Utah bishop’s latest podcast is on Advent
As far as I know, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City and the staff of his diocesan paper, the Intermountain Catholic, are the only folks producing a regular podcast featuring the bishop in, as the title of the series says, “His Own Words.” (We’ve previously linked to the podcasts here, here, and here.) The bishop’s latest podcast, posted just yesterday, is on Advent. The paper’s podcast page notes that you also can subscribe to the bishop’s podcasts through iTunes, for those of you familiar with how to download some of the free stuff available there.
‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’: The story behind the song
That’s the headline on an article in this month’s St. Anthony Messenger magazine on the origins of the popular Christmas classic song “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The song, performed and recorded by dozens of artists, was not of European origins — it was written during the Cuban missle crisis in 1962, the article says.
‘They’re absent from Mass, but they haven’t left the church’
If the subject of Mass attendance intrigues you, you’ll probably be interested in this: The Diocese of Providence, R.I., which according to the Rhode Island Catholic has a committee beginning to study Mass attendance rates in the state, brought an Australian church official to town to discuss a study he recently completed on Mass attendance “down under.” The diocesan paper’s story on the visit noted both similarities and differences between the U.S. and the Australian experiences and found reasons to be optimistic despite the potentially bad news.
Where has this year gone?
As if I needed any reminder of how fast this year is flying by, here’s a story out of Knoxville, Tenn., on preparations for sending busloads of students to Washington next month for the annual March for Life, from The East Tennessee Catholic. Is it really only a few weeks away?
More evidence of Bibles in China
Remember the buzz last month that Bibles were being banned at the Olympics in Beijing next summer?
Like many rumors, this one had an air of believability, especially to people who may not be current on the state of religion in China. As we said last month, Bibles freely circulate in China, despite that regime’s other controls on religion.
I was reminded of this little dust-up by a story we picked up earlier this week from our partners in Asia, UCA News, which reported on a popular Bible Diary that quickly sold out and went to a second printing. There’s even a link where the items can be downloaded.
We’ve often said we’re not above tooting our own horns. Here comes another: For an excellent look at the state of the Catholic Church in China, read our series from earlier this year.
PHOTO: Bibles in Chinese are seen in the back of the Catholic cathedral in Nanjing, China, in this 2007 file photo. (CNS/Nancy Wiechec)
Passing off bad, old news as “good as new”
We all know recycling is a good idea, but let’s save it for glass and plastic.
An old news story on Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno was recently reheated and served up as new on the Internet. Why? Who knows. Maybe because the media seem driven to whip up headlines that smack of scandal. And if it worked first time … well, try, try again.
One digital outlet stirred up a blogging flurry last week with its headline: “Vatican astronomer likens creationism to superstition.” A day earlier, another online agency had led with “Vatican astronomer: God didn’t create the universe in six days.” The coverage was enough to create its own Big Bang chain reaction in the blogosphere, generating comments that ranged from expressing surprise to indignation.
What was wrong was “the story is completely false,” Br. Guy wrote me.
Both agencies reported the U.S. Jesuit astronomer’s remarks were from a talk he purportedly gave “this week” or “on Tuesday” (Dec. 4) in Glasgow, Scotland. Br. Guy was on the road that week, but he was not in the British Isles but in a different England known as New England – specifically, Connecticut.
A simple Google search shows at least one of the “new” reports was based on a story in May 2006, when Br. Guy was indeed in Scotland to give a talk to the Glasgow Science Centre. That particular coverage created its own Internet buzz back then, so much so that it prompted Br. Guy to dedicate one of his regular columns in the Catholic weekly, The Tablet, to the affair.
“I was as surprised as anyone,” Br. Guy wrote in The Tablet’s May 20, 2006, edition, to see he had apparently said, according to the Scottish paper, “Believing that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism.”
“Though I do worry that creationism can tend towards paganism, I don’t remember being so blunt,” he wrote in The Tablet.
Br. Guy, who also has been known to explore fun topics like whether space aliens have souls, told me in an email yesterday he felt the Scottish agency’s May 2006 report was ”a rather muddled version of an interview I gave” based on “some of my own rather muddled comments.”
But as for the Jesuit brother’s general comments about creationism, well, it’s not new the Catholic church does not consider Genesis to be a science manual. The book of Genesis tells us God did create the universe, but it’s science that tries to tell us how.
“It’s hardly news that Catholicism is not creationist,” Br. Guy wrote in an unofficial statement he circulated among friends who had seen the stories last week on the Web.
Church fathers like Aquinas and Augustine specifically refuted the kind of literalism we see in the creationist vision. Br. Guy said there have been many papal speeches supporting scientific findings. One in particular, a 1952 address by Pope Pius XII to the International Astronomical Union “is essentially an Astronomy 101 lecture on the size and history of the universe, as best known by astronomers at that time.”
Br. Guy writes in his email statement: “The bit about science protecting religion from superstition is not mine; it is from Pope John Paul II, in a widely available ‘letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory’ that outlines his views of the relationship between science and religion. Again, it should be read in its context.”
Also, Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical, “Humani Generis,” stated there is “no opposition between evolution, correctly understood, and Catholic doctrine about humanity.”
In 1996, Pope John Paul II told members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in an October address that “new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.” That statement generated a huge media buzz back then, even without the help of the Internet.
PHOTO: Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno stands near the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope located on Mount Graham in Graham County, Ariz. (CNS file/Judith Britt)
Update on the Dolan brothers
You may remember our item late last month on Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and his brother hosting a TV series in Milwaukee on evangelization. Here’s an update, courtesy of the Catholic Herald in Milwaukee, which reports that in a discussion about Christmases growing up in the Dolan household, the archbishop asks little brother Bob if he remembers a certain bowling set that Bob took even though it wasn’t intended for him.
When the Dalai Lama comes knocking
Should Pope Benedict meet the Dalai Lama every time he comes knocking on the Vatican’s door?
The question arose after the Vatican said the pope would not be holding an audience with the Tibetan spiritual leader this month. “I would have liked to have seen him. The pope may not have time or he may have other commitments,” the Dalai Lama told reporters after arriving for a 10-day visit in Italy.
Italian news agencies had earlier reported the papal audience was on, citing an unidentified Vatican source. That prompted a negative reaction from China, which views the Dalai Lama as a political agitator for Tibetan separatism. So when the Vatican announced there would be no meeting, some had the impression that the pope was marching to China’s orders.
Vatican sources I spoke with this week said it was silly to think the Vatican is calibrating its activities to please Beijing. At the same time, they said, there’s no doubt that such a meeting would have a political aspect. Although he is Buddhism’s most famous monk, the Dalai Lama is also the leader of the exiled Tibetan government, which was formed after the Chinese communist government took over Tibet in the 1950s.
“The Vatican has to be attentive to the whole picture,” one source said.
Almost lost in the discussion is the fact that Pope Benedict met with the Dalai Lama last year. On that occasion, the Vatican took pains to underline that the encounter was a strictly private discussion on religious topics — so private, in fact, that the meeting was not even listed in the daily log of papal activities.
Sources said this time around, the Vatican had instead suggested that the Dalai Lama might want to meet with Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who heads the Vatican’s council for interreligious dialogue. As of today, it is uncertain whether such a meeting would take place.
PHOTO: The Dalai Lama bows to the crowd as he makes his way to the podium during an interfaith service in Buffalo, N.Y., last year. He was joined at the service by several local religious dignitaries representing Catholics and other Christians as well as Muslims, Jews and Hindus. (CNS/Patrick McPartland, Western New York Catholic)