Dissed by the secular media and New Catholic Generation’s Catholics Watch, Pure Flix Entertainment rocked the box office with opening of God’s Not Dead 2

The April fool’s joke this year apparently was on the secular skeptics, smarmy and oh-so-hip young Catholic religiös from New Catholic Generation’s Catholics Watch, and myriad other naysaying Nellies. God’s Not Dead 2, which opened in the United States Friday, April 1, rocked the pop culture theater box office with a three-day weekend opening of $7.624 million in box office receipts as of Sunday, April 3, according to Box Office Mojo, the leading online box-office reporting service, operated by Seattle-based Internet Movie Database, (IMDb), which is owned by Amazon.com, and widely considered the number one movie website in the world.

That was a good enough showing for God’s Not Dead 2 to finish fourth that weekend behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zootopia and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. All in all, not too shabby, and suggesting some crossover appeal into the ranks of the unchurched. The original God’s Not Dead in 2014 went on to gross more than $60 million in the United States.

Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian’s film critic, huffed in his April 28 review: “The almighty may not be dead, but Nietzsche is rolling in his grave. Angry, smug self-pity is becoming the keynote of the God’s Not Dead Christian movie franchise. This new drama is about how Christians are threatened and oppressed in … well, where do you think? Iraq? Syria? Places where millennia of Christian traditions are genuinely being trashed and their believers in real danger? Erm, no – this film is set in the U.S., where Christians are crushed under the jackboot of sneering liberals and pantomime-villain atheists.” The storyline for God’s Not Dead 2 (you can watch a YouTube trailer here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxz-Y-c2UUc) has public high school history teacher Grace Wesley (played by Melissa Joan Hart) responding to a student’s question about Jesus’ teachings, as they relate to the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. The teacher’s response acknowledges that “the writer of the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus as saying, ‘You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” In response to another student’s comment, she adds some additional remarks about those who would die for what they believe.

By the end of the day, the teacher finds herself facing the wrath of the principal, the school board, and her union representative, after a text message from yet another student in the class finds its way to the first student’s parents, who are irate.

Offered the chance to apologize for mentioning Jesus in the classroom, she refuses, asserting that she had done nothing wrong in answering the question. In short order, she is put on leave without pay and a proxy civil action on behalf of the school board by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) follows, as they attempt to have her fired and her teacher’s certificate revoked.

Now, truth be told, I’m a fan of the Guardian. The London-based newspaper is one of the truly serious remaining English-language titles internationally. And Bradshaw’s review is not without merit for pointing out places like Iraq and Syria where Christians are undergoing real persecution today. Point taken. But at the same time it would be naïve to suggest an overt reference to Christianity in American classrooms today is not somehow a potentially high-octane mix that could land a teacher in a major conflagration. So while the point may be overdrawn in God’s Not Dead 2, it, too, has merit and isn’t simply a matter of paranoia on the so-called Christian Right, as some secular liberals would have you believe. The Oberlin Review, established in 1874, and the student newspaper of Oberlin College in Ohio, called God’s Not Dead 2 “a Slice of Trump-Era Propaganda” in a headline for an April 14 review by arts editor Christian Bolles, going on in the piece to call it a “nauseatingly unnecessary follow-up” to the original movie.

In the original God’s Not Dead, released by Pure Flix Entertainment in March 2014 (watch a YouTube trailer here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMjo5f9eiX8), Josh Wheaton, an evangelical college student (played by Shane Harper) enrols in a philosophy class taught by Professor Jeffrey Radisson (played by Kevin Sorbo), an atheist, who demands his students sign a declaration that “God is dead” to pass. Josh is the only student who refuses to sign. Radisson requires Josh to debate the topic with him but agrees to let the class members decide the winner. I admit the cosmology, not to mention the philosophy, is pretty convoluted in places to be fully persuasive as Christian apologetics, but when it comes to evolution versus creationism this is a very old and convoluted debate in America, no matter which side you find yourself on. While the debate over competing theories of Darwinian evolution and biblical creationism was famously showcased during the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in 1925, the resolution of the matter – much to the surprise of secularists who had thought it settled for 50 years – is no closer today than it was in 1925, or when it reignited around 1975.

If anything, the issue is more contested in more venues in more ways than ever, with “intelligent design” now added to the mix in recent years, much to the dismay of secular scientists, other academics and many public school science teachers.

Evolution is the theory that generations of animal and plant species alter and transform over time in response to changes in their environment and circumstances, a process known as natural selection.

Intelligent design is the proposition that scientific evidence exists to show that life in its multitudinous forms was caused by the direction of a higher intelligence. In 1925, prosecutors charged John Thomas Scopes, a high school science teacher in Dayton, Tenn., with teaching evolution, which had just been outlawed. Represented by the famed defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow, Scopes was found guilty and fined after a high-profile trial, but the conviction was later overturned on a technicality, although the statute prohibiting the teaching of evolution remained on Tennessee’s law books until its repeal in 1967.

William Jennings Bryan, a well-known Populist, former Nebraska congressman and three-time candidate for the United States presidency, who delivered one of the most famous and fiery orations in American history almost 30 years earlier in 1896 with his “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic national convention in Chicago, denouncing a gold standard monetary policy, argued the prosecution’s case for the State of Tennessee.

Saturday Night Live (SNL), which was perhaps last truly funny around the time it debuted on NBC in 1975 – about the same time the Darwinian evolution and biblical creationism debate reignited – parodied God’s Not Dead 2 last month, which while fair game, came as a surprise probably to exactly no one. Maybe that’s also why SNL last night, 30 years after its debut, brought back former cast member Dana Carvey to resurrect his “Church Lady” sketch, which he performed as character Enid Strict hosting her talk show Church Chat between 1986 and 1993, to deal now with a satanic Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

New Catholic Generation administrator Renée Shumay, joined by several of her young smirking cohorts, have done at last count at least three Catholics Watch vids on Gods Not Dead 2 since January, two based on trailers, and a more recent one based on the full movie, each being more smarmy than the one before. New Catholic Generation bills itself as a “Catholic teen initiative that uses YouTube to spread the Catholic faith.” God help us. Catholics kids are oh-so-cool don’t you know. And we wonder why evangelical Protestant Christians sometimes question whether Catholics are really Christians?

Ohio-based vlogger Shumay, who has worked for the last year for Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), is an alumnus of the proud-to-be-orthodox über Catholic Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, I’m embarrassed as a co-religionist to say. If you are in doubt, check them out for yourself at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcY_wn_6g7E and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0cu_NXEXuU

It’s a very Catholic Thing, the whole “we’re-the-one-true-Church-and-you’re-not” sort of petty one-upmanship. Unfortunately.

Maybe someone should get the word out to Shumay and her New Catholic Generation hotshots that Protestant-bashing masquerading as pop culture criticism is not so cool in 2016.

While it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the sex-and-morality hot-button issues of his pontificate, although it does garner some coverage, one of the most interesting facets of Pope Francis in action is to watch is his truly remarkable rapprochement with Protestants, particularly evangelicals of all denominations, including his now famous impromptu iPhone video message two years ago for Kenneth Copeland, and other influential evangelicals, done during a January 2014 three-hour breakfast meeting chat at the Vatican with his close personal friend Bishop Tony Palmer, 48, of the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a close personal friend of the Pope’s, dating back to their days in Buenos Aires in Argentina. Tragically, Palmer died about six months later on July 20, 2014 in hospital following hours of surgery after a motorcycle accident.

Pope Francis, along with his meetings in 2014 with Palmer, and Copeland, co-host of Believer’s Voice of Victory, also met with James and Betty Robison, co-hosts of the Life Today television program, Rev. Geoff Tunnicliff, chief executive office of the World Evangelical Alliance; well-known Canadian evangelical leader Brian Stiller, Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, also from the World Evangelical Alliance, and Rev. John Arnott and his wife, Carol, co-founders of Partners for Harvest ministries in Toronto. That meeting lasted almost three hours and included a private luncheon with Pope Francis.

God’s not dead. But Catholic “we’re-the-one-true-Church-and-you’re-not” sort of petty one-upmanship of those working in the evangelical Protestant Christian filmmaking genre should be. If young Catholics’ big knocks against that Christian movie genre are too many heavy-handed theological scripts, clunky acting or cheesy sets that do little more than preach to the choir, we eagerly await their contributions alongside Pure Flix Entertainment to the movie canon.

Criticize or evangelize?

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Time

Time dilation, Daylight Saving Time and Other Mysteries of Time

In 1983, Ohio State University historian Stephen Kern wrote The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918, a book which talked about the sweeping changes in technology and culture that reshaped life, including the theory of relativity and introduction of Sir Sandford Fleming’s worldwide Standard Time – and an onrush of technics, including telephone, electric lighting, steamships, skyscrapers, bicycles, cinema, airplanes, X-rays, machine guns, as well as cultural innovations that shattered older forms of art and thought, such as the stream-of-consciousness novel, psychoanalysis, Cubism, simultaneous poetry. All of these things created new ways of understanding and experiencing time and space during that almost 40-year period ending with the end of the First World War. Kern’s argument is that in the modern preoccupation with speed, especially with the fast and impersonal telegraph, international diplomacy broke down in July 1914, leading to the outbreak of the First World War the following month.

In physics, according to Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity (SR), motion in space alters the flow of time, creating a time dilation, speeding up or slowing down time, because as you move through space, time itself is measured differently for the moving object than the unmoving object. This, in theory, would allow time travel within the known laws of physics into the future, not into the past.

I had a very odd experience, more akin to what Kern wrote about 33 years ago than Einsteinian physics, I suppose, where time was a product of perception – in this instance slowing down, rather than speeding up – back on Feb. 9, 2015, when I began working as a library clerk on the new Thompson campus of University College of the North (UCN) at the intersection of Thompson Drive North and UCN Drive.

I decided, probably not wisely in retrospect, to bicycle to work my first night, taking the then newly paved but snow-covered two-lane multi-use boulevard pathway for pedestrians and cyclists that then ran pretty much from behind my house all the way down to UCN (it now runs even further to Cree Road). While I had been riding all winter, very little of it until that point had been on the multi-use boulevard pathway toward UCN. I was also using an unfamiliar bicycle with some chain-dropping problems that first night.

The result was too little time and heavy exertion, not wanting to be late for work my first night. I thought I had given myself plenty of time for my 6:30 p.m. start, but conditions were more adverse than I anticipated. The ride is two kilometres, the last half kilometre or so from about the Giant Tiger department store to campus.

I distinctly remember checking the wristwatch on my left wrist four of five times under street lights as I pushed as hard as I could that last half-kilometre stretch. The oddest thing was the first three or four times, the hands on the analog display showed 6:28 p.m. – as if time was standing still, although my bicycle was in motion with me aboard. It wasn’t until I got to the door at UCN, the watch seemed to move that last two minutes to show exactly 6:30 p.m. on the dot. I have no rational explanation for what happened. Did the minute hand on my watch get stuck briefly and then free itself and jump ahead the two minutes? Maybe, but it didn’t feel like that.

Speaking of rational, under Manitoba’s Official Time Act, Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins on the second Sunday in March and continues until the first Sunday in November. That means it begins tomorrow. How rational Daylight Saving Time is; well that continues to be a matter of some debate.

The official time change to Daylight Saving Time occurs at 2 a.m., Sunday, March 13, at which time clocks should be set ahead to 3 a.m.

While it has been gradually remaining lighter later in the evening since late December here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re about to get an even bigger early evening light boost Sunday. Tonight the sun sets here in Thompson, Manitoba at Latitude 56° 19.8′ North at 6:31 p.m. Central Standard Time (CST), according to National Research Council (NRC) of Canada calculations. Tomorrow sunset here is at 7:33 p.m. Central Daylight Saving Time (CDT). Presto! In the course of a single day, we’ve picked up another hour and two minutes of daylight in the evening. And by the time the spring equinox arrives March 20 here in Thompson, we’ll be seeing about the same amount of hours of daylight as night, with sunrise at 7:33 a.m., and sunset at 7:48 p.m. Come the summer solstice June 20, don’t be surprised if we’re out on the dock at the Paint Lake Marina, a bit south of here, fishing until almost 11 p.m., as sunset won’t be until 10:26 p.m., while the end of civil twilight, defined as the centre of the sun’s disk at six degrees below the horizon, and the limit at which illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished; the horizon is clearly defined and the brightest stars are visible under good atmospheric conditions, won’t be for more than an hour later at 11:30 p.m. CDT.

While fishing until midnight on the dock sounds pretty appealing right about now, as Lucas Powers pointed out earlier today in an interesting online CBC News story headlined “Daylight saving time 2016: How big business benefits from more sunshine. Longer daylight time has nothing to do with saving energy or benefiting farmers, critics say, which you can read at http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/daylight-saving-business-energy-1.3485281, as it outlines how the biggest long-time (pardon the pun) advocates for Daylight Saving Time over the years has been no other than the big business lobby. Tufts University professor Michael Downing wrote a book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, on the phenomena 10 years ago.

The Alexandria, Virginia-based Association for Convenience & Petroleum Retailing, formerly known as the National Association of Convenience Stores, founded in August 1961, loves Daylight Saving Time. Likewise big-box stores, sporting and recreational goods manufacturers, barbecue and charcoal retailers, lawn and garden retailers, shopping malls and golf courses. Surprise.

For this, we can thank (or blame) George Vernon Hudson, an English-born New Zealand amateur entomologist and astronomer who gave the world Daylight Saving Time (DST). Hudson’s day (and sometimes night) job was as a clerk (eventually chief clerk) in the post office in the capital of Wellington on North Island, and, in all fairness, Hudson could hardly be accused of being a shill for big business. They just picked up on Hudson’s idea in time, so to speak, and ran with it.

Standard Time, of course, with its standardized times zones, is a Canadian invention, courtesy of Sir Sanford Fleming, conveniently divided into hourly segments, and dating back to October 1884 and the International Prime Meridian Conference attended by 25 nations in Washington, D.C. Before Fleming invented standard time, noon in Kingston, Ontario was 12 minutes later than noon in Montréal and 13 minutes before noon in Toronto. Noon local time was the time when the sun stood exactly overhead.

Most of Canada’s time experts work in a place called Building M-36 (which involuntarily conjures up for me visions of the X-Files and Area 51.) They work in the Frequency and Time program in the Measurement Science and Standards portfolio with the National Research Council of Canada on Montreal Road in Ottawa. Physicist Rob Douglas, a principal research officer in the Frequency and Time group, however, can be found on Saskatchewan Drive in Edmonton.

Fleming’s genius was to create 24 time zones and within each zone the clocks would indicate the same time, with a one-hour difference between adjoining zones. Usually, when one travels in an easterly direction, a different time zone is crossed every 15 degrees of longitude, which is equal to one hour in time.

But on the other side of the world in New Zealand, Hudson had a somewhat different interest a decade or so after Fleming’s development of Standard Time. Hudson’s shift-work job gave him enough leisure time to collect insects, and led him to value after-work hours of daylight for that pursuit when he was working days. On Oct.15, 1895, spring in New Zealand, he presented a paper called “On Seasonal Time-adjustment in Countries South of Lat. 30°” to the Wellington Philosophical Society, proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch on South Island, where 1,000 copies of his paper were printed in 1896, he followed up on Oct. 8, 1898 with a second paper, “On Seasonal Time,” also presented to the Wellington Philosophical Society in springtime, and which can be found in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, housed at the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington.

While interest grew in Hudson’s Daylight Saving Time ideas between 1895 and 1898, they were hardly greeted by a rousing show of unanimous support when he presented his first paper in Wellington on Oct. 15, 1895, according to the abstract in Volume 28, 1895 of the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, which noted, “The author proposed to alter the time of the clock at the equinoxes so as to bring the working-hours of the day within the period of daylight, and by utilizing the early morning, so reduce the excessive use of artificial light which at present prevails.

“Mr. Travers said the clocks could be managed by having different hands. He did not think we were far enough advanced to adopt the plan advocated by the author of the paper.

“Mr. Harding said that the only practical part of Mr. Hudson’s paper had long since been anticipated by Benjamin Franklin, one of whose essays denounced the extravagance of making up for lost daylight by artificial light. Mr. Hudson’s original suggestions were wholly unscientific and impracticable. If he really had found many to support his views, they should unite and agitate for a reform.

“Mr. Maskell said that the mere calling the hours different would not make any difference in the time. It was out of the question to think of altering a system that had been in use for thousands of years, and found by experience to be the best. The paper was not practical.

“Mr. Hawthorne did not see any difficulty in carrying out the views advocated so ably by Mr. Hudson.

“Mr. Hustwick was of opinion that the reform spoken of would have to wait a little longer.

“Mr. Richardson said that it would be a good thing if the plan could be applied to the young people.

“Mr. Hudson, in reply, said that he was sorry to see the paper treated rather with ridicule. He intended it to be practical. It was approved of by those much in the open air. There would be no difficulty in altering the clocks.”

While Hudson may he have been somewhat discouraged by that initial reception, he was far from defeated, so he was back before the Wellington Philosophical Society with his second paper on the subject three years later in October 1898:

“In order to more fully utilize the long days of summer, it is proposed on the 1st October of each year to put the standard time on two hours by making 12 (midnight) into 2 a.m., whilst on the 1st March the time would be put back two hours by making 2 a.m. into 12 (midnight), thus reverting to the present time arrangements for the winter months,” wrote Hudson in 1898.

“The effect of this alteration would be to advance all the day’s operations in summer two hours compared with the present system. In this way the early-morning daylight would be utilised, and a long period of daylight leisure would be made available in the evening for cricket, gardening, cycling, or any other outdoor pursuit desired. It will no doubt be urged that people are at present quite at liberty to make use of the early-morning daylight in summer without any such drastic alteration in the established order of things as is here suggested. To this objection it may be pointed out that, living as we do in a social community, we are unable to separate ourselves from the habits of those around us. We cannot individually alter our times of going to bed or getting up, but must fall in with the habits of the majority – at all events, to a great extent, Again, under the present arrangement, those who desire to utilise the early-morning daylight are compelled to take some of their recreation before their daily work and some afterwards, which in many cases results in their having to forgo pursuits that they would be enabled to follow successfully if their daylight leisure were continuous … The foregoing remarks are framed to apply to us in the Southern Hemisphere, but with the seasons reversed they’ would, of course, apply with equal force to the Northern; Hemisphere.”

While Vernon’s self interest in Daylight Saving Time stemmed at least in part from his interest in collecting insects during a longer evening, along with such other genteel pursuits by his countrymen as cricket, gardening and cycling, it wouldn’t be until 18 years later that his DST proposals would be implemented in a modified form in a very different military context in the midst of the First World War by Germany and Austria at 11 p.m. on April 30, 1916, when they advanced the hands of the clock one hour until the following October. The rationale was simple: conserve fuel needed to produce electric power. Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey and Tasmania immediately followed suit, as did Manitoba and Nova Scotia here in Canada. Britain also followed three weeks later on May 21, 1916. In 1917, Australia and Newfoundland began DST.

The United States followed on March 31, 1918 and Daylight Saving Time was observed for seven months in 1918 and 1919, but was largely unpopular and Americans used in variably and inconsistently for decades afterwards. The most recent change in the United States, pursuant to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, adding parts of March and November to DST, came into effect in 2007, and has been adopted by most Canadian jurisdictions to keep in synchronization with American business and government interests. The operative word is “most,” however, as there are a slew of Canadian exceptions to the general norm.

Most of British Columbia is on Pacific Time and observes DST, but there are two main exceptions: Part of the Peace River Regional District, including the communities of Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Hudson’s Hope, Fort St. John, Taylor and Tumbler Ridge, are on Mountain Time and do not observe DST. This means that the region’s clocks are the same as those in Calgary and Edmonton in the winter, and they are the same as those in Vancouver in the summer.

The East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia, including the communities of Cranbrook, Fernie, Golden and Invermere, are on Mountain Time and observe DST, meaning the region is always on the same time as Calgary. An exception is Creston, which observes MST year-round. Clocks in Creston match those in Calgary in the winter, and Vancouver in the summer.

While the rest of Nunavut observes DST, Southampton Island, including Coral Harbour, remains on Eastern Standard Time throughout the year. The Kitikmeot Region including Cambridge Bay observes DST but is on Mountain Time.

Most of Ontario uses DST, but Pickle Lake, New Osnaburgh, and Atikokan, located within the Central Time Zone in Northwestern Ontario, all observe Eastern Standard Time all year long.

Most of Quebec also uses DST. However, the eastern part of Quebec’s North Shore, east of 63° west longitude, are in the Atlantic Time Zone, but do not observe DST for the most part, meaning in summer their clocks match those of the rest of the province, while in November, their clocks are match Atlantic Standard Time (AST) in the Maritimes. Although places east of 63° west are officially on Atlantic Time, local custom is to use Eastern Time as far east as the Natashquan River. Those communities observe DST, including all of Anticosti Island, which is bisected by the 63rd meridian. Les Îles de la Madeleine observe DST and are on Atlantic Time.

Although Saskatchewan is geographically within the Mountain Time zone, the province is officially part of the Central Time zone. As a result, while most of Saskatchewan does not change clocks spring and fall, it technically observes DST year round. This means that clocks in most of the province match clocks in Winnipeg during the winter and Calgary and Edmonton during the summer. This time zone designation was implemented in 1966, when the Saskatchewan Time Act was passed in order to standardize time province-wide. Lloydminster, which is bisected by the Saskatchewan-Alberta provincial boundary, observes Mountain Time year-round, with DST, which in the summer synchronizes it with the rest of Saskatchewan. Along the Manitoba inter-provincial boundary, the small, remote Saskatchewan municipalities of Denare Beach and Creighton unofficially observe Central Daylight Time during the summer, keeping the same time as the larger neighbouring Town of Flin Flon here in Manitoba.

Just remember, you are about to pass briefly through The Twilight Zone. Nothing can happen tomorrow between 2:01 a.m. and 2:59 a.m. because those 59 minutes do not exist on March 13 this year or any when March day when Standard Time meets Daylight Saving Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk

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Books, Catholic, Eschatology, Fatima

Blessed Pope Paul VI on the ‘tail of the devil’ and ‘Smoke of Satan’ and the disintegration of the ‘Catholic world’

“The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world,” said Blessed Pope Paul VI on Oct. 13, 1977 in a formal address marking the 60th anniversary of the sixth and final Fatima apparition – the “Miracle of the Sun” – at Fatima, Portugal on Oct. 13, 1917. “The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.” Blessed Pope Paul VI’s remarks on Satan indwelling even the highest levels of the Catholic Church were reported on the following day – Oct. 14, 1977 – in the Milan-based daily Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

It was not the first time Blessed Pope Paul VI had sounded such a warning. More than five years earlier, in what is now known as his “Smoke of Satan” homily delivered on June 29, 1972 on the ninth anniversary of his coronation, the Pope gave the sermon that remains perhaps the most famous and most-argued about in terms of meaning sermons the Holy Father delivered during his 15-year-plus pontificate.

The are several difficulties in analyzing the homily, delivered by Blessed Pope Paul VI, as he celebrated the mass and the beginning of the tenth year of his pontificate as successor of Saint Peter, with 30 “porporati” (cardinals) present, including Lord Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, dean of the sacred college; Lord Cardinal Luigi Traglia, the sub-dean; Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, substitute of the secretary of state; and Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, secretary of the council for the public affairs of the church.

The homily was delivered in Italian, so it must be faithfully translated into English for many analysts to tackle it.

The translation here was provided by Father Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B., a Benedictine monk and priest at Prince of Peace Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1958 in Oceanside, California, near San Diego. Pedrano was educated at the International Benedictine Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome and is fluent in Italian and the translation was rendered in 2006 at the request of Jimmy Akin, the Texas-born self-described nominal Protestant, who converted to Catholicism in 1992, and is now the senior apologist at Catholic Answers, the El Cajon, California apostolate started in 1979 by attorney Karl Keating. You can read the English translation by Pedrano of the papal homily here from Akin’s Nov. 13, 2006 blog posting at http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/11/the_smoke_of_sa.html

Aside from any translation challenges, Akin quite rightly points out the Vatican-issued Italian homily (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/homilies/1972/documents/hf_p-vi_hom_19720629_it.html) is by no means a verbatim account of Blessed Pope Paul VI’s words that day, as we might expect in such a document today, but rather for the most part a “narrative summary” of the Holy Father’s homily by an anonymous narrator, although certain statements are attributed with quotation marks as direct quotes from the Pope, the most famous being “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” Akin argues that even if the reporting is accurate, Blessed Pope Paul VI’s 1972 remark should not be interpreted as a literal assertion “claiming that there were Satanists in the Vatican,” but rather as symbolic representation of the “cultural crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s” and secular influences among Catholics.

The enigmatic Malachi Martin had a more literal take, suggesting the Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer occurred exactly nine years to the day earlier – on the day Blessed Pope Paul VI was coronated on June 29, 1963 – on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, as the Availing Time arrived.

In The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, the novel for children published in October 1950, the Anglican writer C.S. Lewis, one of the leading Christian apologists of the 20th century wrote, “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” Catholic writer Robert Hugh Benson, author of the 1907 apocalyptic and dystopian novel Lord of the World, (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/spiritual-warfare/) , who has been quoted approvingly by Pope Francis, would have agreed with Lewis.

There is perhaps no more mysterious figure in the Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century than Malachi Brendan Martin, born on July 23, 1921 in Ballylongford in County Kerry, Ireland, who we remember today mainly as a best-selling New York City writer of fiction and non-fiction, where in typical Martin style, the two genres were separated, if at all, by a very blurred line at times.

He was ordained a priest for the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1954. Was he an insider at the Second Vatican Council from 1962, as peritus (expert advisor) for German Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea, or more accurately a somewhat lesser figure, albeit a highly skilled linguist, translator and Semitic paleographer? Did he act as a shadowy agent or advocate for certain Jewish interests during the council? Did he read the Third Secret of Fatima? Was he a liberal or a conservative? An agent provocateur? A double agent? Was he a valid exorcist? Secretly ordained a bishop by Pope Pius XII? Was he laicized at his own request by Blessed Pope Paul VI in 1965, or just given dispensation from his vows of poverty and obedience, but not chastity? Was he chaste or a serial womanizer who seduced a string of women, including Susan Kaiser in 1964, as alleged by former TIME magazine Vatican correspondent Robert Blair Kaiser in his 2002 book Clerical Error: A True Story, published three years after Martin’s death? And speaking of Martin’s death, even that is somewhat shrouded in mystery. Martin died of a cerebral hemorrhage on July 27, 1999 due to a fall in his apartment in Manhattan, four days after his 78th birthday. More than one conspiracy theorist has argued Martin was pushed by an unseen hand.

Martin first made his claim about the Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer occurring on the day Blessed Pope Paul VI was coronated on June 29, 1963 – on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, as the Availing Time arrived – in his 1990 purportedly non-fiction work, The Keys of This Blood: Pope John Paul II Versus Russia and the West for Control of the New World Order, where he wrote St. Pope John Paul II came “up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the ‘superforce.’ Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of [Blessed] Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary’. . . an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican.”

He revisited the theme in his 1996 blockbuster fictional novel, Wind Swept House, where Martin wrote at length near the opening of the book about it:

“The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer was effected within the Roman Catholic Citadel on June 29, 1963; a fitting date for the historic promise about to be fulfilled. As the principal agents of this Ceremonial well knew, Satanist tradition had long predicted that the Time of the Prince would be ushered in at the moment when a Pope would take the name of the Apostle Paul. That requirement – the signal that the Availing Time had begun – had been accomplished just eight days before with the election of the latest Peter-in-the-Line.

“There had barely been time since the papal conclave had ended for the complex arrangements to be readied; but the Supreme Tribunal had decided there could be no more perfect date for the Enthronement of the Prince than this feast day of rhe twin princes of the Citadel, SS. Peter and Paul. And there could be no more perfect place than the Chapel of St. Paul itself, situated as it was so near to the Apostolic Palace.

“The complexity of the arrangements were dictated mainly by the nature of the Ceremonial Event to be enacted. Security was so tight in the grouping of Vatican buildings within which this gem of a Chapel lay that the full panoply of the Ceremonial could not possibly escape detection here. If the aim was to be achieved – if the Ascent of the Prince was actually to be accomplished in the Availing Time – then every element of the Celebration of the Calvary Sacrifice must be turned on its head by the other and opposite Celebration. The sacred must be profaned. The profane must be adored. The unbloody representation of the Sacrifice of the Nameless Weakling on the Cross must be replaced by the supreme and bloody violation of the dignity of the Nameless One. Guilt must be accepted as innocence. Pain must give joy. Grace, repentance, pardon must all be drowned in an orgy of opposites. And it must all be done without mistakes. The sequence of events, the meaning of the words, the significance of the actions must all comprise the perfect enactment of sacrilege, the ultimate ritual of treachery. ”

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Eschatology

‘The sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars’: Most recent shemitah year ended Sept. 13

Another shemitah year has come and gone. And the world as we know it has … well, it has carried on pretty much as before. Shemitah years, also spelled as shmita, have ancient roots dating back 3,000 years and are grounded in the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel and still observed in contemporary Judaism. During a shemitah year, the land is left to lie fallow.

More recently, some Wall Street analysts have pondered the mystery of what appears to be seven-year economic cycles tied to shemitah years. And wondered why crashes often seem to come in September and October. While we’re only halfway through that two-month period and the financial sky has yet to exactly fall, investors had a brief scare in August when China’s currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, fell in value more than it did in the previous two decades.

The Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 8.5 on Aug. 24 – erasing the last of its gains for the year in its biggest single-day loss since 2007. The Shanghai Composite Index has plummeted nearly 40 percent since hitting a peak earlier this year.

Within minutes after the opening bell Aug. 24, the Dow Jones plummeted 1,089 points, the largest point loss ever during a trading day, surpassing the trillion-dollar “Flash Crash” of May 6, 2010, which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes, sending the Dow down 998.5 points, its biggest intra-day trading drop until Monday. The Dow closed down 588 points Aug. 24, the worst one-day for the Dow since August 2011.

Brent crude, the benchmark for oil prices worldwide, closed Aug. 24 at $42.80 a barrel, its lowest close since March 11, 2009. Oil prices tumbled more than five per cent Aug. 24, with U.S. light crude closing at $38.24 a barrel, its lowest close February 2009. The week of Aug. 16-22 marked oil prices’ longest weekly losing streak since 1986. Today, Brent Crude LCOc1, the key indicator for global crude prices, was selling for $47.34 a barrel; meaning there has been no significant recovery in price over the last month or so, nor is any expected anytime soon.

And while the Shanghai Composite Index and China have been making most of the bad-news financial headlines of late, consider this:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average all-time closing high was 18,312.39, set on May 19. The Dow closed at 16,001.89 today, down 2,310.5 points from its peak 4½ months ago;
British stocks are down about 16 percent from the peak of the market;
French stocks have declined nearly 18 percent;
Italian stocks are already down 15 percent.

Jonathan Cahn is a New Jersey-born messianic Jewish rabbi, meaning he accepts Jesus Christ as the messiah, and is best known for his book The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future, in which he compares the United States and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America to the destruction of ancient Israel. He started Railroad Avenue Hope of the World Ministries in Lodi, New Jersey in 1988 as “an end-time ministry for an end-time world,” describing it as being devoted to “giving out the Word of God to all peoples – to fulfill the Biblical mandate and Great Commission of God – to bring salvation to the Jew, to the Gentile, and to all unreached peoples of every land.”

In his sequel to The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future, called The Mystery of the Shemitah: The 3,000-Year-Old Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future, the World’s Future, and Your Future!, Cahn argued that the five great economic crashes of the last 40 years – 1973, 1980, 1987, 2001 and 2008 – all occurred in shemitah years. The book rocketed to become an instant bestseller, listed at number eight overall on Amazon.com, and number one in Amazon’s Christian prophecies section.

Cahn argued if the Shemitah was not observed by the people, it would become a curse, as described later in Leviticus Chapter 25 in the Bible’s Old Testament. That’s what happened, Cahn said in 586 B.C., a shemitah year, when the First Temple in Jerusalem fell and the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah went into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. The year following the destruction of the rebuilt Second Temple on the original site of Solomon’s Temple in 70 A.D. was the first year of the seven-year sabbatical cycle. In the Jewish calendar, counting from creation, this was year 3829. By counting sevens from then the next shemitah year will be the year 5775 after creation, which runs from Sept. 25, 2014 through Sept. 13, 2015.

Deuteronomy, another Old Testament book, says in Chapter 15, “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a remission of debts. “This is the manner of remission: every creditor shall release what he has loaned to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor and his brother, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed…” Before you decide to stiff the bank on your October mortgage payment, it might well be worth noting it is not a carte blanche release apparently, as the same chapter in Deuteronomy also says, “You may collect from the alien, but if you have any claim against your brother for a debt, you must relinquish it….”

Cahn said shemitah can have several meanings. It can mean a “release” – and in ancient Israel debts were canceled and land returned to its original owners,

But it can also mean “to fall, to collapse, to shake,” he said.

Back beyond the five great economic crashes of the last 40 years in 1973, 1980, 1987, 2001 and 2008, during the Great Depression, a solar eclipse took place 83 years ago on Sept. 12, 1931 – the end of a shemitah year. Eight days later, England abandoned the gold standard, setting off further market crashes and bank failures around the world. It also heralded in the greatest month-long stock market crash calculated on a percentage basis in Wall Street history.

But Cahn was guarded and careful not to predict what would happen in the recently completed shemitah year.

“The phenomenon may manifest in one cycle and not in another and then again in the next,” he wrote. “And the focus of the message is not date-setting but the call of God to repentance and return. At the same time, something of significance could take place, and it is wise to note the times.”

Cahn also noted the fact that 2014 and 2015 are marked by a series of blood moons – a pattern that began on Passover 2014 and will conclude on the Feast of Tabernacles in 2015. There was one last night, accompanied by a full lunar eclipse.

April 15, 2014 marked the first Blood Moon of the 21st century. In astronomical terms, the total lunar eclipse on April 15, 2014 was the 56th eclipse of the Saros 122 series, a series that began on Aug. 14, 1022 and is composed of 74 lunar eclipses in the following sequence: 22 penumbral, eight partial, 28 total, seven partial, and nine penumbral eclipses. The last eclipse of the series is on Oct. 29, 2338.

Blood moon is a term of more religious than astronomical significance. In the Old Testament Book of Joel, Chapter 2, verse 31, the minor prophet says: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.”

In Bible prophecy, this is always first and foremost about Israel and the Middle East, and what, if anything, such portents hold. The April 2014 and April 2015 total lunar eclipses align with the Jewish Feast of Passover. The October 2014 and September 2015 total lunar eclipses aligned with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Yori Yanover, writing in the Brooklyn, New York-based Jewish Press Oct. 6, 2013 observed, “The prophecy in Joel, like most prophecies, is surreal, beautiful, and open to many interpretations.” But he also notes that two of these Blood Moons will “shine over the Passover seder” on April 15, 2014 and April 4, 2015. “Whenever this happened in the past, enormous events took place in Jewish history.”

The tetrad phenomenon of a string of four Blood Moons, partially or completely eclipsed, last occurred twice in the 20th century – and both times on the night of the Passover seder in 1949-50 and 1967-68. The first came after the establishment of the State of Israel, which resulted in Israel officially taking a seat at the United Nations on Nov. 5, 1949, while the latter occurred after the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel re-captured the Old City that included the Temple Mount for the first time since 70 AD.

The last Blood Moons tetrad before the 20th century was in 1493-94 – a year after the Christian expulsion of Jews from Spain by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Catholic monarchs.

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Blogosphere

Soundingsjohnbarker: Blogging by the numbers from Thompson, Manitoba to the European Union to Vatican City

Since starting soundingsjohnbarker last September, WordPress tells me I’ve had readers from 120 of the world’s 196 countries, which seems respectable enough given it is an English-language blog written in Thompson Manitoba, the province’s fourth-largest city of 13,123, according to the most recent revised Statistics Canada census count, and located more or less smack dab in the centre of Manitoba, Canada and North America, for those interested enough to pull out a map.

In that eclectic mix of posts, I’ve made certain observations that have held true from the start. Local stories tend to garner the biggest numbers by a considerable margin and the really big ones take on something like a life of their own, appearing with daily readers months and months after they are first posted, albeit perhaps only a handful some days. Other more esoteric or obscure topics tend to draw a much smaller overall audience, but from a wide range of countries. So while a local story headlined “Lonely Planet, the world-famous travel guide, calls Thompson a town lacking ‘charm’ but ‘a necessary evil for northern itineraries’” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/lonely-planet-the-world-famous-travel-guide-calls-thompson-a-town-lacking-charm-but-a-necessary-evil-for-northern-itineraries/) had about 650 “views” almost out of the gate, so to speak, when it went online around 9 p.m. CDT July 14, my guess is that none of those first wave of readers (and they do often seem to come in waves) were from the European Union, where I’ve garnered 56 views on https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/ (in a tie at the moment with Ireland).

Today, I had my first reader from Vatican City (as opposed to elsewhere in Italy). Pope Francis perhaps? Probably not, but if it was, I expect he might ring me on the telephone to share his thoughts soon enough.

Some countries are special cases. Take Tanzania in east Africa for instance. I’ve had 89 readers from there, which is quite remarkable when you realize Tanzania is a country where electricity, much less Internet connections, can be spotty and unreliable at times. But it so happens that Bishop Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, the new auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Arusha in Tanzania, was posted here in Thompson as a diocesan priest a few years ago, leading me to write a couple of times about him since last November.

While it is easy enough to figure out why more than 31,000 readers have come from Canada, there are some countries, such as Moldova, Curaçao, the Falkland Islands, Georgia, Réunion Island, a French department in the Indian Ocean, and Qatar, that supply a small number of readers, that I have a harder time figuring out, but am glad to have them.

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Forgiveness

Pope Francis’ remarkable rapprochement with Protestant evangelicals

Pope Francis, pretty much since his election as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in March 2013, has also been the de facto supreme pontiff of world religious leaders among the secular media. Other than the 14th Dalai Lama, long serving Tibetan Buddhist, most journalists would likely be hard pressed to name the current Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby), who leads the worldwide Anglican Communion, much less the leaders of any other Christian denomination.

Pope Francis, of course, rocketed into the media stratosphere on July 28, 2013, little more than four months after being elected pope, when returning on his first foreign papal trip from Rio de Janeiro on the Alitalia flight to Rome July 28, at the end of his seven days in Brazil, wandered back to the press compartment in the rear of the plane and took questions from 21 reporters travelling aboard the papal aircraft for 81 minutes with nothing off the record. Francis stood for the entire time, answering in Italian and Spanish without notes and never refusing to take a question. The Pope’s answer to the last question became the worldwide take-away quote: “If a gay person is in eager search of God, who am I to judge them?” While Pope Francis’ answer shot around the world – for the most part without benefit of being prefaced by the question or contextually situated – it didn’t break any new Catholic theological ground or offer up a new heresy. What it did represent was a change in tone.

And if there was any doubt whether that was the start of a new tone and emphasis, Pope Francis answered that less than two months later on Sept. 19, 2013 when the Italian Jesuit journal La CiviltÀ Cattolica published a 12,000-word interview that took place over three days in August at Santa Marta in Rome between the first Jesuit pope, until little more than six months earlier, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and Father Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit confrere and the journal’s editor-in-chief.

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” Pope Francis said. “This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

While it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the sex-and-morality hot-button issues of his pontificate, although it does garner some coverage, one of the most interesting facets of Pope Francis in action to watch is his truly remarkable rapprochement with Protestants, particularly evangelicals of all denominations. With no disrespect to either side of the now 43-year-old Joint International Commission for Catholic–Pentecostal Dialogue, Pope Francis has probably done more for harmonious and improved relations between the two groups, as he has with Christian evangelicals of various denominations and non-denominational identities, such as with his now famous impromptu iPhone video message for Kenneth Copeland and other influential evangelicals, done during a January 2014 three-hour breakfast meeting chat at the Vatican with his close personal friend Tony Palmer.

A young English bishop with the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a group that broke away from the Anglican Church and considers itself part of the Convergence Movement, founded by Anglicans and other Protestants and embracing a middle ground of Anglican identity, Palmer had known Pope Francis since his days in Buenos Aires where he and then-Archbishop Bergoglio had become friends in 2008 when Palmer was a missionary in Argentina and has asked the future Pope’s permission to work with charismatic Catholics in the city. Prior to becoming a Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches bishop, Palmer, married to Emiliana Serzio Palmer, an Italian Roman Catholic, was the director of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ office in South Africa. Palmer also served as the director of The Ark Community, an international interdenominational convergent church online community.

During their extended breakfast the Pope asked Palmer what he could do to encourage unity with evangelical Protestants and Palmer pulled out his iPhone and said, “Why not record a video greeting to the group of influential charismatic Christians I am going to meet at a conference in Texas next week?” Palmer was en route to a charismatic conference hosted by Copeland, the well-known American television evangelist who heads up Kenneth Copeland Ministries, at his Eagle Mountain International Church, near Fort Worth. With Palmer holding the iPhone, Pope Francis refers to him as “my brother, a bishop-brother,” saying they had been friends for years.

In that video, which was released publicly in February 2014, Pope Francis says to the evangelicals gathered at the Copeland conference, “Let’s give each other a spiritual hug.”

In introducing the Pope’s video at the Copeland meeting, Palmer pointedly remarked: “Brothers and sisters, Luther’s protest is over. Is yours?”

Pope Francis wound up meeting privately again on June 24, 2014 – a year ago today – with Palmer, and also this time with Copeland, co-host of Believer’s Voice of Victory, James and Betty Robison, co-hosts of the Life Today television program, Rev. Geoff Tunnicliff, chief executive office of the World Evangelical Alliance; well-known Canadian evangelical leader Brian Stiller, Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, also from the World Evangelical Alliance, and Rev. John Arnott and his wife, Carol, co-founders of Partners for Harvest ministries in Toronto. That meeting also lasted almost three hours and included a private luncheon with Pope Francis.

The Pope told the evangelicals he believed the division in Christianity was not now between Catholics and Protestants but between those Christians who believe in a revealed religion and those who believe in a relative religion. “The real divide is between progressives who wish to alter the historic faith according to the spirit of the age, and those who believe the spirit of the age should be challenged by the eternal and unchanging truth of the Christian gospel.”

James Robison was baptized as a child in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church but as an adult became a Southern Baptist and in the 1980s was one of the first prominent Southern Baptist ministers to openly proclaim he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

He told the Fort Worth Star Telegram after the meeting last June with Pope Francis, “This meeting was a miracle … This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”

Tragically, Palmer, 48, died less than a month later on July 20, 2014 in hospital following hours of surgery after a motorcycle accident.

About a week later, Pope Francis made a private visit to the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, still under construction in Caserta in southern Italy to meet with Giovanni Traettino, its pastor, and 200 people, including members of Traettino’s congregation, other Italian evangelicals and representatives of Pentecostal ministries in Argentina and the United States.

The pope and Traettino first met in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s when Traettino was establishing ties between charismatic Catholics and Pentecostals. The then-Cardinal Bergoglio and Traettino also appeared together at a large ecumenical charismatic gathering in Buenos Aires in 2006. Traettino was present on June 1, 2014 in Rome’s Olympic Stadium when Pope Francis spoke to an international gathering of Catholic charismatics.

At the meeting with Traettino at the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, Pope Francis apologized for the the complicity of some Catholics in the fascist-era persecution of Italian Pentecostals and evangelicals.

“Among those who persecuted and denounced the Pentecostals, almost as if they were crazies who would ruin the race, there were some Catholics. As the pastor of the Catholics, I ask forgiveness for those Catholic brothers and sisters who did not understand and were tempted by the devil.”

Pope Francis made a similar apology two days ago on Monday of this week to the small Italian Waldensian evangelical community, seeking forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s persecution of members of the community whose leader was excommunicated and his followers branded as heretics during the Middle Ages.

Pope Francis made the appeal June 22 during the first-ever visit by a pope to a Waldensian house of worship.

The Waldensian church was founded in the 12th century by Pierre Valdo, a wealthy merchant from Lyon in France, who gave up his belongings to preach a Gospel of simplicity and poverty that condemned papal excesses. He was excommunicated and his followers persecuted as heretics by Rome.

The Waldensians today are united with the Methodist Church of Italy and claim 45,000 followers, mostly in Italy, Argentina and Uruguay.

“On the part of the Catholic Church,” said Pope Francis, “I ask your forgiveness, I ask it for the non-Christian and even inhuman attitudes and behavior that we have showed you. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us!”

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Saints

Today marks the feast day of the remarkable Saint Gianna Beretta Molla – pediatrician, mother and a powerful pro-life witness both in her life and death

April 28 marks the feast day of the remarkable Italian 20th century saint, Gianna Beretta Molla, who was canonized by now Saint Pope John Paul II on May 16, 2004. The miracle recognized to canonize Gianna Molla involved a 35-year-old Brazilian mother, Elizabeth Comparini Arcolino, who sustained a tear in her placenta that drained her womb of all amniotic fluid. Because a normal term of pregnancy is 40 weeks, Arcolino was told by her doctors the baby’s chance of survival was “nil.” Arcolino said she prayed to Gianna Molla asking for her intercession, and was able to deliver a healthy baby girl, Gianna Maria, on May 31, 2000, despite the lack of amniotic fluid.

The case of the miracle was studied by the Consulta Medica of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and on April 10, 2003 it was determined that, despite the grave prognosis for the fetus and the mother as the result of the total loss of amniotic fluid at the 16th week of gestation, and despite medical treatment that failed to alleviate and was inadequate for such a grave situation, the positive outcome of the pregnancy, both healthy mother and healthy child, was unexplainable in medical terms. The decree super miraculo was promulgated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the presence of now Saint Pope John Paul II on Dec. 20, 2003.

Gianna Beretta was born in Magenta, about 24 kilometres west of Milan, on Oct. 4, 1922, as the 10th of Alberto and Maria Beretta’s 13 children. The name Gianna derives from the Hebrew, and means “God is gracious.”

During high school and her undergraduate years in university, she applied her faith in apostolic service among the youth of Catholic Action and charitable work among the elderly and needy as a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

After earning degrees in medicine and surgery from the University of Pavia in 1949, she opened a medical clinic in Mesero, near Magenta, in 1950. She specialized in pediatrics at the University of Milan in 1952 and thereafter gave special attention to mothers, babies, the elderly and poor.

She first met Pietro Molla, an engineer, factory director and fellow member of Catholic Action, who was 10 years older than her and would become her future husband, just in passing, in September 1949. But it was a meeting more than five years later on Dec. 8, 1954 – the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and the 100th anniversary of the day on which Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception – which proved to be the decisive moment in the attraction that was developing. Both had been invited to the first mass of a mutual friend, Father Lino Garavaglia. They were married on Sept. 24, 1955, in the Basilica of St. Martin in Magenta. In November 1956, she gave birth to Pierluigi, followed by Maria Zita, known as Mariolina, in December 1957, and Laura in July 1959.

In September 1961 towards the end of the second month of her pregnancy with a fourth child, Gianna Emanuela, she developed a fibroma in her uterus.

She rejected the possibility of having an abortion to save her own life, instead opting for risky surgery, before which she told Pietro, “If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: choose the child – I insist on it.” Gianna Emanuela was born on April 21, 1962. Her mother, Gianna Beretta Molla, died a week later on April 28, now her feast day, as the result of complications from the pregnancy. She was 39. Gianna Emanuela, like her mother, became a doctor, and is a geriatrician living in Milan. There is also now a Saint Gianna Physician’s Guild, founded by Catholic laymen who saw a need for physicians and other healthcare workers to bring their faith into their lives and medical practices in a more pronounced way. The mission of Saint Gianna Physician’s Guild, based in San Diego, California, is to unite and encourage Catholic physicians, and those in the healthcare profession, to promote and defend Catholic principles in a public way by word and example, and to inspire sanctification in their lives.

“Conscious immolation” was the phrase used by now Blessed Pope Paul VI to define the self-sacrificing act of Gianna Beretta Molla, remembering her at the Sunday Angelus of Sept. 23, 1973 as, “A young mother from the Diocese of Milan, who, to give life to her daughter, sacrificed her own, with conscious immolation.”

Pietro Molla, then 91, was present at the canonization ceremony in St. Peter’s Square in front of over 100,000 people for Gianna Beretta Molla on May 16, 2004, marking the first time in the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church that a husband had witnessed his wife’s canonization. The entire Arcolino family was also present for the canonization.

Along with Saint Pope John Paul II , Saint Gianna Beretta Molla has been named patron saint of the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September, which Pope Francis is scheduled to attend during his first papal visit to the United States.

In 1979, Saint Pope John Paul II was the first pope to visit Philadelphia, where he said mass on Logan Circle for nearly one million people filling the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In 1994, he celebrated the first World Meeting of Families in Rome, which aimed to strengthen the bonds of family across the globe. Upon his canonization a year ago on April 27, 2014, he was declared “the pope of the family.” Saint Gianna Beretta Molla is the patron saint for mothers, physicians and unborn children.

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Catholics, Food

Catholic cooking: From Pope Francis’ love for Buenos Aires pizzerias to Father Leo Patalinghug, the TV show Filipino ‘Cooking Priest’

“If smell and sound are important to Catholics, so, too, taste,” I wrote last Dec. 18 in a blog post headlined “With our O antiphons, Smoking Bishops and ‘sinful servants’ we are the Church Militant on Earth.” I noted that we had borrowed the “Smoking Bishop,” a mulled wine wassail, “in a spirit of ecumenical breaking of bread at table” from our “Anglican (also known as Episcopalian and Church of England, depending what country you are reading this post in) brothers and sisters, particularly Charles Dickens….” You can read that earlier Christmastide post in its entirety at https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/with-our-o-antiphons-smoking-bishops-and-sinful-servants-we-are-the-church-militant-on-earth/

As today marks the Fourth Sunday of Lent, could be food is simply on my mind a bit, as I wrote in another post Feb. 13 headlined “Shrived by the confessor: Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday arrive for penitents as the liturgical season of Lent is upon us, but not before one last rich feast of pancakes Feb. 17 as shrovetide ends” and Ash Wednesday was some 26 days ago now: https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/shrived-by-the-confessor-fat-tuesday-and-ash-wednesday-arrive-for-penitents-as-the-liturgical-season-of-lent-is-upon-us-but-not-before-one-last-rich-feast-of-pancakes-feb-17-as-shrovetide-ends/

In any event, something Pope Francis said in a recent interview, to mark the second anniversary of his election to the papacy March 13, with Valentina Alazraki, the veteran Vatican correspondent for Mexico’s Noticieros Televisa at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican hotel where he has lived since his election on March 13, 2013, caught my eye. Alazraki has covered the Vatican for Noticieros Televisa since 1974. The Spanish-language section of Radio Vaticano published a full transcript of the interview March 12, which you can read here at: http://es.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/12/segundo_aniversario_de_la_elecci%C3%B3n_del_papa_francisco/1128922, while an English-language summary of its contents published March 13 by Vatican Radio is available to read here at: http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/13/pope_francis_on_his_pontificate_to_date/1129074

It wasn’t the prediction that the 78-year-old pontiff expects to have a short papacy of maybe four or five years that really caught my eye. Perhaps if Pope Francis had suddenly embraced Jack Van Impe, Cris Putnam and Tom Horn’s view, along with others on the far reaches of Protestant evangelicalism, that he was indeed “Petrus Romanus” (Peter the Roman), who would be history’s last pope, according to the Prophecy of St. Malachy (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/the-prophecy-of-malachy/), also known as the Prophecy of the Popes, from 1139, then the time element really would have caught my eye. Alas for would-be date setters and their eschatological ilk (some of whom like to deny they are date setters even when they are for all practical purposes) he didn’t do that. No, what really caught my eye was Pope Francis saying the only thing he really misses as pope is the ability “to go out to a pizzeria and eat a pizza,” adding that even as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires he was free to roam the streets, particularly to visit parishes.

Almost half the population of Buenos Aires can rightfully claim Italian heritage, so it is little surprise the Argentinian capital is so well-known for its Napoletana pizza. “The only thing I would like is to go out one day, without being recognized, and go to a pizzeria for a pizza,” Pope Francis said, comparing his life now to how it was when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. “In Buenos Aires I was a rover. I moved between parishes and certainly this habit has changed. It has been hard work to change. But you get used to it,” Pope Francis told Alazraki.

What I want to know is what pizzeria is Pope Francis’ favourite in Buenos Aires? Is he a double-cheese kinda guy with extra pepperoni? Those strike me as the kind of questions this pope just may answer if posed to him.

In a similar vein, I am a big fan of Father Leo Patalinghug, who was born in the Philippines, raised in the Baltimore area, ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Baltimore on June 5, 1999, and who works at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland – and who finds time along the way to host Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN’s) half hour Savoring Our Faith show, where he uses the kitchen as his pulpit to preach the Catholic faith while at the same time showing viewers how to prepare flavourful dishes.

Father Leo developed his love for cooking while attending seminary at the North American College in Rome. There, he became friendly with several Italian restaurant owners and would often invite them back to the student kitchen to trade cooking secrets. They would teach him about rigatoni and lasagna; he would show them how to make hamburgers and ribs.

I haven’t caught an episode of Savoring Our Faith for a few months, but I did see a special report with Father Leo, known as the “Cooking Priest,” back home in the Philippines walking through Central Market in Manila Jan. 16 to do an open air Filipino street food tour, explaining local delicacies to a journalist during January’s papal visit to the 7,107 Islands of Faith.

Mouth watering. Soul satisfying. And so very Catholic.

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Time

Just remember, you are about to pass briefly through The Twilight Zone: Nothing can happen tomorrow between 2:01 a.m. and 2:59 a.m. because those 59 minutes do not exist on March 8

As government news releases go, this “media bulletin” sent to me, and no doubt many others via e-mail by the the province at 11:32 a.m. yesterday, sort of stretches the old journalistic notion of the word “bulletin” connoting some sense of urgency. “Daylight saving time returns to Manitoba early in the morning of Sunday, March 8, when clocks across the province will be advanced by one hour,” says the lede (journalism-speak for opening sentence or paragraph).

“Under the Official Time Act, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and continues until the first Sunday in November.

“The official time change to daylight saving time occurs at 2 a.m., Sunday, March 8 at which time clocks should be set ahead to 3 a.m.”

While it has been gradually remaining lighter later in the evening since late December here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re about to get an even bigger early evening light boost Sunday. Tonight the sun sets at 6:19 p.m. Central Standard Time (CST). Tomorrow sunset here is at 7:21 p.m. Central Daylight Saving Time (CDT). Presto! In the course of a single day, we’ve picked up another hour and two minutes of daylight in the evening. And by the time the spring equinox arrives March 20 here in Thompson, Manitoba at latitude 55.7433° N, we’ll be seeing about the same amount of hours of daylight as night, with sunrise at 7:35 a.m, and sunset at 7:46 p.m. Come the summer solstice June 21, don’t be surprised if we’re out on the dock at the Paint Lake Marina, a bit south of here, fishing until almost 11 p.m., as sunset won’t be until 10:26 p.m.

For this, we can thank George Vernon Hudson, an English-born New Zealand amateur entomologist and astronomer who gave the world Daylight Saving Time (DST). Hudson’s day (and sometimes night) job was as a clerk (eventually chief clerk) in the post office in the capital of Wellington on North Island.

Standard Time, of course, with its standardized times zones, is a Canadian invention, courtesy of Sir Sandford Fleming, conveniently divided into hourly segments, and dating back to October 1884 and the International Prime Meridian Conference attended by 25 nations in Washington, D.C. Before Fleming invented standard time, noon in Kingston, Ontario was 12 minutes later than noon in Montréal and 13 minutes before noon in Toronto. Noon local time was the time when the sun stood exactly overhead.

Most of Canada’s time experts work in a place called Building M-36 (which involuntarily conjures up for me visions of the X-Files and Area 51.) They work in the Frequency and Time program in the Measurement Science and Standards portfolio with the National Research Council of Canada on Montreal Road in Ottawa. Physicist Rob Douglas, the principal research officer, however, can be found on Saskatchewan Drive in Edmonton.

“Mr. Travers said the clocks could be managed by having different hands. He did not think we were far enough advanced to adopt the plan advocated by the author of the paper.

“Mr. Hawthorne did not see any difficulty in carrying out the views advocated so ably by Mr. Hudson.

“Mr. Hustwick was of opinion that the reform spoken of would have to wait a little longer.

“Mr. Richardson said that it would be a good thing if the plan could be applied to the young people.

The United States followed on March 31, 1918 and Daylight Saving Time was observed for seven months in 1918 and 1919, but was largely unpopular and Americans used in variably and inconsistently for decades afterwards. The most recent change in the United States, pursuant to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, adding parts of March and November to DST, came into effect in 2007, and has been adopted by most Canadian jurisdictions to keep in synchronization with American business and government interests. The operative word is “most,” however, as there are a slew of Canadian exceptions to the general norm.

Most of Ontario uses DST, but Pickle Lake, New Osnaburgh, and Atikokan, located within the Central Time Zone in Northwestern Ontario, all observe Eastern Standard Time all year long.

Most of Quebec also used DST. However, the eastern part of Quebec’s North Shore, east of 63° west longitude, are in the Atlantic Time Zone, but do not observe DST for the most part, meaning in summer their clocks match those of the rest of the province, while in November, their clocks are match Atlantic Standard Time (AST) in the Maritimes. Although places east of 63° west are officially on Atlantic Time, local custom is to use Eastern Time as far east as the Natashquan River. Those communities observe DST, including all of Anticosti Island, which is bisected by the 63rd meridian. Les Îles de la Madeleine observe DST and are on Atlantic Time.

Just remember, you are about to pass briefly through The Twilight Zone. Nothing can happen tomorrow between 2:01 a.m. and 2:59 a.m. because those 59 minutes do not exist on March 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk

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Business

Canadian beaver trumped by moose from Maine: Iconic Roots Canada Ltd. prunes its operation with closure of last franchise store in Prince Edward Island Jan. 3, as Charlottetown Roots becomes a Maine-based Cool As A Moose®

When franchise owner Chris Cudmore or one of his employees locks the door at 156 Queen St. for the last time at the close of business Saturday, it will mark the end of an era for Roots Canada Ltd. as its last retail franchise store in the country in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island closes Jan. 3.

The Cudmore family, however, won’t disappear from retailing in Charlottetown with the closure of its Roots franchise store. Previously a partner in the independent retail clothing store retail Henderson and Cudmore, which was a fixture in downtown for Charlottetown for decades, the space occupied by the present Roots store will be reopening a few days later as a Cool As A Moose® franchise store. Cool As A Moose® is a specialty retailer featuring Maine-themed apparel, gifts, souvenirs and sunglasses company, founded in 1986 in Bar Harbor, with stores in Maine also in Portland, Brunswick and Freeport, and in Canada in Halifax, Quebec City, Banff, Whistler – and next week, Charlottetown. Cool As A Moose® – now owned by American Kip Stone, a competitive Open 50 class Rhode Island sailor, who also lives in Maine and also owns Westbrook, Maine-based Artforms – was named the 2011 Merchant of the Year by the Maine Merchants Association.

About eight of the current Roots employees have been offered employment at the new Cool As A Moose® store on Queen Street in Charlottetown.

More than 200 company-owned Roots and Roots 73 stores are not affected by the end of franchise operations in Canada. Cudmore had been operating the Roots franchise in Charlottetown for about 25 years . “At one time there might have been 15 or 20 franchises across the country, but we’re the last franchise standing and we really didn’t fit the Roots model anymore,” Cudmore told CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster. “They had an infrastructure just to service us. They had two or three employees dedicated to looking after the franchises.”

While Roots is in many ways an iconic Canadian brand, the privately-held company was founded in 1973, ironically, as well as iconically, by two Americans from Detroit, Michael Budman and Don Green. Both had been campers and later on staff at Camp Tamakwa on South Tea Lake in Central Ontario’s Algonquin Park. Camp Tamakwa was founded in 1936 by naturalist Lou Handler, a former prizefighter from Detroit, and canoeist and famed Canadian solo paddler Omer Stringer, and is a summer home to 250 to 300 boys and girls – ages seven to 16 – and more than 130 staff. Tamakwa campers are mostly Canadian and American with some campers coming from Mexico, Israel, England, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. Canadian campers are mostly from the Toronto area and Americans are mostly from the suburbs of Detroit, but others are from places like New York, Illinois, Florida and California.

Budman and Green first thought up the idea for Roots and did the initial planning for it in Algonquin Park in 1972. By then they had both moved to Canada and were living in Toronto. They both still have cabins in Algonquin Park. The well-known Roots logo – featuring the Cooper font and the quintessential Canadian beaver – was created by graphic designers Heather Cooper and Robert Burns.

Roots has more than 200 company-owned retail stores in Canada, the United States, and in China and Taiwan in Asia. Roots began with a small store in Toronto selling a “negative heel” shoe, designed to keep the heel slightly lower than the rest of the foot to promote proper alignment of the spine. Unlike traditional footwear, which elevates the heel and shifts a person’s center of balance forward as they walk, negative heel shoes work with the foot’s natural motion, with the heel striking the ground first and bearing the most weight. The shoes are also designed to be wider at the front and narrower at the heel to support the foot comfortably and avoid crowding the toes. Developed by Danish yoga instructor Ann Kalso in the 1950s, the shoes mimic the traditional Tadasana, or mountain pose, taking the stress off one’s back, hips and knees and putting it on the leg muscles.

Starting in Toronto with footwear, Roots evolved to include leather bags, jackets, accessories, natural fiber clothing and home furnishings. Roots also has a network of approximately 40 outlet stores throughout Canada called Roots 73.

Roots still has a leather goods factory in Toronto on Caledonia Road, operated by the Kowalewski family. The Kowalewskis were originally from Poland and then Argentina before immigrating to Canada. Jan Kowalewski had a small family business, Boa Shoe Company, on College Street in Toronto, and manufactured negative heel shoes for Roots in its earliest days, before Roots purchased the Boa Shoe Company. Family patriarch, Jan, along with his sons, Richard, Henry, Karl and Stan, worked for Roots for years and the latter three continue to, as the Kowalewski family is now in its third generation working with Roots.

Unable to compete with offshore manufacturing companies, Roots outsourced the manufacturing of much of its apparel line to Chinese and other Asian factories a decade ago.

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