Ad Limina

On Wednesday afternoon the Beda hosted the Bishops of England and Wales, serving a mass for them at Saint Paul's Basilica as part of the Bishops Ad Limina visit to the Holy Sea. The Ad Limina is a duty performed by the Bishops every five years to inform the Vatican of each and every aspect of Catholic life in a particular country. The vatican can then offer aid and support as and where it is needed.

The mass at St Pauls was a wonderful affair, which began with a procession of about 40 Bishops and Archbishops who were joined by the Abbot of St Pauls Benedictinde community and faculty members of the Beda. The principle celebrant was the newly installed Archbishop of Birmingham Bernard Longley, with Archbishop Vincent Nicols, and Monsignor Roderick Strange, Rector of the Beda, Concelbrating. The Bishops party included four Southwark men, the three auxillary Bishops, Hine, Lynch and Hendricks and the Bishops to Britain's armed forces, Richard Moth. After the mass the Bishops were invited to the Beda for lunch.

After

Papal Vespers

Today I am attending Papal vespers at St Paul's Basilica outside the walls, which is my Parish Church. The event is held for two reasons, firstly to commerate the feast day of the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus, and secondly as the final event of eight days of prayer for Christian unity. The event will be attended by about 5000 people, I hope I can get a seat near the front.

St pauls Basilica is a lovely building, being cared for by a community of Benedictine monks for a bout a thousand years. It was rebuilt in 1852 after a fire and has paintings of every Pope around its walls. The myth being that when they run out of space, God will come again. Luckily they have alot more space. More so anyway then will be available this afternoon at Papal Vespers I am sure.

Christian Unity

On Wednesday we started our week of activity and prayer for Christain unity with a mass at Saint Pauls Basilica. The mass which included Vespers was celebrated by the community of the Beda but we were joined by 3 Bishops, the Bishops of Leeds, Middlesborough and Lancaster and the Benedictine community of St Paul's. The mass was said in Italian and was a very solemn affair, and was very much in the mood that the week is trying to promote.

We are all followers of one Lord, one God, and though we may have differances in Theology and practice, we are on the same side. Surely the differances can and must be sorted out so that God's love can reign supreme in this World which so desperatly needs it.

Exams

The end of term exams now loom large on the horizon and it is time for revision and swotting up. We have exams in Theology, Human development, Moral Theology, Early Church History, Pastoral Theology, Latin, Spirituality, Liturgy and Philosophy. The exams are 10 min orals, which I am very pleased about, but some are dreading them. The marking is done Roman style being out of 10. Anything higher then 9.6 being a first class honours degree and between 9 and 9.5 being a 2.1

As well as the exams, we doing 3 essays a semester, of 2500 words each, which are marked using the same system. I have completed essays this year on The Carmalites, How to train people to learn gropus in a parish praying the Liturgy of the Hours and on JustinMartyr, who was a 1st Century Catholic apologist, eventually going to his death under Emperor Marcus Aurelias, becasue he refused to worship the genius of the Emperor, giving his loyalty to a truth that he felt transcended all earthly concerns. Which is abit like how I feel about the exams really, so please remember us in your prayers

Sant'Egidio

I arrived late in Rome Thursday Night, after what was a tremendously difficult journey as you can image. On Friday afternoon I went to help out the Sant'Egidio community serve food to about a 1000 of Rome's homeless people. The community was set up in 1968 and has now expanded to 70 countries around the world. It offers free meals, which were both nutritious and substantial. The homeless that attend, are given bread, fruit, and a choice of starters and main courses. They are also given something to drink and cared for by the volunteers that help out. The volunteers come from many of the convents and Seminaries in Rome. Four attending each week from the Beda.

The community was visited on Christmas eve, by the Pope who ate there before going to celebrate midnight mass at Saint Peters. A mass in which he was, famously, attacked and in which the French Cardinal's hip was broken. His visit however was still talked about by those at the Sant'Egidio community

Tre Fontana

Connected with and belonging to the monastery of Tre fontana are three separate churches. The first, the Church of St. Paul of Three Fountains, was raised over the spot where St. Paul was beheaded by order of Emperor Nero. Legend says that the head, once severed from the body, bounced, striking the earth in three different places from which fountains sprang up, which flow to the present day and are located within the sanctuary itself.
The second, originally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title "Our Lady of Martyrs", is built over the relics of Saint Zeno and his 10,203 legionaries, who were martyred here at the order of Diocletian in 299. In this church is the altar "Scala Coeli" ("ladder to heaven"), from which the church receives its present name. Finally there are the church and monastery dedicated to Saints Vincent and Anastasius, built by Pope Honorius I in 626 and given to the Benedictines, who were to care for the two older sanctuaries, as well as their own church.
Towards the middle of the seventh century the persecutions inflicted on the Eastern monks by the Monothelites obliged many of them to seek shelter in Rome, and this abbey was committed to them as a refuge.
The abbey was richly endowed, particularly by Charlemagne, who bestowed on it Orbetello and eleven other towns with a considerable territory, over which its abbot exercises ordinary jurisdiction (abbatia nullius).
In the tenth century it was given to the Cluniacs. In 1140 Pope Innocent II withdrew the abbey from them, and entrusted it to St. Bernard, who sent there a Cistercian colony from Clairvaux, with Peter Bernard of Paganelli as their abbot, who five years later became Pope Eugene III.
At the time Innocent granted the monastery to the Cistercians, he had the church repaired and the monastic quarters rebuilt according to the usages of the order. Of the fourteen regular abbots who actually governed the abbey, several besides Blessed Eugene III became cardinals, legates, or bishops. Pope Honorius III again restored the Church of Saints Vincent and Anastasius and personally consecrated it in 1221, seven cardinals at the same time consecrating the seven altars therein.
Cardinal Branda da Castiglione became the first commendatory abbot in 1419, and after him this office was often filled by a cardinal. Future popes Clement VII and Clement VIII as cardinals held this position. Pope Leo X authorized the religious in 1519 to elect their own regular superior, a claustral prior independent of the commendatory abbot, who from this time forward was always to be a cardinal. From 1625, when the abbey was affiliated to the Cistercian Congregation of St. Bernard in Tuscany, until its suppression at the Napoleonic invasion in 1812, the local superior was a regular abbot, but without prejudice to the commendatory abbot. The best known of this series of regular abbots was the second, Dom Ferdinand Ughelli, who was one of the foremost literary men of his age, the author of "Italia Sacra" and numerous other works.
From 1812 the sanctuaries were deserted, until Leo XII removed them from the nominal care of the Cistercians in 1826, and transferred them to the Friars Minor of the Strict Observance. The purpose of the pontiff was however not accomplished: the surroundings were so unhealthy that no community could live there.
In 1867 Pius IX appointed as commendatory abbot of Tre Fontane his cousin Cardinal Milesi-Ferretti, who endeavored to restore the material desolation that reigned in the neglected sanctuaries. To this end he obtained that their care be again committed to the Cistercians. A community was sent there in 1868 from La Grande Trappe to institute the regular life and to try to improve the healthiness the lands, which from long neglect had been called the tomba (graveyard) of the Roman Campagna.
When the Papal States were inglobated in the Italian kingdom in 1870, the friars remained at Tre Fontane, at first renting and later (1886) definitively purchasing it from the Government, with an additional tract of 1,234 acres. They inaugurated modern methods for the elimination of the malarial conditions that had been such an obstacle to health in the past, especially by planting a large number of eucalyptus and other trees, an experiment insisted upon by the government in the contract of sale. The trial proved a success, so that the vicinity became nearly as healthful as Rome itself.

Karl Popper

Most of the reasons people find to question, or even refuse, to believe the claims of religion stem from the research and beliefs of Karl Popper. Though they often wouldn't know it. Popper believed that life was about finding out about life and that we went through a process of verification. This process started in the scientific world and has now spread out into every avenue of human society. Many say that they will only believe what we can see and what we can prove. Popper called this Critical Rationalism. However he stated that we go through a process of falsification. What we know today to be true, could be proved to be false or wrong tomorrow when new information is discovered. For example we all believed once that the world was flat, then round, now scientists say it is eliptical in shape. He called this falsification. This attitude is predominant in western culture. Popper said that this was an absolute.

However in saying that it was an absolute he contradicts his own theory, hence the problem. Science is not an exact science and will always leave us with a gap in our knowledge. The mind however, despite all this still knows that it can know. That there is an ultimate truth and,logically, that truth is God. It may take scientist a while however, to realise that they are going down a cul de sac in thought, while the world waits to realise that there is more to life then what we can prove and see. That what is more is a power and a reality that loves and nutures them. One that they ignore whilst they wait for him to prove himself, and one whose gifts they squander whilst wondering even if he exists.