In reflecting on the election and on all the financial turmoil plus Washington involvement and all the doomsday language flying around Capitol Hill, I called to mind a simple verse from the King James Bible:
Put not your trust in princes,
nor in the son of man
in whom there is no help.
Psalm 146:3
Jeff Cavins just launched a website that will be keeping track of what goes on at the synod which begins Monday. In the intro video on the site, he says the site will be posting articles, audio and video of synod events. I’m hoping it will be a valuable resource for everyone over the next couple weeks. The site is called scripturesynod.com.
Why is this synod so important? Well, it’s the first time in over 40 years that the highest echelons of Church authority are officially discussing the Bible. Yes, the last major document on the Bible was Dei Verbum. A few things have been released by the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the Popes have a made a few comments, but the Magisterium has not grappled with the biblical question in a serious way since the early 1960’s. So I think the next couple weeks could be really important in Catholic biblical thought and biblical theology for the next 40 years or so. I could be wrong.
Edit 6/25/2013: Updated info at this post.
Okay, my friends, the database of Catholic saints which I have been working on and telling you about is finally being launched. (Hold onto your hats!) Here’s the URL: http://www.ecatholichub.net/study/saints. Click on “Saint A-Z” to see searchable javascript database. Like I told you before, you can search by multiple criteria for anyone listed in the Roman Martyrology–a saint or a blessed. Take a look and tell me what you think. This is a totally unique resource on the web and I think it promises to be a very useful one.
There’s an interesting CNS story about various people the Pope has invited to attend the synod next week. I thought I’d scour through the official Italian list to find the Americans (Zenit has it in English). I only came up with four:
1. Fr. Peter Damian Akpunonu, professsor of biblical exegesis at St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Chicago and member of the International Theological Commission (expert consultant)
2. Sr. Sara Butler, professor of dogmatic theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Yonkers, NY (expert consultant)
3. Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus (official observer)
4. Ricardo Grzona, president of the Foundation Ramon Pane of Honduras and Catholic consultor to the United Bible Societies of the Americas (official observer)
According to Zenit there are 32 voting members, 41 experts and 37 observers. I thought it a bit disappointing that the US didn’t get a voting member at all, but oh well. (This is not correct, see this more recent post for correction.) I also thought the selection of these four people to represent the American perspective at the synod was a bit mercurial. I mean, these are not the names that leap to mind when I think of “American Catholic Biblical Scholarship.” But I don’t get a phone call from Rome before these things happen. If only…just kidding! Now I will say that the pool is quite small–only 32 votes–so I suppose not every country can get a seat at the table.
It is also a little odd that Fr. Akpunonu is not from the US, but from Africa. Here’s his bio at the Mundelein website:
But I suppose being a member of the International Theological Commission probably puts him in good stead to be an expert consultant at the synod. Ah, yes, this must be the case. Turns out Sr. Sara Butler is also a member of the ITC. Here’s her bio from the St. Joseph Seminary website:
At her bio page she has an interesting paper on women’s ordination.
The other thing is that the synod is not an exegetical conference, but a pastoral synod. The most important things to discuss is how the Bible functions in the life of the Church as a whole–not the intricacies of biblical scholars opinions on minute topics. So the most important members are the pastors of the Church–the cardinals, archbishops and so on. They represent the authority and pastoral intelligence of the Church. Thank God the Church is not run by Bible scholars!
Oh yes, the other two. I find the official observers less interesting to talk about because, well, I imagine them just sitting in the back of the room shaking hands with people and such–not actually participating in the work of the synod. But anyway. You probably know who Carl Anderson is. He just wrote a new best-selling book and you’ll find him wherever the Knights may go. But Ricardo Grzona…hmmm…well, I found a picture of him handing a book to the Pope. According to the American Bible Society, he’s a Spanish speaker and has been active in promoting Lectio Divina with the UBS. Unfortunately, most of the stuff about him on the web is in Spanish so I can’t do much with it.
A new project is afoot in the world of Catholic biblical scholarship. It is a new Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. The editors are Peter Williamson, Mary Healy and Kevin Perotta. They’ve put together a great team of writers including themselves and Edward (Ted) Sri, Curtis Mitch, Tim Gray, Fr. George Montague, Fr. Francis Martin, Bill Wright, Fr. Bill Kurz, Scott Hahn, Fr. Thomas Stegman, Fr. Ronald Witherup, Fr. Dennis Hamm and Dan Keating. Williamson, Healy and Keating are professors at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. Perotta is a Catholic writer who has authored and edited many books including a recent series of Bible studies from Loyala University Press. The editorial board includes Scott Hahn, Daniel Harrington, Frank Matera, Bill Kurz, Francis Martin, George Montague and A.Bp. Terrence Pendergast.
The editors lay out their principles for the commentary as follows:
If the commentary fulfills all these goals, it will be well worth reading. I hope that they put out the volumes as fast as is reasonably possible. The first ones will be available in November 2008: Mary Healy’s commentary on Mark and Fr. George Montague’s work on 1 Tim, 2 Tim and Titus.
This commentary is a different animal in the world of commentaries. It reminds me a lot of the Interpretation series, which was a Protestant commentary designed for pastors and lay persons with a high level of biblical knowledge, but little familiarity with the biblical languages and the technical stuff Bible scholars get into. So, hopefully, this new commentary will provide many American Catholic priests with great homily material that is sound in terms of scholarship and yet relevant and applicable for people of faith.
Oh yeah, and they’ve cleaned up extremely positive endorsements from the likes of Cardinal Schonborn, Cardinal Vanhoye, Archbishop Chaput, Gary Anderson, Romanus Cessario, Aidan Nichols, Robert Louis Wilken, Benedict Groeschel, Ralph Martin (who can be found in my sidebar), and a host of other people.
Right now, the project is New Testament only, but if it is a success I wouldn’t be surprised to see an OT commentary too. And with little competition out there, it may happen. If you pick up a copy and read it, let me know what you think.
EDIT 6/25/2013: Updated info at this post.
On October 1, the database of Catholic saints and blesseds which I have been constructing will be launched into cyberspace by ecatholichub.net. I invite you to take a look at it and let me know what you think once it gets up on the web. The database is based on the data in the 2004 Roman Martyrology which I explained in a previous post. What makes it unique and special as far as online saint databases go, is its comprehensive scope. It doesn’t leave out saints or add people who are not recognized by the Catholic Church. There are a few other saint databases online and each one has its merits and problems. But I think this new one at ecatholichub.net will really take the cake. It’s more of a reference tool, I suppose, but it provides data that no one else is providing. In that sense, I think it will be very useful for finding saints that are less well known. Right now, we’ve got 6,882 entries. Now there are still a handfull of double entries that I haven’t deleted yet. And there are some entries which include martyr groups or several people for whatever reason. This can result in double entry (when each member of the group is also listed separately) or it can result in masking the total number (for example, if there are 100 martyrs in a group, but we only have the names of three of them).
The most challenging part of putting the database together was translating Latin proper nouns which describe diocesan sees over which a saint bishop ruled or locations where martyrs were put to death. I had piles of Latin dictionaries and word lists all over my desk and I was mining the depths of the resources at Catholic University’s library trying to find various words. I got the vast majority of difficult terms and proper nouns from Latin into English, but there are still a few I left untranslated because I couldn’t find them. Hopefully, this will not bar people from figuring out who these saints are or confusing them with one another.
One of the coolest features about the database is the ability to search with multiple criteria. You can use any combination of fields to search for saints by name, title, feast day, year of death, etc. I think this should be useful for finding all saints with the name “Odo” or all saints remembers on August 24th and such like.
I really struggled over whether to uniformly translate saint names into English or vary it up a little based on common usage. For example, St. Teresa of Avila is usually spelled “Teresa” in English, but St. Therese of Lisieux is another story. Both appear as “Teresa” in Latin. Then of course, there are different spellings of Anne, Ann, Anna, Hannah and then Mary, Maria, Marie, etc. It goes on. Some saints have a Latinized “-us” on the end like “Bernardus.” In most cases, I chopped off the “-us.” The reason this is such a struggle is that many people are named after saints and take great pride in the spelling of their names because names are such an important part of our identity and self-understanding. But I judged that in the interest of saint-searchers, uniformity was the best route. I listed many saints with alternative names in the Biography field, so if people are used to calling a saint by a certain spelling or title, it still can usually be found.
I’m hoping that the database will grow over time and new saints and blesseds will keep being added. If it goes in the right direction, we may be able to set it up to take user-generated content like pictures and biographical information. Like I said, I think it will be very useful to a lot of people and it really is a one-of-a-kind thing on the Internet. Once the link is up, I’ll provide it for you here and ya’ll can have a look for yourselves.
Pope Benedict XVI has called a synod of bishops to meet on the theme “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.” For those of us not in the ecclesiastical know, this is a big deal. The synod is going to meet Oct 5-26 and talk about the Bible in Catholic life–something that has not been done in an official, serious way since the publication of Dei Verbum 40 years ago.
A little controversy was ginned up back in January when Cardinal Martini wrote a piece giving his opinion on what the synod should avoid saying.
The important thing that will come out of this is an official document penned by Benedict himself that presents the results of the synod and a way forward for the Church regarding Scripture. While I try to avoid predicting the future too much, I’ll bet some of his views from his famous Erasmus lecture in 1988 will resurface, albeit in disguised form. This lecture has guided much discussion on biblical hermeneutics in Catholic circles in the United States. I project that the document coming from this synod will be equally important for future discussions. If nothing else, the synod promises to be an important and much needed moment for reflection on Scripture by our Church’s leadership.
Here’s a couple articles on the synod:
Chinese Catholics Prepare…
Zenit
From CNS
CNA
And here’s the official synod preparation document.
“Hope is the confident expectation of fulfillment.”
-Peter Herbeck
EDIT 6/25/2013: Updated info at this post.
I’ve been working on a saint database for ecatholichub.net, creating a saint database that promises to be the most comprehensive, complete and well-organized saint database on the internet.
To do this, I’ve been basing the database on the Roman Martyrology. The Roman Martyrology is the Church’s official list of saints. For each day, the Martyrology lists usually about ten to twenty saints with a little phrase about where they lived, who they were or where they were martyred. Not every saint in the martyrology is a martyr. But every saint that has been officially canonized or beatified is. The process for canonization was originally set up by Pope Alexander III in 1170. Since then the process has been modified a bit, but the pope maintains the right to name saints. Before 1170, local bishops would name saints based on their lives or popular devotion.
Canonization
I’ll explain the Martyrology in a bit, but first you need to know a little about how people become saints. When a holy person dies or is killed for the sake of Christ, he or she might be named a saint by the pope. There is a 5-year waiting period after the person’s death before the process can begin. Sometimes this waiting period is lifted by the pope–as in the cases of Mother Teresa and John Paul II. If people are pushing for the person to be canonized and the Church elects to begin the process, the holy person is initially called “Venerable” or “The Servant of God.” The process cannot begin until the Church does a basic verification that the holy person in question lived a holy life and was a professing Christian.
Then there is a waiting period where people across the world pray to the holy person, asking his or her intercession for various things. This is not an act of worship, but it is a prayer. That is, Catholics don’t worship saints, but they do pray to them, asking them to pray for us. It’s like asking a friend to pray for you. Ok, so if a request is granted through the intercession of the saint–usually these are medical miracles–then the “Servant of God” can be beatified. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints (part of the Roman Curia) is responsible for reviewing cases and approving miracles. The Congregation verifies the occurrence of a miracle using evidence and witnesses. Once a miracle is approved by the Congregation and the Pope, then the person is beatified. A beatification is an event, so the person is not officially “Blessed” until after the beatification event. After the event, they carry the name “Blessed” or “Bl.” for short.
But you must be thinking, so what’s a “blessed”? Is that like a junior saint? Well, in fact, you’d be correct about that. The Church permits people to pray to Blesseds and ask their intercession. Their names are entered in the Roman Martyrology and their feast days actually get celebrated by their religious order or by their local Church. But their feast days are not celebrated in the Church universal.
People continue praying to the Blessed person and if another miracle is granted, then their case or “cause” is resubmitted to the Congregation. If the miracle is approved, then the Blessed is then canonized a “Saint.” And yes, canonization is an event too, so the person isn’t officially a saint until after the event. Then they get the little “St.” in front of their name. Oh yeah, and canonizations are technically infallible pronouncements–they can’t be revoked.
So what’s the Roman Martyrology?
The Roman Martyrology is where the names of all these people go. It’s an official list. Each saint and blessed is assigned a day. Since there’s about 6,500 saints and blesseds, each day contains several saints, about 10-20 as I said above. The entries in the Martyrology are meant to be read liturgically, but few places actually practice that right now.
The current edition of the Martyrology was published in 2004. It is only in Latin for now. But since I know a little Latin, I’ve been working on translating the index and turning it into a saint database. It doesn’t have a whole ton of information about each person, but enough to organize it. I hope we get an official translation sometime soon.
Past editions of the Martyrology have often been incomplete or kind of haphazard. Fortunately, John Paul II got serious work going on a well-researched, comprehensive one and they did quite a job. The first edition came out in 2001, but it had a lot of errors and problems, so they reworked it and republished in 2004. There were previous editions in 1946 and 1962.
Now technically a “martyrology” is a list of martyrs, so a whole lot of martyrologies were floating around the early Church. Fortunately, Rome saw to it, that these lists were verified in codified, so we’re not all using different or inaccurate lists. Some of the lists are very ancient, for example, from inscriptions in the Roman catacombs.
Well, that’s the Martyrology. Oh, and if you want to buy a copy and have $150 to spare, look here at the Vatican Bookstore, yep, it’s the official one.
I’ve been reading Pope Benedict’s encyclical on Hope, “Spe Salvi,” and I thought I’d share some juicy quotes with you. So here’s the official Catholic Bible Student quote list for Spe Salvi:
-Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi