A Founding Father of a United Europe

Robert Schuman's Cause of Beatification Advances


VATICAN CITY, MARCH 3, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The cause of beatification of Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of a united Europe, is in its final stages. ( Read more... )

Monking at the Bank

A thread has started in seraphimsigrist's LJ about interior monasticism, which sounds New Agey only because of the way monasticism has developed in the West over the past thousand years or so. In the present Roman Catholic system every priest is a a monk to the extent of being vowed to chastity and obedience and obligated to recite a breviary of the Liturgy of the Hours. From the Middle Ages until quite recently only a priest could be a full-fledged monk. So if priests are the noncomissioned officers of the Pope's army, the monastic orders are the elite corps of special forces. The Liturgy of the Hours, now required of legions of exhausted teachers, administrators, and social workers, is curtailed to the point of being almost useless to the very people whose forbears developed it in the first place, who often have to supplement it with forms of meditation borrowed from non-Christian religions. Laypeople are out of the loop entirely, except for leftwing and rightwing troublemakers and, of course, those troublesome charismatics.

seraphimsigrist represents an older and in some ways more authentic tradition, in which parish priests and deacons are family men with day jobs or small businesses, not obligated to the Liturgy of the Hours, monastics are not ordained to clerical status, and laypeople are urged to adopt a monastic lifestyle of prayer and fasting to the extent that it fits in with the particular obligations of their personal vocations. At least that is the tradition; lay Orthodoxy, in North America at least, seems to be as much about the celebration of ethnicity as about anything more specifically spiritual.

In our search for interior monasticism we might look towards communities such as the Religious Society of Friends and various Mennonite communities, as well as to Catholic, Protestants, and Orthodox who have had the courage to learn from Eastern spiritual traditions without losing their faith.

I got this far with this yesterday, was not able to continue it, and found the tone a little off, not sure why. But I should probably share it for what it is worth.

I was going to go on to speak of Evelyn Underhill and her little book on spirituality and her Practical Mysticism, not to be confused with her rather daunting tome on Mysticism, which is, by the way, on line at CCEL -- the others are at Barnes and Nobles. I think she has a rather good sense of what interior monasticism is, and may well have contributed to a modest revival of the spiritual life in English speaking countries in the last century, and reading her could have a reviving effect here and now. And a month or so ago I mentioned a remarkable Pendle Hill pamphlet by Thomas Kelly, a former president of my Alma Mater, also on line, as giving a good sense of the Quaker approach I resonate to.

I think I'll just send this out as it is.

In other news, today is, or was supposed to be payday, but my check was delivered to Erik's office, and his door is shut. He is either with Alan, getting the word on how many of us are to be fired Wednesday, or with one or more of his managers going over the list. I do not see any gleaming faces of happy campers here today.

Fire on Athos

(BELGRADE) 4 March 2004 – Last night after midnight Chilandar Monastery on Mount Athos was caught by catastrophic fire, which is still not completely extinguished. There are no casualties, and the firefighters, monks and workers in the monastery are keeping the fire under control. The fire, which spread by rooftop, completely destroyed a part of the monastery complex from the abbot's cell, through the hospitality rooms all the way to the Tower of Saint Sava. The Church of King Milutin, the treasury, archives and monastery library remain out of the fire's range. Five fire engines from Kareia, the administrative center of Mount Athos and the Chalkidiki Peninsula, joined in extinguishing and containing the fire -- from the Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church via naqerj in orthodoxy