Quick greetings from Lublin

Just a quick Hello from the main hall of the Catholic University of Lublin where I have been speaking to a fine group of students. Off to visit the class where Karol Wojtyla taught.

More soon from Poland with photos.

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Saint Agatha - a saint for today

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St Agatha, from Catania in Sicily, was martyred in 251 during the brief but ferocious persecution of Decius. At that time, everyone was ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods by a certain day determined by the local authorities. When you had done so, you got a certificate (a libellus ). Some Christians were able to bribe an official or knew someone who could get a libellus – they were referred to as libellatici and were considered as having betrayed the faith; though not as seriously as those who had offered sacrifice to the Roman gods. St Agatha’s martyrdom is a classic example of the combination of two virtues, chastity and fortitude even in the face of torture and death. The Virgin Martyrs are sometimes despised in the world today by those who are particularly outraged by chastity and the readiness to quit this earthly life for heaven. St Agatha’s passion began when she rejected the amorous advances of a prefect Quintianus. He gave her to Aphrodisia, the keeper of a brothel wh...
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Text of the new ICEL translation

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1962 Missal pdf online

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St Irenaeus: not a psychobabble practitioner

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Window of St Irenaeus by Lucien Bégule (1901) The single most celebrated quotation from St Irenaeus, the apostolic Father who lived from about 130 to about 202AD is “ Gloria Dei vivens homo .” ( Adversus Haereses 20-1-7) As my old patristics teacher, Father Antonio Orbe once said as politely as he could to a student who wanted to study the dictum for his dissertation: “This phrase is very often cited, but always wrongly understood.” Not a statement of self-actualising psychobabble The venerable professor said this because the much-quoted statement used to be widely misused to enlist St Irenaeus as a supporter of the personalist psychology of the 1970s. In this context, it would usually be quoted as “The glory of God is man fully alive” by which is meant man fully self-actualised, replete with “healthy” self-esteem. You could find this misinterpretation of St Irenaeus in books written by priest psychologists, in pastoral letters, and in sermons. I have sadly even seen it filt...
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She shall crush thy head

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A commenter says (of St Jerome's translation of Genesis 3.15) "That is not what the lectionary says." I am sure he/she is right, whichever lectionary is used. In fact, the Nova Vulgata , the Church's new official translation of the Bible in Latin, translates the Hebrew with the neuter ipsum . Here is the (old) Vulgate text again for the sake of reference: Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. (I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.) The word ipsa translates an epicene Hebrew personal pronoun: one that has only one form to denote either male or female. It can legitimately be translated either as "he", "she", or "it." In one place, St Jerome quoted the Vetus Latina version which gives ipse . (Lib. Quaest. Heb. in Gen. PL 23.943) and this has been t...
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