Posted in category "History"
On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, Swiss Guard Lance Corporate Cedric Tornay, 23, killed Lt. Col. Alois Estermann, 43, and his Venezuelan wife, Gladys Meza Romero, 49. After they were dead, Tornay knelt, put his service revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. 
The Vatican handled the autopsy and investigation of the crime by itself, without asking for help from Italian officials. They considered the case clear-cut. “It was a fit of madness in a person with very peculiar psychological characteristics,” papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the day after the killings. ”That is the only hypothesis,” a Vatican official confirmed. “There is no reason to advance any alternative.”
Estermann and his wife were given a splendid funeral, concelebrated by 16 cardinals and 30 bishops. Before the service, Pope John Paul II made a point of praying at all three caskets, which were displayed, side by side, for viewing. Tornay was given a separate funeral in a chapel in the small church of St. Anne’s.
Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano said the Requiem Mass for Col. Estermann and his wife at St. Peter’s Basillica, a rare honor for laymen. In his homily Cardinal Sodano said, “In times like these we feel above all the need to be silent.” The Estermanns had been married 16 years. They did not have any children.
The official explanation of their deaths didn’t make sense to people who knew Cedric Tornay. A flurry of articles and books followed the murders.
Bugie di sangue di Vatican (Blood Lies in the Vatican) by the “Disciples of Truth” was printed by a tiny publisher in Milan. It was reputed to have been written by a group of disaffected priests inside the Vatican. They claimed that Estermann was the victim of a struggle for control of the Swiss Guard – which had been in charge of papal security for the past five centuries – between the secretive, traditionalist Catholic movement Opus Dei and a masonic power faction ensconced in the Curia. Estermann and his wife were members of Opus Dei. The director of the Holy See press office, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is a member as well.
John Follain, a British investigative journalist and Sunday Times correspondent for Italy and the Vatican authored City of Secrets: The Truth behind the murders at the Vatican. It was published in 2003 by William Morrow & Co. He followed several threads in trying to establish a motive for the murder. One of them was a homosexual love affair gone sour.
One source Follain met and interviewed was Italian writer and art historian, professor Massimo Lacchei. In his 1999 book, Verbum Dei, Verbum Gay (God’s Word, Gay Word) Lacchei offers ten short stories about homosexuality in the ranks of Catholic clergy. The book would have passed generally unnoticed had Lacchei not called a press conference to announce that the two Swiss guard officers in the chapter ”Mass in a Private Chapel” were in fact Estermann and Tornay. In the book they appeared as “Major Jorg” and “Lieutenant Kaspar.” “This is not fiction, they (the stories) are based on real encounters” Lacchei told reporters.
The story is an account, spiced up with a couple of lewd ancedotes, of an all-male party Lacchei attended in 1997 at the home of an elderly and important Roman politician. The most eagerly awaited guests were two officers of the Swiss Guard. The story opens with the guests waiting expectantly for the two officers. They arrive, Mass is celebrated, and then, over a meal, the others sit in rapt attention as they relate the story of their relationship. 
Lacchei said he had no proof that the two Swiss Guards were lovers, but their presence at the gay brunch–and their behavior there–certainy made him think so. “They were so intimate and friendly for a subordinate and a captain,” he said. Lacchei told Follain of a second, chance meeting with Tornay in April 1998, a month before his death. Lacchei had been out walking his dog on the Via della Conciliazione, the avenue leading to St. Peter’s, when he saw Tornay and invited him home. Tornay confided that Estermann had betrayed him. He saw Estermann in an embrace with another guard in the changing rooms of the barracks. “I can forgive, but never forget” Tornay said.
A former Vatican employee told Follain a story about a homosexual chaplain of the Swiss Guard. The chaplain had several affairs with members of the corps. Whenever his advances were rebuffed, he would dress himself in civilian clothes and go to Roma Termini Station to find male prostitutes. “The ex-employee told me,” Follain related, “that a Swiss Guard plucked up his courage and complained about him to the elderly, wheelchair-bound Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur, who has been the pope’s closest friend ever since they studied at the seminary together. ‘We will do nothing,” Deskur muttered. ‘The chaplain is digging his own grave.’” The chaplain later died of AIDS.
As Tornay and Estermann’s relationship deteriorated, Estermann began to persecute Tornay. Estermann’s refusal to grant Cedric Tornay the Benemeriti medal for three-years service–a routine award– may have sparked the killings. Hurt and fustrated, there was no where Tornay could go to unburden or be heard. He could not discuss his relationship with Estermann. Officially, homosexuals do not exist in the Swiss Guard. “I had no choice but to hid my homosexuality,” said an ex-guardsman named Steiner. “I soon realized that the only way to survive as a homosexual in the heart of the Church was to keep it invisible.”
Tall and thin, with a short-cropped sandy beard, Steiner did not return to Switzerland after his service but stayed in Rome and opened up a flower shop. “Some people choose to live in the Vatican because for them it is like living in a giant, protective cocoon,” he said. “But for many people life in the Vatican is just a big pretense, because the truth is that under all those cassocks and the robes there are individuals who want to live normal lives, who have desires that are absolutely normal–including sexual ones.”
Vatican spokesman Vavarro-Valls took pains to deny rumors of a sexual motive for the killings. Navarro, who said he had known the Estermanns well, insisted: “”They were a model couple. The fact that they didn’t have children wasn’t important, because they dedicated their time to charity work.”
Others disagreed. “The relationship could not be other than one of a homosexual nature,” Ida Magli, a prominent anthropologist, told the Roman daily Il Messaggero. “”The Holy See wanted to close a case in a hurry, perhaps out of a need to hide a sad, worrisome truth.”
The January edition of the Magnificat included the story of St. Reinold, religious and marytr (980 c.) He died at the hands of stone masons and later came to be venerated as their patron saint. 
There are various versions of his life and martyrdom. St. Reinhold may have been a monk, a knight, a pilgrim–or all three. He may be a fabrication of several different people, stories and legends. Even his murder may have several explanations.
Version I: Reinold was a Benedictine monk of the monastery of Saint Pantaleon in Cologne, Germany. He was entrusted with the duty of overseeing the construction work to complete the abbey.
Reinold was murdered by the stone masons working on the building. They beat him to death with their hammers and threw his body into a pool of water near the Rhine river.
In one telling, Reinold is killed due to his “over-strenuous diligence,” which incurred the hostility and bitter resentment of the stone masons. In a second account, he was murdered by stone masons who were annoyed that Reinold worked harder and with more skill then they did.
Reinold’s fellow monks were unable to find his body until its whereabouts were made known in a private revelation to an infirm poor woman. His body was taken to the abbey and buried with honor.
Version II: St. Reinold was drawn from the story of Renaud, the youngest son of Duke Aymon of France. He was supposedly a descendant of the sister of Charlemagne, and the 4th son mentioned in William Caxton’s romantic poem, Romance of the Foure Sonnes of Aymon.
The four sons of Duke Aymon are Renaud, Richard, Alard and Guiscard, and their cousin is the sorcerer, Maugis. Maugis was raised by the enchantress Oriande la Fee. He won the magical horse Bayard–who could understand human speech–and the sword Froberge which he later gave to Renaud.
The oldest extant version of the story of Renaud de Montauban and his cousin, Magris, was the anonymous Old French chanson de geste Quatre Fils Aymon which dates from the late 12th c.
In the tale, Renaud and his three brothers were sons of Aymon of Dordone. They flee from the court of Charlemagne after Renaud kills another of Charlemagne’s nephews in a brawl over a chess game. Renaud kills the man by battering him with a chess board. A long war follows, during which Renaud and his brothers remain faithful to the Christian chivalric code.
The four brothers are pardoned on the condition Renaud go to the Holy Land on crusade (or on a pilgrimage), and their magical horse Bayard, who could expand his size to carry all four brothers, be surrendered to Charlemagne. 
Charlemagne orders Bayard to be drowned by chaining it to a stone and throwing it in the river Meuse, but the horse escapes and lives forever more in the Ardennes forests.
After further adventures soldiering in the Holy Land, Renaud returns home. On his return he abandons his home and gives himself up to religion. He eventually makes his way to Cologne and enters the monastery of St. Pantaleon, where be works as a mason on the Church of St. Peter. He is murdered by jealous fellow masons. His body is miraculously saved from the river and magically makes its way home to his brothers in a cart.
In art, St. Reinold is depicted with armor, reflecting the tradition that he had been a soldier before entering monastic life. He is also shown as a Benedictine monk with a stone mason’s hammer; as a monk being killed by stone masons, and as a dead monk being thrown in water.
Besides his identity, I have three other mysteries to solve: 1) why was he murdered; 2) why was he named a saint; and strangest of all, 3) Why he was named a patron saint of the group of people who killed him?
Here are my two versions:
Story 1: Brother Reinold is two people: pious in prayer and a mean, overbearing, and cruel overseer. Hatred and resentment build up among the stone masons he supervises. He oversteps his bounds one day, striking, kicking or punishing someone he bullies to push them to work harder. The man or his friend strikes back in self defense or in a fury. The others finish the job and try to get rid of the body. A local poor woman knows where the body was disposed, and tells the monks the place came to her in a dream from God. The monks find the body and attribute it to divine revelation. They don’t pursue the killers because they know Reinold was a creep and they need their abbey completed. Over the years, long after all the murderers and monks are dead, Brother Reinhold becomes a patron saint of stone masons because he was associated with them, and his *martyrdom* came at their hands.
Story 2: A former warrior named Renaud shows up at the Monastery of St. Pantaleon in Cologne after soldiering in the Holy Land. They can’t pronounce his French name and it comes out sounding like “Reinold.” He comes from an aristocratic family, a descendant of the legendary Charlemagne, and cousin to a famous sorcerer. He makes sure everybody knows it, and the fact he has given it all up to follow a monastic life. He is tough, skilled and hard, and drives himself and everyone around him with a religious zeal. Newly devout, Renaud hectors the other half-pagan stone masons about their lives and picks fights with them. One day, they turn on him in a group and kill him. The body is never found, although local legend has it returning to France in a magical cart–derived, no doubt, from his stories about his horse, Bayard.
Could there have been a darker meaning behind his death? Some historical evidence points to a Christian-Pagan clash or ritual: according to the book, The Ciphers of the Monks by David A. King, German stone mason’s marks (Steinmetzzeichen) were often based on the runes. They chiseled these marks into the stones, especially the foundation stone, as their signature. I can see how that would fill a zealous Christian with horror and anger–an affront to the consecration of the building.
Two hundred years earlier another Benedictine, St. Boniface, was bludgeoned and hacked to death for insulting the gods. 
Medieval people also used “foundation sacrifices” or burials to ensure the stability of a building–castle, bridge and sometimes, churches. They also had a tradition of sacrificing people to placate the spirits of a place. The sacrificed person, in turn, became its protector. Often these were children, sometimes adults, who were entombed alive within the structure. In other sacrifices a dead person was thrown into a pool of water as a votive offering. Could this been what happened to Reinold?
If a monk-mason named Reinold ever existed, and whatever the reasons were behind his death, ultimately the church profited by his romantic and legendary associations. Over time he became “St. Reinold,” martyred for the faith by fellow stone masons jealous of his example.
In one of those delicious ironies the Catholic Church is so famous for, he becomes their patron saint and protector.
I did notice that mason’s hammers bear a strong resemblance to Mjollnir, the hammer of Thor. Just a coincidence, or a subtle clue to his killers? 
Mary Daly, 81, died two weeks ago, mostly forgotten, certainly unshriven. Carolyn Moynihan, deputy editor of MercatorNet, noted that Daly “seems to have departed this life as a kind of orphan herself. The New York Times obituary notes that she ‘leaves no immediate survivors’. No family on earth? No father in heaven? I hope it really was not like that for Mary Daly at the end.” 
After her two first two books, which stood the Catholic world on its head, Mary Daly spun off into the ether, writing books with titles like: Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage; and Quintessence..Realizing the Archaic Future. Daly created her own language, but most people weren’t interested in learning it. She lost her hold on the larger Catholic imagination.
In the 80s the lesbian herd moved past her, too, migrating on towards the mainstream–”Ellen,” “The L Word,” “Rachael Maddow,” “Suze Orman,” human rights, marriage rights and child rearing. The labrys pendant was lost or forgotten. Daly was, too.
Mary Daly was the quintessential Irish Catholic girl. Born October 16, 1928, in Schenectady, NY, she went all through Catholic schools, and received a BA from the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY and a MA from Catholic University in Washington, DC. After earning her doctorate in religion from St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1953, she went on to obtain two degrees from the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, since no U.S. institutions at the time offered theology doctorates to women.
Dr. Daly was hired as an assistant professor at Jesuit-run Boston College in 1967, when the school only enrolled men. She started as a reformist, and her first book, The Church and the Second Sex, (1968) she argued that the Catholic Church was patriarchal in nature and had systematically opposed women for centuries. In response, the college attempted to dismiss her, but the support she received from students and the public kept her in the classroom.
As a student in the early ’70s at Trinity, an all-women’s college in Washington, DC, I was thrilled about Mary Daly and her books. “Someone speaking for us,” I thought as I picked one up, “someone speaking the truth about what it’s like to be a woman in the Catholic Church.”
Sr. Joan Chittister reflected on Daly’s impact on history: “I learned how to look newly at things I’d looked at for so long that I was no longer really seeing any of them. Women need to thank Daly for raising two of the most important theological questions of our time: one, whether the question of a male God was consistent with the teaching that God was pure spirit, and two, whether a church that is more patriarchal system than authentic church could possibly survive in its present form. These two questions have yet to be resolved and are yet rankling both thinkers and institutions.”
Daly came out as a lesbian in the early 70s–when she was in her 40s. She began to study ancient cultures, and came to regard all major modern religions as oppressive to women, a view expressed in her second book, Beyond God the Father (1973). Her original critique of the Roman Catholic Church as a bastion of patriarchy was extended to the entire Christian tradition. She rejected Christianity’s focus on a monotheistic deity and what she attacked as its intrinsic patriarchy. She asserted that Christianity’s focus on Jesus Christ was just another dimension of its patriarchy–a Savior in a male body.
As Margaret Elizabeth Kostenberger explains, Daly’s “compete rejection of Scripture” on the basis of its “irremediable patriarchal bias” took her far outside the Christian faith. While other feminists called for the adoption of female or gender-neutral language for God, Daly attacked those efforts as half-measures that fail to take the “phallocentricity” of theism seriously.
Her famous dictum, “If God is male, then the male is God,” stood at the heart of her argument against religion. She accused Christianity of “gynocide” against women and suggested that all monotheistic religion–and Christianity in particular–is “phallocentric.”
“I urge you to sin,” she wrote to women readers. “But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism–or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism–which are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!”
In 1999 Professor Daly left Boston College after a male student threatened a lawsuit when he was denied a place in her class on feminist ethics. She had long limited enrollment in some advanced women’s studies classes to women only, maintaining that the presence of men there would inhibit frank discussion.
What happened to Mary Daly, that she imposed the same gender barriers in her classrooms as she experienced? Daly went to Europe for advanced degrees because no U.S. Catholic university would accept a woman in a theology program. Years later, Daly bared men from her advanced courses in women’s studies because she felt their presence would have a negative impact on the other students. Men, she said, “have nothing to offer but doodoo.”
It may be retribution, but it doesn’t seem right. How do you rail against a system of discrimination, and then implement it with glee yourself?
So I am left with a mystery to solve: why did Mary Daly, a “post-Christian,” continue to affiliate with Boston College, an unabashedly Catholic institution? Love and hate are bound very closely. Daly was never indifferent.
Perhaps it began with a girlhood hurt. Daly wrote about her intellectual formation in a 1996 article in the New Yorker “Sin Big,” in which she recalled being mocked by a male classmate, and altar boy, at her parochial school because she could never “serve Mass” because she was a girl.
“(T)his repulsive revelation of the sexual caste system that I would later learn to call ‘patriarchy’ burned its way into my brain and kindled an unquenchable Rage,” she wrote.
Daly described herself as a pagan, an eco-feminist and a radical feminist in a 1999 interview with The Guardian newspaper of London. “I hate the Bible,” she told the paper. “I always did. I didn’t study theology out of piety. I studied it because I wanted to know.”
So with all that, how could she in good conscience continue to teach at a Catholic university?
Here’s what I think: at BC, Daly could be an outlaw, get a paycheck, credibility for book deals, and still have the protective mantle of identity that gave her cachet: a professor at a highly regarded Catholic university.
She lived on the piercing insights she fearlessly raised 40 years ago. But Daly had ceased to be a theologian, and even her philosophical writing declined into self-important gibberish. She should have taken her own advice–a person becomes stagnant if they don’t move on. 
If you’re going to call yourself a Post-Christian, then be Post-Christian. If you have moved on… move on, and stop clinging to institutions that you say you no longer believe in.
A man wrote the best epitaph for Daly that I have read: “When I was in the seminary, attending class at B.C. during the eighties, Mary Daly was a joke. Imagine my surprise when, years later, as a purely cynical move to impress a feminist scholar, I cited Mary Daly in a paper, but was not able to put her work down. Although her work never persuaded me to abandon my beliefs, or my own thinking, Mary did push me to consider a whole world of concern that years earlier I would have dismissed as nonsense. Now, when I think of her, I do not think of a nut, or a totally whacked out feminist. I think of a pioneer, who, although not worthy of discipleship, is certainly worthy of being taken seriously as a thinker and a human being. I wish I had met her, although I’m not sure of how it would have turned out.”
Thumbing through my copy of Magnificat in church last week, I came upon the story of Saint Ethelfleda. Her tale breathes a warm, oddball humanity–in contrast to the usual Magnificat fare of sanctity, torture and grim death for aspiring saints.
Saint Ethelfleda is someone I can relate to: swims naked, prays outdoors, entertains generously, and inspires young people.
Here are her miracles of renown, and those of her teenage admirer – who went on to surpass her in weird tales.
Saint Ethelfleda (c.930 – Feast Day – October 23) was a member of the Anglo-Saxon nobility. Following the death of her husband, she spent the rest of her life as abbess of Romsey. Her devotional acts included chanting psalms while standing naked in the cold water of the River Test.
One day, as Ethelfleda was preparing for a visit from her kinsman, King Athelstan, the royal chamberlain arrived in advance to see if she had the provisions necessary to host the king and his large retinue. Upon being informed by the chamberlain that she lacked an adequate supply of ale, Ethefleda answered, “My patroness, the Virgin Mother, will send me an abundance of ale.” She thereupon withdrew to an oratory of the Blessed Virgin, where she ardently prayed for heavenly intervention.
When on the next day the king and his men arrived after attending Mass, Ethelfleda’s modest barrel of ale supplied all they wanted without running dry.
Her legend also tells that she spent time with the king and queen at court, where Ethelfleda’s habit–for “ascetic reasons” –of bathing in the nude at night was the occasion of the queen’s nervous illness, brought on by the queen’s “indiscreet curiosity” when she followed her to see where she went. The queen was afterward cured by the abbess’ intercession.
The Magnificat story ended by saying the elderly Ethelfleda was frequently visited by a teenage boy who drew inspiration from her example. The youth was the future abbot of Glastonbury and archbishop of Canterbury – Saint Dunstan.
Saint Dunstan (909?-May 19, 988, Feast Day – May 19) was born near Glastonbury and lived for a time in the household of Saint Ethelfleda’s kinsman, King Athelstan. The dreamy young man became a great favorite of the king, his relatives and other members of the court became jealous and envious. They accused Dunstan of studying heathen literature and black magic, and prevailed upon the king to order him to leave the court. 
As he was departing Dunstan was attacked. According to various accounts, he was beaten and thrown in a duck pond or cesspool, where his enemies pushed him face down in the muck.
He fled to Winchester and entered the service of Bishop Aelfheah the Bald, who endeavored to persuade him to become a monk. Dunstan was doubtful about whether or not he had the vocation to celibate life, but an outbreak of tumors all over his body–probably from blood-poisoning caused by the treatment to which he had been subjected, changed his mind. 
He made his profession at the hands of St. Aelfheah (”Elf-high”) and returned to live the life of a hermit at Glastonbury, working on his forge and playing his harp. Here the Devil is supposed to have appeared to tempt him, and Dunstan seized him with his blacksmith tongs and made him promise never to enter a house with a horseshoe over the doorway.
Dunstan also worked as a silversmith and in the scriptorium while he was living at Glastonbury. Dunstan drew his own self-portrait in the small, kneeling monk beside Christ in the Glastonbury Classbook. The inscription reads: “I ask you, merciful Christ, to watch over me, Dunstan. May you not permit the Taenarian storms to swallow me.” 
Did Saint Dunstan delve into occult practices in his youth? Perhaps. It has been speculated that his famous fight with the Devil was in fact a battle with his own desire to fully resume his former practices and studies.
The sketch in his own hand showing Dunstan holding the hem of Christ’s garment; and his petition for Christ’s aid to save him from the underworld–or Hell–may be more illuminating than we realize about his inner and outer life.
The “heathen literature” Saint Dunstan studied when he was younger may have been some Irish manuscripts describing druid practices and beliefs that survived Saint Patrick’s efforts at destroying all of them. His early education was received from Irish monks at Glastonbury. Dunstan obviously had access to manuscripts by Ovid or other ancient Greeks with his reference to “Taenarian storms” – Taenarius or Taenarus is the path or gateway to the underworld or Hades.
At least one person thought St. Dunstan might have practiced or dabbled in magic: William Godwin (1756-1836) , who included him in his book, Lives Of The Necromancers: Or An Account Of The Most Eminent Persons In Successive Ages, Who Have Claimed For Themselves, Or To Whom Has Been Imputed By Others, The Exercise Of Magical Power. The book was published in 1834. The other necromancer of ancient Britain Godwin cited was Merlin.
Goodwin asserted that at least one of Saint Dunstan’s “miracles” was really magic. As the story goes Eadmund, a young king of 18, sought the advice of Dunstan, but the jealousy of the courtiers was aroused and he was driven from court.
“For, a few days later, the king rode out to hunt the stag in Mendip Forest. He became separated from his attendants and followed a stag at great speed in the direction of the Cheddar cliffs. The stag rushed blindly over the precipice and was followed by the hounds. Eadmund endeavoured vainly to stop his horse; then, seeing death to be imminent, he remembered his harsh treatment of St. Dunstan and promised to make amends if his life was spared. At that moment his horse was stopped on the very edge of the cliff. Giving thanks to God, he returned forthwith to his palace, called for St. Dunstan and bade him follow, then rode straight to Glastonbury. Entering the church, the king first knelt in prayer before the altar, then, taking St. Dunstan by the hand, he gave him the kiss of peace, led him to the abbot’s throne and, seating him thereon, promised him all assistance in restoring Divine worship and regular observance.” (Catholic Encyclopedia)
At that time Dunstan was 19 or 20 years old. He became the Keeper of the Treasure and the chief adviser to the king. When his royal friend was stabbed in May 946 by the outlaw Leof, the abbot buried him in the abbey.
It sounds like a spell Merlin would have concocted to change the king’s heart.
A counselor to successive kings, Dunstan continued to have potentially fatal run-ins with them. On the day of his coronation in 956, newly crowned King Eadwig left his banquet to join two women in bed–the king’s foster-mother, and her daughter, Aelfgifu. Dunstan followed in a fury and dragged the startled king back to the hall and his knights. The episode, no surprise, led to Dunstan’s exile and flight for his life.
Besides the number of times he was thrown out of court and then restored, Dunstan’s life was notable for the number of visions of angels and demons, including a warning by angels that he would die within three days. He did.
“..for all his life this unique and marvellous man had revelation of things distant in space and in time, and his happy spirit, full of the artist, metal-worker, lover of tunes and gay, lived on the edge of this world; the good and the evil of the unseen supported and attracted him as they do such few as are placed on the outposts of humanity.” (Hilaire Belloc, History of England)
For the last several months I have been contemplating observing the Sabbath as a day without “servile” work: answering email, mapping out projects, running errands, getting a head start on the week–stuff I do every Sunday.
Beginning tomorrow, the Sabbath–Sunday– will be spent relaxing: nothing planned, nothing scheduled–just enjoying the day as it unfolds.
I have been very hesitant to make a commitment to a “work-less” Sunday. I wasn’t sure about how I felt about not being busy, organizing the day with a list of things to do and accomplish.
But the racing around didn’t make me feel better–it made me feel less.
Earlier this month, I had the chance to ask a fellow blogger, Benny the Bridgebuilder from Bulls, if he knew where I could get a copy of Cardinal Suenens remarks on stress and leisure. 
Benny very kindly send me a pdf of the article How to Relax, which appeared on page 25 of the final commemorative issue of The Word, published December 2008. The original article by Cardinal Suenens appeared in the August 1965 edition.
Here are some excerpts I found especially relevant to my situation. It was almost as if Cardinal Suenens took some time to sit down and talk to me about my life:
“Modern life is lived at high tension; its pace is intense and nerves get frayed. Whatever it costs, we must learn how to stop, when we need to, and draw a quiet breath. Many solve the problems of necessary recreation by taking more holidays. This is a step forward. But we must still learn how to relax, how to avoid being unbalanced by amusements, how to measure how this rhythm of fatigue and repose in the required mixture.”
“In order to acquire this art, we must learn particularly how to take advantage of the little opportunities life has to offer and become children at heart again. We must not live at such an intensive, hustling pace that we no longer have time to – have time. To be relaxed makes one accessible to others.”
“We must learn, or re-learn, to have time. Our Lord himself did not want His Apostles to live in a state of perpetual tension. He urged them to “come away into a quiet place” – “rest a little”, He said to them on days after they had finished their apostolic missions. In the wilderness and in solitude, He revealed to them the best of Himself and His message.”
“We stand in need of rest – in the ordinary sense of the word, and also rest in God. We must find a place for Him in the bustle of the day; a place for private prayer, for slow and mediative reading. We need this ‘oxygen.’ It is one of our vital necessities.”
“We need to get our breath back. That is why the Church is so insistent on Sunday being kept as a holy day; a day for public worship, certainly, but also a day of rest.”
“We must detach ourselves from our work, but only in order to attach ourselves more firmly to the one thing needful. We must stop, like the Alpine climber who has reached a high peak, to take breath for a moment, admire the view, fill our lungs with fresh air and go on to the next peak.”
“Sunday is the day to halt so that we can resume our march with a firmer tread. Do not let us neglect to fix our gaze on the sky until we can see the stars there. We make much better headway here on earth when we have a sense of direction and move forward with a firm step on solid ground. Looking at the heavens is the form of relaxation we can least dispense with if we want to keep things in their perspective and make the world a better place to live.”
Leo Jozef Cardinal Suenens (1904-1996) served as Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel, Belgium, from 1961-1979. He was made a cardinal in 1962. Suenens was a leading voice at the Second Vatican Council.
In May 1969 he offered a passionate critique of the Roman Curia during an interview with Informations Catholiques Internationales. Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, a high official at the Vatican, demanded he retract his remarks. Suenens refused.
Ten years later, Cardinal Suenens reflected on the event and said, “There are times when loyalty demands more than keeping in step with an old piece of music. As far as I am concerned loyalty is a different kind of love. And this demands that we accept responsibility for the whole and serve the Church with as much courage and candor as possible.”
- Benny, thank you so much for sending me the article. It really helped me.
Lesbian and gay saints have contributed in their individual ways to the life of the Church. Two examples are Saint Alcuin, who openly professed his emotional and sexual passion for several brother monks; and Saint Bridget of Ireland, who deeply loved the young nun, Darlughdach, who slept with her and sometimes functioned as her ambassador.
There are also gay icons–the handsome youth, Saint Sebastian, and Saint Joan, a woman who dressed herself in men’s clothing, became a warrior, and defied the gender role and expectations of her time.
Of course, there is also Saint Peter Damien with his fixation on gay male sex. He is the epitome of a self-hating homosexual who persecutes others of his kind in order to avoid detection, and punish the objects of his own desire.
Here are two clues to help identify gay and lesbian saints: 1) did they enter religious life partially to avoid marriage; and 2) does part of their story involve a special “friend” they had in religious life?
Today’s lesson: Saint Galla of Rome. 
In his Dialogues, Pope Saint Gregory the Great speaks of a holy woman of Rome named Galla, who had been married for less than a year when her husband died. Refusing to remarry, the young widow resolved to devote the rest of her life to God. To protect her beauty againt men’s attention, it is said she disguised herself as a man and God gave her a beard.(!)
Joining with a community of women living near St. Peter’s Basilica, caring for the poor and sick, this wealthy and pious woman founded a convent and a hospital. She is reputed to have once healed a young deaf and mute girl by blessing some water, and having the girl drink from it.
As she lay stricken with breast cancer, Galla kept two candles burning each night at the foot of her bed, for Gregory explains, “She hated darkness, being a friend of light, physical as well as spiritual light.”
It was between these two candles that one night the Apostle Saint Peter appeared in a vision to Galla. The dying woman asked him: “Have my sins been forgiven?” Smiling, Peter nodded yes and answered, “They are forgiven. Come.”
But Saint Galla now requested, “I beg you to let Sister Benedicta come with me.” Peter told her, “Sister Benedicta will follow you in thirty days.” Three days later, Galla died, and a month later, Benedicta.
Rest together in peace.
Death: c. 550 A.D.
Feast Day: October 5
I spent part of Friday afternoon poking around in an old marine salvage store in town. Along with time-crusted anchors, portholes sporting blistered paint, antique lanterns and knives, and leather bracelets sailors used to wear when they mended sails, the store has a selection of old books. That’s where I head first. 
A title caught my eye, “The Wreck on the Half-Moon Reef.” It was written by Hugh Edwards, the Australian diver who found the wreck in 1966. The book was published in 1970.
I pulled it off the shelf and opened it to read the jacket. The book was the account of the wreck of the 38-gun Dutch East Indiaman Zeewyk in 1727 on the savage reefs around the Abrolhos Islands. “The lookout thought that the surf on the Half-Moon Reef was ‘moonlight.’ The result was a quick death for some, a slow death for others, and the torture and execution of two youths for the ’stupid sin’ of sodomy.”
It’s rare a nautical history includes a full chapter describing a sodomy trial and execution. I bought the book.
Chapter 12, The Stupid Sin, begins: “The two sodomy-accused boys were doomed from the moment that the eager informants burst into the officers’ tent with the news.” The youths, it seems that they were not older than their mid to late teens at the most, had been accused of a homosexual act. The “stupid sin” as the Dutch called it.
One of the officers, Adriaan van der Grafee, kept a journal during the voyage and recorded their trial and punishment.
“December 1st, 1727: At eight o’clock in the morning the Petty Officers enter our tent and ask to see the Skipper, and inform him that two hands named Adriaen Spoor from St. Maertensdyck, and Pieter Engels, from Ghent, both boys, were found yesterday committing together the abominable sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
The boys were spotted by several others having sex in broad daylight, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon according to the account.
The white-faced boys were brought to the officers’ tent, “But they were not willing to make a confession. Wherefore we placed burning fuses between all their fingers. But being obstinate they would no more confess. So upon due consideration we resolved with the entire Council and consent of the Common Hands, to place these men apart on one of the northernmost islands.”
Marooning, death by exposure or drowning. That is what the verdict meant.
The youths were rowed across to one of the tiny cays at the north-eastern corner of the island group, about eleven miles away from the wrecked Half-Moon, and set on separate islands. The boat, with an official party of two petty officers, a boatswain and six unnamed seaman, then put about and left them to die.
The place they were left is known today as the Mangrove Islands. Hugh Edwards describes them: “Mere nodules of coral slates and spikey bushes raised four feet above the surrounding reefs. There is no water on them. No food, Deep channels run between islets and if they youths could not swim they would have been prisoners, each on his own rock until they died from sun and thirst, or went mad with despair and flung themselves in the water. In any event, death must have overtaken them within a day or two.”
Van der Graeff does not record in his diary whether the two boys were left any provisions when they were tumbled ashore, nor does he mention any conversation or pleas for mercy.
“In the case of the boys,” Edwards opined, “emphasis was placed, on sentencing them, in the brazen nature of unnatural sexual intercourse in broad daylight. Perhaps it was the flagrant nature of the indiscretion that enraged their shipmates.”
Despite the harsh punishments of the time, homosexual relations aboard ships were well-known.
Edwards notes that Engels previously appeared to be the object of bullying and persecution by some Zeewyk crewmen. He says, “it is interesting to note the modern psychological belief that those who are most condemnatory of sexual deviation are often those who sense the desire for such deviation in themselves.”
Whether out of shame or conscience, the incident is never mentioned again in van der Graeff’s journal, and the islands where the youths were marooned were not noted on the maps.
Edwards describes a sad postscript to the event: “More than a century later, in 1844, one of the party who had gone to the Abrolhos from the recently established Swan River colony to survey for guano and a fishing industry, laid his groundsheet down in darkness on the Mangrove Islands, and after a wretchedly uncomfortable night got up gumbling in the morning to find he had slept on a human skeleton. It may have been the pathetic remains of Adriaen Spoor or Pieter Engels.”
After I finished the chapter I closed the book and thought of those poor boys. How horrible to imagine them left to die, alone, on a barren ledge of rock. Each knew he was going to die, and had several days to think about it, and how they had been abandoned without mercy or pity.
The author, probably unintentionally, had several rich metaphors in his story: two youths, punished for their audacity in having sex in the daylight; each consigned to an island to die alone. Some of their tormentors and judges were men who, while expressing fear of the Lord’s punishment on their society for the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, really wanted the lads dead and gone to kill their fears of homosexual desire and possibly cover their own involvement.
The best, though was the Dutch expression of homosexual sex as “the stupid sin.” It is a stupid sin. It is stupid, how much time is spent on it, obsessing about it, to the point of murder.
Oscar Wilde, whose torrid affair with Lord Alfred Douglas scandalized Britain in the 19th century has won an endorsement from the Vatican. 
In a review of a new study, The Portrait of Oscar Wilde by Italian writer Paolo Gulisano, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said that Wilde was much more than “an aesthete and a lover of the ephemeral.”
“What a surprise!” La Repubblica said. “A homosexual icon has been accepted by the Vatican.” Orazio La Rocca, a Vatican watcher, described the book as a bombshell.
The paper added that Wilde was often celebrated by “the gay world” as an example of an artist persecuted because of his homosexuality. But he was also “a man who behind a mask of amorality asked himself what was just and what was mistaken, what was true and what was false.”
Two years ago, some of Wilde’s best known aphorism were included in a book of witticisms for Christians collated by the Vatican’s head of protocol, Father Leonardo Sapienza. The book includes: “I can resist everything except temptation”, and “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
Hardly orthodox Catholic teaching.
Father Sapienza said that he had devoted the lion’s share of Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity to Wilde because he was a “writer who lived perilously and somewhat scandalously but who has left us with some razor-sharp maxims with a moral.”
Father Sapienza said that he wanted to “stimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles.” “Our role,” said Fr. Sapienza, “is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No. 1 enemy of religion–indifference.”
Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons, but in 1891 he began a relationship with the much younger Lord Alfred Douglas. 
In April 1895, Wilde sued Douglas’ father, the Marquis of Queensberry, for libel, after the Marquis had accused him of being a sodomite. Wilde lost, and after salacious details of his private life were revealed during the trial, was arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor in Reading Gaol. 
The way for Wilde’s rehabilitation by the Vatican was paved six years ago by Jesuit theologian, Father Antonio Spadaro. On the centenary of Wilde’s death, he raised eyebrows by praising the “understanding of God’s love” that followed Wilde’s imprisonment in Reading.
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 to a Protestant family but became attracted to Catholicism at Oxford. In 1877 he made the journey to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Pius IX, but declared: “To go over to Rome would be to sacrifice and give up my two great Gods: Money and Ambition.”
During his time in prison he read the works of St. Augustine, Dante and Newman. When he was released in 1897, with his reputation destroyed and in frail health, he moved to Paris. He was received into the Catholic Church shortly before he died, three years later.
L’Osservatore Romano described the writer’s conversion as a “long and difficult path”…”a path which led him to convert to Catholicism, a religion which, as he remarked in one of his more acute and paradoxical aphorisms, was “for saints and sinners alone–for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.”
Saint Oran, also known as Odhron, Odhran, Odran and Otteran, proceeded Saint Columba as a Christian missionary in Iona. His death is recorded in 548 A.D.
Irish Martyrologies relate that he was a kinsman of St. Columba through their ancestor, Conall Gulban, and that he was variously described as a companion, brother or son of Columba.
It is said he was the first Christian to be buried in the ancient pagan cemetery on Iona. Norsemen carried their dead chieftains to be buried there. It is also the last resting place of 48 kings of Scotland, 4 Irish princes, 8 Norwegian kings, a king of France and many great Highland chiefs. Both Duncan and Macbeth, of Shakespeare’s Macbeth fame, are buried there.
The Vikings chose St. Oran, the titular guardian of their ancestors’ ashes, as patron of the city of Waterford in 1096 A.D. Later he was chosen as patron of the Diocese.
The legend of St. Oran begins with a chapel Saint Columba (also known as Colum Cille) wanted to build close to this sacred burial site. He was frustrated in his attempts to build, since the walls were destroyed every night. Finally, he was told by a voice that it could never be finished until a living man was buried in the foundation. So Oran was buried alive willingly, and the chapel was finished. He was promised that his soul will be safe in heaven. Some time after the burial Columba wants to see Oran once more and opens the pit under the chapel. When Oran sees the world he tries to come out again, but Columba has the pit covered with early quickly to save Oran’s soul from the world and its sin. 
But the legend has several versions.
Here is a 19th century Herbridean version of Colum Cille and St. Oran by Mrs. M. Macleod Banks: “The story of St. Columba and the burial of St. Oran under the wall of the church in Iona is well known, and frequently quoted as an instance in the belief in the efficacy of Foundation Sacrifice. It is notably absent in Adamnan’s Life, and it is an ugly tale, but it is recorded by Skene and given in many collections of saints’ legends.”
“I will first quote a version fairly popular in Scotland, collected by Dr. Maclagan at Clachan, Kintyre, in 1894, as follows: Saint Columba had a son whose name was Odhran (Oran), from whom the chapel of St. Odhran has taken its name; tradition says that, when this chapel was in the course of erection, no matter what they would do or how well the work was done, every morning all that had been built the previous day was found thrown down.”
“At last a voice came to St. Columba, telling him the only way to get the chapel completed was to bury a living man under its foundation; without that, the voice said, the chapel could never be finished. Columba decided that no one could be better put under the foundation than his own son, and accordingly got him buried at once and proceeded to build on top.”
“One day, however, Odhran raised his head, and pushing it through the wall, said, ‘There is no Hell as you suppose, nor Heaven that people talk about.’ This alarmed St. Columba, and in case Odhran should communicate more secrets of the other world, he had the body removed at once and buried in consecrated ground, and St. Odhran never again troubled any one.”
In the version recorded by William Sharp (1855-1905), a Scottish poet, author and editor who also wrote under the alias Fiona MacLeod, he noted that St. Columba’s biographer, Adamnan, “never mentions the episode, nor even the name of Oran, nor is there mention of him in the book by Colum’s intimate friend and successor, Baithene, which Adamnan practically incorporated. On the other hand, the Oran legend is certainly very old. The best modern rendering we have of it is that of Mr. Whitley Stokes in his Three Middle-Irish Homilies, and readers of Dr. Skene’s valuable Celtic Scotland recollect the translation there redacted.”
“The episode occurs first in an ancient Irish life of St. Columba. The legend, which has crystallised into a popular saying, ‘Uir, Uir, air suil Odhrain! mun labhair e tuille comhraidh” – Earth, earth on Oran’s eyes, lest he further blab” – avers that three days after the monk Oran or Odran was emtombed alive (some say in the earth, some say in a cavity), Colum opened the grave, to look once more on the face of the dead brother, when to the amazed fear of the monks and the bitter anger of the abbot himself, Oran opened his eyes and exclaimed, “There is no such great wonder in death, nor is Hell or Heaven what it has been described.” (Ifrinn, or Ifurin–the word used–is Gaelic Hell, the Land of Eternal Cold.)
“At this, Colum straightaway cried the now famous Gaelic words, and then covered up poor Oran again lest he should blab further of that uncertain world whither he was supposed to have gone. In the version of Mr. Whitley Stokes there is no mention of Odran’s grave having been uncovered after his entombment. But what is strangely suggestive is that both in the oral legend and in that early monkish chronicle alluded to, Columba is representing as either suggesting or accepting immolation of a living victim to consecrate the church he intended to build.”
“One story is that he received a divine intimation to the effect that a monk of his company must be buried alive, and that Odran offered himself. In the earliest known rendering, “Colum Cille said to his people: ‘It is well for us that our roots should go underground here’; and he said to them, ‘It is permitted to you that some one of you go under the earth of this island to consecrate it.’ Odran rose up readily, and thus he said: ‘If thou wouldst accept me,’ he said, “I am ready for that.’…Odran then went to heaven.”
A modern version relates the tale this way: There is an old tradition that when St. Columba attempted to build a chapel for the worship of the Christian God, their work was impeded by an evil spirit, and it was not until the human victim was sacrificed and buried under the foundation that the building stood firm.
St. Oran, a faithful follower of St. Columba, consented to be buried alive in order to propitiate certain demons of the soil, who interfered with the attempts of St. Columba to erect a chapel. After three days, so it is related, Columba ordered the body of his friend to be disinterred, when Oran to the consternation and dismay of the assistants, declared that there was neither a God, a judgement or a hereafter. Oran ended his story with a bit of cautionary advice for his friend, Columba. Oran whispered, “The way you think it is may not be the way it is at all.” St. Columba, for fear of other and more direful revelations, ordered the earth to be once more shoveled over Oran.
In the Hebrides and Ireland, when someone mentions an uncomfortable subject, it is still common to silence them with the phrase, “Thow mud in the mouth of St. Oran.”
His feast day is October 27th.
The moral of this story is the same 15 centuries later. If even the most devoted follower of the faith reveals a revelation not in support of the preached version they are quickly silenced. And saints have their ugly or suspect actions edited out of their official biographies. 
What makes a Catholic, a Catholic?
Some people believe an “authentic” Catholic is one who is totally anti-abortion.
Others believe a Catholic identity is found in our social teaching, with its emphasis on justice for the poor, the marginalized, the earth and all creation.
Various Catholic spiritual practices are experiencing a revival: retreats, saying the rosary, fasting and abstinence, parish fish frys during Lent, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, examination of conscience, following the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and more.
Will venerating the body parts of saints and martyrs make a revival? For centuries a normal part of Catholic life was to revere and make pilgrimages to sacred places holding a skull, vial of blood, finger bones, toe nails or a hank of hair of a long-dead person believe holds a special place in Heaven.
Our holy dead.
This past Sunday was the Feast of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests.
Pope Benedict XVI has declared a “Year for Priests” beginning with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 19, 2009. The year will conclude in Rome with an international gathering of priests with the Holy Father on June 19, 2010.
The Pope has declared St. John Vianney the Universal Patron of Priests on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé d’Ars.
The Holy Father isn’t a stranger to St. John Vianney. The book, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead, relates that when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he sequestered himself in his apartment with the heart of Saint Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, patron saint of priests.
Three years ago in 2006 the heart of St. John Vianney traveled from France to Cure of Ars Church in Merrick, NY. More than 5,000 people visited from October 7-9 to pray before his heart, and the pastor expected thousands more before the heart left for a stop in Boston on its way back to France.
The heart and Vianney’s chalice was placed at the front of the altar. People could walk by the relics and pray, or see it during Mass. 
In life, St. John Vianney was a revered 19th-century French clergyman who was said to be blessed with the ability to read the hearts of worshippers. He was widely known to Catholics as the Cure (parish priest) of Ars. He won over the hearts of his villagers by visiting with them, teaching them about God and reconciling people to the Lord in the confessional. It was said he heard confessions 16-18 hours a day. He died in 1859.
When his body was exhumed in 1904 because of his pending beatification, it was found intact.
Fr. Charles Mangano of Cure of Ars Church said there’s a long-standing tradition in the Catholic Church of venerating relics such as the heart of Vianney. But for the uninitiated, he said, think of Elvis Presley.
“People get on eBay and they’ll try to get belongings or artifacts from like Elvis Presley, like people that they idolized, they admired,” the pastor explained. “Because having something of that person, you know, makes you feel close to them.”
He said for Catholics, “having a relic in our presence, it inspires us because this relic is from the body of a person whose body and soul was for God.”
Venerating the remains of saints and martyrs goes back to the earliest days of the Catholic church, said the Rev. Jean-Paul Ruiz, a professor of theology at St. John’s University.
“When we venerate the relics of saints, it puts us in touch with those persons who we believe are still alive beyond the death of their bodies.”
Fr. Mangano said he first saw the heart last year while on a retreat to Ars–inspired because he is a pastor of s church that honors Vianney.
“It’s an actual heart, 3-D, not in any kind of gel or formaldehyde,” he said. “It’s brownish color. When you get really close to it, the center is still pinkish-red. Everything else around it is all like browned with age.”
Some of the people who stood in long lines to see the heart described an overwhelming need to see a real miracle. Others said it was a historic moment. And still others–many seminarians and priests–came to thank the Cure of Ars, patron saint of parish priests, for answering prayers during times they struggled with their vocation or ministry.
“I came here to see a miracle,” said Laura Musto, 46, of St. Mary of the Isle Church in Long Beach, referring to the heart. “And we need miracles in today’s world.”
“I came to see the heart of a saint,” said Maria Gilmore, 82, of Sacred Heart Church in North Merrick. “I thought everyone turned to dust but I guess not.”
“We came here on a mini-pilgrimage to be close to his heart, to have a moment of intimacy with the saint,” said Charlie Gallagher, 23, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington who was joined by two classmates, Ted Hegnsuer and Rick Nichols.
“This relic represents who St. John Vianney was and who we aspire to be. When I kneel before the heart, I will ask St. John Vianney to replace my heart with his heart so I can emulate him,” Gallagher told The Long Island Catholic, the newspaper of the Rockeville Centre Diocese.
But when I saw the a picture of the heart in a newspaper, it reminded me of a bear’s heart I saw in the refrigerator of an Indian family member in Alaska. Like most of the people in the village they mostly lived off the land in the traditional ways and and killed a bear for food. The heart was there in case anyone was hungry and wanted a snack.The Vianney relic looked just like the cold, cooked heart on white plate.
I didn’t go see the heart, even though I live about 45 minutes away from Merrick.
I was more morbidly curious to see a mummified heart than faith-filled, so out of respect I passed. Maybe if it was another body part, like a finger bone, I could have coped. Or, if I went with other people I knew I could justify the visit like a modern day Canterbury Tales pilgrimage. We could have all shared our stories of faith and doubt and sin en route.
But I didn’t know any Catholic who wouldn’t have given a “Huh?” response at the offer to go see a saint’s heart on the middle of Long Island.
