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French Archbishop of Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-trois holds a copy of a street plate on the square in front of Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris September 3, 2006 after a ceremony to rename the esplanade after the late pope John Paul II. The decision was voted through the Paris council in June, and required a dispensation for the city’s general rule that five years must pass after the death of prominent personalities before public places are named after them. REUTERS/Charles Platiau (FRANCE)

Unfortunately all of the stories covering this event concentrate on the protesters.

About 200 demonstrators staged a sit-in near Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral Sunday protesting the inauguration of a new John Paul II Square because of the late pope’s stance on AIDS and contraception.

City legislators and members of the Green Party and the AIDS activist group Act-Up were among the protesters sitting and lying down on the pavement as Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe led a ceremony formally renaming the square.

"Delanoe is honoring an assassin," some chanted, saying John Paul’s opposition to condoms, along with other forms of contraception, was responsible for hundreds, even thousands of deaths to AIDS and other diseases.

Delanoe, joined by Paris Archbishop Andre XXIII, honored the late pope as a "messenger of peace."

"Was there another pope before him who had as much courage to talk about the Church’s mistakes about the Holocaust, about the treatment of blacks, about the Crusades, about the wars of religion?" Delanoe asked.

MercatorNet has a wide-ranging piece up on blogs, blog addiction, and the wide ranging subject of blogs. I find the fact that so many people now have blogs to be rather a good thing. To quote G.K. Chesterton.

This paper exists to insist on the rights of man; on possession st hat are of much more political importance than the principle of one an one vote. I am in favour of one man one house, one man one field; nay I have even advanced the paradox of one man one wife. But I am aalmost tempted to add the more ideal fancy of one man one magazine . . . to say that every citizen ought to have a weekly paper of this sort to splash about in . . . this kind of scrap book to keep him quiet.*

The addictive quality of blogging has been something much written about. In my over four years of bloggers I have seen many who have sworn off the blogosphere come back once again. I once wrote a post on blogger addiction New Betty Ford Center opening.

"Good evening Godless sodomites" was how Stephen Colbert started his Emmy Presentation (American Papist has the video). In a story closely related.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Sister Mary Pia, wearing a threadbare habit, spoke from behind the bars of her gated parlor about the power of prayer.

"Hollywood is the Babylon of the U.S.A.," she said. "For people who need prayers, we have to be here."

Just two long blocks from her monastery, you are in the thick of the electric lights of Hollywood Boulevard: among the dopers, the runaways, the homeless, the sex salesmen.

Sister Mary Pia said she prays for all of them, while knowing virtually nothing about them. There is nothing ironic about this, she said: "One doesn’t need to be of it to know of it."

Indeed, in her 56 years at the Monastery of the Angels, she has ventured out no more than a few dozen times to attend religious retreats or make preparations for dying loved ones. Rarely has she set a shoe onto the stained sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard.

Yet the signs of iniquity are everywhere. Police helicopters routinely hover over the cloister. There is the dull roar of the Hollywood Freeway. Neighbors recently complained so loudly about the belfry’s morning chimes to prayer that the authorities forced the peals to go silent.

"I think we pricked their conscience," she said of the neighbors.

Sister Mary Pia is one of 21 Dominican nuns in this walled complex of stucco and steel.

They do no missionary work here, canvass no alleys, cook in no soup kitchen. Prayer is the occupation.
[Via Relapsed Catholic]

Well I quibble that they do no missionary work. The fact that St. Therese of Lisieux is a patron saint of missionaries and some missions is not an oddity, but a truth highlighting our faith. Contemplative are on the front lines of whatever they intercede for.

In another story Nuns prove God is not figment of the mind

The idea that there a "God spot" in the brain, a circuit of nerves which could explain mankind’s almost universal belief in a deity, is questioned today by a study of Carmelite nuns.

Scientists have been in the pursuit of the brain processes underlying the Unio Mystica – the Christian notion of mystical union with God – and this endeavour is now part of a newly-emerging field called "neurotheology".

Carmelite nuns assisted scientists in their quest to discover a circuit of nerves in the brain to explain man’s almost universal belief in a deity

But the God module, as some scientists call it, is a mirage, according to the study by Dr Mario Beauregard, of the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal and his student Vincent Paquette, published in the journal Neuroscience Letters. "The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience," said Dr Beauregard. "This does not diminish the meaning and value of such an experience, and neither does it confirm or disconfirm the existence of God."

Fifteen cloistered Carmelite nuns ranging from 23 to 64 years old were subjected to brain scan using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging while being asked to relive a mystical experience, rather than actually try to achieve one. "I was obliged to do it this way seeing as the nuns are unable to call upon God at will," said Dr Beauregard.

This method was justified because previous studies with actors asked to enter a particular emotional state activated the same brain regions as people actually living those emotions.

Rather than reveal a spiritual centre in the brain, a module of neural circuits specifically designed for religious experience, the study demonstrated that a dozen different regions of the brain are activated during a mystical experience.

In other words, mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems normally implicated in functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation.

First off I do wonder what the same study done on the Erie Benedictines would have revealed? My first thought on reading the story was good thing they selected the Carmelites. Another question is why they used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) instead of a CATholic scan?

I do wonder what they classify as mystical experiences? Mystical theology would classify them as extraordinary forms of prayer, the higher forms of contemplation in all their varieties or gradations, private revelations, visions, and the union growing out of these between God and the soul, known as the mystical union. I mean it’s not like you can tell somebody "start up your mystical experience why we scan you." These machines are the same devices you see in medical dramas. I can imagine the problem they would have had with St. Teresa of Avila if they had tried these on her. "Stop levitating. We can’t get a good image with you always moving around."

The stories headline is rather deceptive and the word prove is rather strong. I find it funny sciences search for a God gene or a God spot (G spot?) to try to explain away religious belief. Why not a search for the gene that causes some people to believe that all existence can only be explained by material processes? Or a gene explaining why we believe in truth? Though the scientific study for denying God’s existence has been around for a while.

Proof! Proof! That is what I have always been after. I do not know the soul, I know the mind. If there is really any soul, I have found no evidence of it in my investigations. — Thomas Edison

"I didn’t see God." Russian astronaut coming back from space,

Alice von Hildebrand relates this story:

A student said "I will believe in God the day I can see him under a microscope" to which she replied "The day I can put God under a Microscope, I will stop believing in God."

Since today seems to be nothing but nuns here is great picture of some of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist via Mark of no discernable blog name. [hat tip Angry Twins]

I have often heard the quote of St. Athanasius who said, "The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." What is not normally emphasized is that they have plenty of company with the skulls of the laity who failed to pray for them in the first place.

Michelle Arnold of Catholic answers blogging at JimmyAkin.org has created a generically meme in response to Brooke Shield’s saying her family tree included Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conqueror and King Harold II, and also five popes. Just like in those who claim past lives you never hear anyone mention the scullery maid or dude cleaning out the stables in their family tree. Since I am one of the tagged here is my response.

1. Which famous person would you most like to learn that you are descended from? Adam and Eve. Oh wait I think everyone can claim that one. Well how about Noah? I guess there is the same problem with that one. If G.K. Chesterton was not childless I would claim him.

2. Which famous person would you hate to learn that you are descended from? Judas.

3. If you could be ancestor to any living famous person, who would it be and why? Philip Pullman. If on the condition I was dead and in the beatific vision so that he might have at least one more person in his family praying for him. He is much more dangerous than Dan Brown in that he can actually write.

4. If you could go back in time and meet any known ancestor(s) of yours, who would it be? Obviously it would be Adam. Don’t you dare eat that apple!

5. Tag five others: Michael Barber, Mike Aqualina (surely he has a Church Father in the mix), Discerning Sainthood, Zorak, Victor Lams

In Maisie Ward’s biography of G.K. Chesterton on G.K.’s conversion his friend Maurice Baring wrote him:

…Did I ever quote you a sentence of Bernard Holland on the subject of Kenelm Henry Digby when the latter was received?

"Father Scott . . . who, at last, guided him through the narrow door where one must bend one’s head, into the internal space and freedom of the eternal and universal Catholic Church." Space and freedom: that was what I experienced on being received; that is what I have been most conscious of ever since. It is the exact opposite of what the ordinary Protestant conceives to be the case. To him and not only to him but to the ordinary English agnostic the convert to Catholicism is abandoning his will and his independence, sometimes they think even his nationality; at the best they think he
is sheltering himself in a walled garden; at the worst they think he has closed on himself an iron door: and shackled himself with foolish chains and sold his birthright for a crown of tinsel.

And yet their own experience, the testimony of their eyes if they would only use them, ought to suggest to them that they might perhaps be mistaken.

It would be difficult for anyone to make out a case for the UnEnglishness of Manning or indeed of any prominent English Catholic whether a born Catholic or a convert.

It would be difficult for them to prove that Belloc was a writer wanting in independence. It would be difficult for them to convince any one that Father Vaughan and Lord Fitzalan were wearing foolscaps.

And anybody who has thought about history or looked on at politics must have reflected that freedom resides where there is order and not where there is license: or no-order.

I remember before of having that exact feeling of Christianity. That is was a cramped thing, an imposition of severe restrictions, that a life of virtue was a life of severely bound manacles. Or as the Pope recently said in his German TV interview "So I think we should correct that image that sees the Church as spreading severe "no’s"." This old error has only grown more pernicious. The word freedom has been replaced with the definition of license and the word license now has no definition. Looking back to my conversion I am amazed at how many restrictions have been lifted from me and looking forward I hope to see more of those chains fall from me. Not that I don’t sometimes commit the sin of Lot’s wife by looking back. But fortunately instead of being turned into a table condiment the temptation passes. Peter’s power to bind and loose gives the aura to confirm societies belief until we realize is that Christ through his Church binds us to him and looses us from our sins.

I often enjoy Fr. Powell’s homilies via his podcast and I listened to his Sunday one today which has much to commend it.

That we must be ready to remove from us the soul-killing voices of dissention, rebellion, bitterness, and contention does not mean that we must be ready to ignore or even coddle the Spirits of Deceit and Disobedience. Nothing about growing up to be Christs for others requires us to tolerate false teaching, listen to phony myths, or watch anti-Catholic bigots (both in and outside the Church) dismantle the Body given to us by Christ. Charity without Truth is not love; it’s merely lazy toleration. But Truth without Charity is mere accuracy, just fact—cold, hollow.

Since everybody is quoting from the Holy Father’s German Television interview.

Lanz: My question is linked to that of Father von Gemmingen. Throughout the world believers are waiting for the Catholic Church to answer the most urgent global problems, like AIDS and overpopulation. Why does the Catholic Church pay so much attention to moral issues rather than suggesting concrete solutions to these problems that are so crucial to humanity, in Africa, for example?

So that’s the problem: do we really pay so much attention to moral issues? I think — I am more and more convinced after my conversations with the African bishops — that the basic question, if we want to move ahead in this field, is about education, formation. Progress becomes true progress only if it serves the human person and if the human person grows: not only in terms of his or her technical power, but also in his or her moral awareness. I believe that the real problem of our historical moment lies in the imbalance between the incredibly fast growth of our technical power and that of our moral capacity, which has not grown in proportion. That’s why the formation of the human person is the true recipe, the key to it all, I would say, and this is what the Church proposes. Briefly speaking, this formation has a dual dimension: of course we have to learn, acquire knowledge, ability, know-how, as they say. In this sense Europe, and in the last decades America, have done a lot, and that’s important. But if we only teach know-how, if we only teach how to build and to use machines, and how to use contraceptives, then we shouldn’t be surprised when we find ourselves facing wars and AIDS epidemics. Because we need two dimensions: simultaneously we need the formation of the heart, if I can express myself in this way, with which the human person acquires points of reference and learns how to use the techniques correctly. And that’s what we try to do. Throughout Africa and in many countries in Asia, we have a vast network of every level of school where people can learn, form a true conscience and acquire professional ability which gives them autonomy and freedom. But in these schools we try to communicate more than know-how, rather to form human beings capable of reconciliation, who know that we must build and not destroy and who have the necessary references to be able to live together. In much of Africa, relations between Christians and Muslims are exemplary. The bishops have formed common commissions together with the Muslims to try and create peace in situations of conflict. This schools network, dedicated to human learning and formation, is very important. It’s completed by a network of hospitals and assistance centers that reach even the most remote villages. In many areas, following the destruction of war, the Church is the only structure that remains intact. This is a fact! We offer treatment, treatment to AIDS victims too, and we offer education, helping to establish good relationships with others. So I think we should correct that image that sees the Church as spreading severe "no’s." We work a lot in Africa so that the various dimensions of formation can be integrated and so that it becomes possible to overcome violence and epidemics, that includes malaria and tuberculosis as well.

Just when I think I couldn’t love the Holy Father even more he goes on to quote Chesterton.

Fuchs: Stories with humor in them too? In 1989 in Munich you were given the Karl Valentin Award. What role does humor play in the life of a pope?

I’m not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it’s very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I’d also say it’s necessary for my ministry. A writer once said that angels can fly because they don’t take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn’t think we were so important.

Via Amy Welborn is this article on archaeological discovery concerning the Georgia Martyrs.

Dr. Paul Camarata of the wonderfully produced SaintCast interviewed Paul Thigpen during the Atlanta Eucharistic Conference and played the interview on his podcast last week.

Previously Fr. Seraphim Beshoner O.F.M. interviewed the he Vice Postulator for the The Five Franciscan Martyrs of Georgia.

Hopefully their cause will make more well known their life and martyrdom, especially since they are another set of martyrs who died concerning the indissolubility of marriage. From John the Baptist, to Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher this has not often been a message that was welcomed by society.

I recently came across the following while listening to Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward and it is quite appropriate for today.

I am so glad to hear you say . . . that, in your own words "it is good for us to be here"–where you are at present. The same remark,if I remember right, was made on the mountain of the Transfiguration.It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life–other things superficially, but this always in our depths. "It is good for us to be here–it is good for us to be here," repeating itself eternally. And if, after many joys and festivals and frivolities, it should be our fate to have to look on while one of us is, in a most awful sense of the words, "transfigured before our eyes": shining with the whiteness of death–at least, I think, we cannot easily fancy ourselves wishing not to be at our
post. Not I, certainly. It was good for me to be there.
11 Warwick Gardens (postmarked July 11, 1899.)