straw." After this episode, Thomas wrote only one more small work: fittingly, a letter to the abbot of Monte Cassino answering questions which had become controversial at the abbey regarding the ability of providence to know future contingents without becoming deterministic and robbing human beings of their freedom and contingency. The monks seemed convinced that they faced a quandary: either there was human freedom, but God was not involved in the world; or, more likely, what seemed to be human freedom was no more than the unavoidable result of divine determination. Within their confines, cloisters can at times of controversies become something like pressure cookers, and Bernard, the abbot, asks Thomas to help alleviate some of the less constructive pressure. In this short, "expert opinion", Thomas' answer is in many ways typical of his work and shows that he could still practice theology even after the events of December. His response draws on the ancient wisdom of Boethius in a new service of mercy, confirming the faith of those struggling here with intellectual doubt. Thomas' letter to Abbot Bernard even includes a rare play on words. If the monks grasp the meaning of eternity vis-a-vis time, they will solve their problem "quasi fide occulata", as if with a faith which has come to see (by reason). Normally, "fides occulata" meant no more than "eye-witness", a frequent topic in visitation reports about who was doing - or not doing - what. Here, Thomas has added a "quasi" to show that he is expanding the conventional meaning. Thomas, who had received so much from the monks at Monte Cassino, saved his last work as a means of thanking them.


Soon after Thomas died on March 7, 1274, having been injured on the way to the Second Council of Lyon. The philosophical faculty at Paris asked the Dominican Order for the permission to bury Thomas' remains their own halls. The theologians were less approving. Thomas' theology had become a matter of increasing controversy in the final years of his life and in the first decades after his death. Nevertheless, he was declared a saint in 1323.


As for Thomas' thought, its influence has varied through the centuries. Reacting against often severe criticism of Thomas' positions, the Order of Friars Preachers recommended "Thomism" as its common doctrine in the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century, at the Council of Trent, Thomas' thought emerged as a crucial tool for the explication of Catholic doctrine; at this time, almost 300 years after Thomas' death, the Summa Theologiae came to replace the patristic anthology of Peter Lombard's Sentences as the chief text for theological systematics. Yet Thomism declined after Trent, until Pope Leo XIII called for its revival in 1879, leading as well to the formation of the so-called "Leonine Commission", which has produced critical editions of many of Thomas' works and, since the 1960's, has set standards for what the critical edition of a widely diffused medieval text should be. Interest in Thomism declined again after Vatican II. Although the Council recommended Thomas' thought, the excessively dogmatic and ahistorical appearance of much of "Neo-Thomism" (1879 - 1962) led to a negative reaction. Yet the study of Thomas has experienced a revival in recent years, partly due to the work of Dominicans at the Angelicum in Rome, in Toulouse, France, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington D.C., and at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at Berkeley, California. Another important factor has been the wider development of mediaeval studies. Ironic as it might seem, the disappearance of the need to ascribe every insight to the "doctor communis" has freed the way to study the particular place of Thomas in the controversial context of his times. This can provide new possibilities for a wider systematic reception in the thought of our own day as well.


In this sense, the Catholic Church continues to look to St. Thomas Aquinas for insight into the mysteries of the faith, as evidenced by the "magisterial" references to Aquinas in the new Catechism or the encyclical, Fides et Ratio, but also by academic publications on philosophy and theology. Thomas' life and thought continue to inspire his fellow friars as they devote their lives to prayer and study, to preaching and teaching, for the salvation of souls.


Bibliography

  • Torrell, Jean-Pierre, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, Volume 1: The Person and His Work, Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1996.
  • Tugwell, Simon, O.P., Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings, Paulist Press, New York, 1988.
  • Weisheipl, James A., O.P., Friar Thomas D'Aquino, second ed., Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1983.
 

January 20, 2010

Student of Boniface Wimmer, celebrated as great religious priest

Father Helmpraecht, born on 14 January, 1820, was the son of a well-to-do family in Bavaria. He made his studies partly with the Benedictines at Metten, where the celebrated Abbot Boniface Wimmer was one of his preceptors, and partly at the University of Munich. Before com-pleting his theological course, he applied to be received as a novice of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer for the American Missions. Being accepted, he arrived in America, June, 1843, and made his novitiate and finished his studies at the old St. James monastery in Baltimore.

He was professed on 6 December, 1844. There, too, he was ordained on 21 December, 1845. He performed his first ministerial services in Baltimore until 1848, when he was sent to Buffalo as Superior, at the age of twenty-eight. His spirit of regularity, prudence, solid learning and piety justified his appointment. In 1854, he became Rector of the monastery in New York, which office he held until 1860.

For only a short time, from 1860 to 1863, he again became a subject, and as such lived contented and happy. But in 1865 he had to accompany the Provincial, Father DeDycker to Rome, whence he returned as the latter's successor. The heavy burden and great responsibilities of the Provincialate, which he had to bear for four successive terms, made him only more humble and charitable. During those twelve years of office he had innumerable trials and sufferings, some connected with his office, others of a private nature. Some of them demanded more than ordinary courage and confidence in Divine Providence. But he bore everything with heroic fortitude. We refer only to the Annapolis disaster of 1866.





When relieved of the Provincialate in 1877, he was appointed Rector of St. Michaels, Baltimore, and in 1880 of the monastery of the Most Holy Redeemer, New York, where he had been Rector twenty-five years before. The faithful of the parish, who had known him long ago, were delighted to see him back in his old position, but the good Father was worn out by cares and troubles. He sighed for the moment when he could again be a simple subject, a favour which he daily implored of Almighty God.

God granted his desire. At the expiration of his three-year term, another Father was appointed Rector, and Father Helmpraecht was free to endure in silent patience the torments of his protracted sickness. Like a true and genuine disciple of his Crucified Redeemer, he suffered almost without relief and comfort. Such had long been his desire. He wished to die within the Octave of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and to die with no one present.

The Octave came, the 15th of December, 1884. It was past ten o clock that night, when good Brother Lambert, his beloved infirmarian, said to him: "Well, Father, you are not going to die within the Octave, after all." Father Helmpraecht, in his native language, was heard to whisper: "Mother! Mother! Mother!" The "Mother" heard her faithful son. After some little time, he said to the Brother: "If you will leave me, I think I can sleep a little now." Brother Lambert, to gratify him, withdrew from the room. Looking in a little later, he found Father Helmpraecht lying dead, as calm and composed as when he had last seen him. His words were fulfilled.

All who were closely acquainted with Father Helmpraecht knew him to be a truly saintly priest and Redemptorist. It is, therefore, to be hoped that, at some future day, a lengthy biography of this holy man will be published. James McMaster, the celebrated journalist, who knew the Father well, declared that he did not hesitate to invoke his intercession.

January 19, 2010

Pittsburgh Cardinal to celebrate March for Life Vigil Mass.


His Eminence, Daniel Cardinal Dinardo, a Pittsburgher, will celebrate the Solemn Holy Mass at the Basilica National Shrine in Washington, DC to kick off the 2010 March for Life.  For more on the Cardinal (a great vocation story) click here.


January 18, 2010

Follow the March for Life on EWTN


Here are some great pro-life resources from EWTN.com.  If you are unable to attend the 2010 March for Life you can tune into EWTN which will broadcast the events live from Washington, DC.
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January 15, 2010

St. Maurus and Placid


"Once while blessed Benedict was in his room, one of his monks, the boy Placid, went down to get some water. In letting the bucket fill too rapidly, he lost his balance and was pulled into the lake, where the current quickly seized him and carried him about a stone's throw from the shore.

Though inside the monastery at the time, the man of God was instantly aware of what had happened and called out to Maurus: "Hurry, Brother Maurus! The boy who just went down for water has fallen into the lake, and the current is carrying him away." 


Maurus asked for the blessing and on receiving it hurried out to fulfill his abbot's command. He kept on running even over the water till he reached the place where Placid was drifting along helplessly. Pulling him up by the hair, Maurus rushed back to shore, still under the impression that he was on dry land. It was only when he set foot on the ground that he came to himself and looking back, realized that he had been running on the surface of the water. Overcome with fear and amazement at a deed he would never have thought possible, he returned to his abbot and told him what had taken place.
The holy man would not take any personal credit for the deed but attributed it to the obedience of his disciple. Maurus, on the contrary, claimed that it was due entirely to his abbot's command. He could not have been responsible for the miracle himself, he said, since he had not even known he was performing it. While they were carrying on this friendly contest of humility, the question was settled by the boy who had been rescued. "When I was being drawn out of the water," he told them, "I saw the abbot's cloak over my head; he is the one I thought was bringing me to shore."- Dialogues of Gregory the Great
 
O God, Who through the holy Abbot Maurus didst spread the Order of Saint Benedict throughout France, and there increase and preserve it; grant us in Thy mercy the grace, that through the merits and intercession of this Thy faithful servant, and all the holy sons of Saint Benedict, the Order may also be spread in our days; and that we may imitate the virtues of Saint Maurus in such a manner, as to gain Heaven, where, in company with the blessed, we may praise Thee for all eternity. R. Amen. 

 

January 13, 2010

January 12, 2010

Jan, 12, 2010 (Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time)

From: saintvincentarchabbey.org

1Sm 1:9-20; 1Sm 2:1,4-8; Mk 1:21-28

"He humbles, he also exalts!"

Seldom does this happen in our liturgy, but when the responsorial psalm is not a psalm at all it does not mean that it is not full of praise. Today the First Book of Samuel is the source of both the first reading and the response to the first reading. In the response we hear the voice of Hannah our model of prayer. One who prays does so from a heart that is exulting in the Lord, our savior. In his mighty power to save us the Lord has enabled us to swallow up our enemies and rejoice in our victory. The weapons of the mighty are useless and those who have no weapons find new strength. Those with boundless resources have no food, and those hungry have an abundance to eat. The powerless one is the childless one, and from her womb new life abounds. It is the LORD alone, who can judge between those who will live and those who will die. The LORD alone, favors the poor while ignoring the rich; The LORD alone, humbles even as he exalts. No longer are the needy ignored; the Lord raises them from oblivion. From a pile of defecation rises the humble of the earth. The Lord seats those who have no glorious throne upon his own throne in Christ and at the right hand of power. These words of praise abound in Hannah's prayer even as she awaits with confidence the coming of a son into her seemingly dead womb. Indeed the LORD dispelled Hannah's downcast spirit so that next time she had relations with Elkanah, she could be relaxed and opened, and the LORD remembered her. Indeed the Lord Jesus spoke with the authority of someone who knows the LORD and lives in the power of the LORD. We, too, have that kind of power that overflows from a heart that shares intimately with the Father in the Holy Spirit.


Why could her voice not be heard? Perhaps Hannah was too distraught to do anymore than whisper. Perhaps Hannah felt embarrassed that her words were less than theologically accurate or liturgically kosher. Perhaps she could not be heard because it was a man's place to pray out-loud and a woman was not to be heard in public prayer. Even though Eli could see her mouth moving he could not hear her petition. He quickly misjudged her, and accused her of being too drunk to even try to pray. Hannah spoke with an inner authority to the Priest Eli, in her tone or in her words the old priest could a heart full of deep sorrow and misery. This is the deepest source of prayer, a heart full of sadness. When the priest listened to Hannah's explanation about her behavior in the house of the LORD, he could hear in her voice of authority, the truth that she spoke. This inspired him to send her away with a blessing, "God in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him." In response to her heart felt and heart formed prayer the LORD gave Hannah a son whom she named Samuel because she had asked the Lord for him.


When the Lord Jesus came to Capernaum with his disciples, he spoke in their assembly with authority, not like the scribes. Evidently the scribes claimed their authority from the sources they quoted. They would not make a command or a claim without reference to some other important and well-respected teacher or prophet. Authority was external, it was in the words they spoke or in the sources of their argument, not in the person speaking. The Lord Jesus, like Hannah in the first reading, spoke from the depths of his heart. The Lord Jesus spoke from the depths of a heart filled with the compassion of the Father and the fire of the Holy Spirit. Such a word of power was unfamiliar to the crowds as were the words Hannah unfamiliar to Eli, the priest. Neither the officials of the synagogue nor the priest at the shrine were familiar with the voice of the LORD, the Word of God. In humorous gospel irony however, the man with an unclean spirit could hear the Lord Jesus speaking and knew who he was. The Lord Jesus would not take advantage of any demon witness. He wanted people to witness out of love rather than demons out of fear. So the Lord Jesus cast out the demon and silenced his truthful but unworthy testimony. So too, the priest Eli and his sons were silenced and cast out of the house of the LORD upon the arrival of Samuel, a man of authority, who listened to the LORD and did his will. Either we speak with the authority of one who knows the Lord Jesus and His Father in the Holy Spirit or we will be silenced and cast out. This is the only way The Lord wants his fame to spread throughout the whole world.

March for Life 2010


Look for a number of monks and seminarians from St. Vincent Archabbey and Seminary at the 2010 March for Life in Washington DC.  Please join us as we pray for an end of abortion and all crimes against life.



January 11, 2010

Papal Mass (Baptism of our Lord)

Upcoming Dates for Catholic Undergound announced!!!


Get ready for Catholic Underground to start back up this spring!  We have set the following dates for our events: February 20th, March 20th, April 17th, and May 15th--that's every third Saturday from February through May. Note that we are changing to a new location: St. Matthew's Parish in Lawrenceville (5322 Carnegie Street Pittsburgh, PA 15201-2599). Mark your calendars so that you don't miss the chance to come worship the Lord and hang with us! Artists still TBA... More info at http://www.catholicundergroundpittsburgh.org/


Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010, 8 -10:30pm
Saturday, March 20, 2010, 8 -10:30pm
Saturday, April 17, 2010, 8 -10:30pm
Saturday, May 15, 2010, 8 -10:30pm

Pax et Gaudium

O.S.B. Vocation Awareness

O.S.B. Vocation Awareness