Defilippis, founder of Saint Luke Productions and author of the script, incorporates many of the same elements that were so effective in the stage version of his one-man-show about St. Maximilian Kolbe in 1995:  a minimalist set consisting of fabric-covered panels, boxes and scrims;  a boisterous prologue painting a historical backdrop for the saint’s life;  a series of short vignettes distinguished by quick changes of lighting, with projections, music, and audio segments adding a further dimension;  and a heightening of the dramatic tension through the appearance of the Devil in a speaking part.

The new production is greatly enhanced by the sparing but striking use of a flat-screen television suspended over center stage.  This allows the introduction of a virtual cast of dozens:  seminary administrators debating what to do with the hapless, over-aged and underachieving seminarian;  crowds of uncomprehending villagers reacting to the arrival of the earnest new priest in Ars;  Vianney’s collaborator in founding an orphanage, Catherine Lassagne (Lindsay Younce, star of Thérèse), narrates occasionally; and there are even apparitions of St. Philomena (little Lucy Defilippis), the young Roman virgin and martyr on whose intercession the Curé relied.  Authentic costumes and evocative masks create a vivid sense of early and mid-nineteenth-century France.

After the recorded musical overture by composer Randall DeBruyn, with swirling, supernatural imagery onscreen, I wondered how a former Shakespearean actor was going to manage in that interactive museum.  There were, in fact, initial rough spots as Defilippis tried to adjust to the basketball-court acoustics but then had to hurry to keep up with the digitized dialogue.  Furthermore the actor uses slightly exaggerated vowels and intonation to suggest a French accent, presenting another challenge for the listeners.  But once the pace was set and the audience grew accustomed to Vianney’s voice, the drama became intensely interesting and the two-plus hours passed quickly.

The wealth of incident in the life of the Curé of Ars and the formidable challenges that he faced in his priestly ministry make for dramatic variety, which is seasoned by samples of his forthright peasant humor.  After a while it doesn’t matter whether the actor onstage is conversing with someone onscreen or with a voice on the audio track.  The spectator’s imagination is engaged, and it almost seems as if he is reading a storybook illustrated with an occasional engraving.

That book would be the classic biography of St. John Vianney by Abbé François Trochu, which the script follows selectively but closely.  This means that practically all of the incidents portrayed are factual; many of them were taken directly from testimony given during the canonization process.  When Vianney puts on his biretta and preaches, we hear excerpts from actual sermons.

Literary critics have often observed that in Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, the Devil “gets all the good lines”.  In Vianney he gets some very scary ones, but the real dramatic high points come when the humble Curé celebrates sacraments:  when he elevates the host at his first Mass or sits in the box and listens to a series of one-sentence confessions made by actors whose shadowy faces file past slowly in a montage.

I repeat:  Vianney is an extraordinary work of art.  It is a well-crafted work in which the whole Defilippis family collaborated.  It is a drama that can be appreciated by adults and youngsters alike (judging from the comments of several schoolchildren who saw the play and were interviewed afterward for the diocesan newspaper).  At the performance this reviewer attended, the audience of around two hundred included one auxiliary bishop and a dozen or more priests.  The play received a standing ovation.

The drama Vianney unforgettably depicts the trials and triumphs of a true pastor of souls.  In doing so it recalls the reasons why the Holy Father declared a Year of the Priest.  Anyone who sees it will be inspired to start praying, or to pray more fervently, for priests and seminarians.  The stage production is well worthwhile and highly recommended.

A schedule of the tour is can be found at www.stlukeproductions.com.

[This article originally appeared in The Wanderer (www.thewandererpress.com) and is used by permission of the author.]

Defilippis, founder of Saint Luke Productions and author of the script, incorporates many of the same elements that were so effective in the stage version of his one-man-show about St. Maximilian Kolbe in 1995:  a minimalist set consisting of fabric-covered panels, boxes and scrims;  a boisterous prologue painting a historical backdrop for the saint’s life;  a series of short vignettes distinguished by quick changes of lighting, with projections, music, and audio segments adding a further dimension;  and a heightening of the dramatic tension through the appearance of the Devil in a speaking part.

The new production is greatly enhanced by the sparing but striking use of a flat-screen television suspended over center stage.  This allows the introduction of a virtual cast of dozens:  seminary administrators debating what to do with the hapless, over-aged and underachieving seminarian;  crowds of uncomprehending villagers reacting to the arrival of the earnest new priest in Ars;  Vianney’s collaborator in founding an orphanage, Catherine Lassagne (Lindsay Younce, star of Thérèse), narrates occasionally; and there are even apparitions of St. Philomena (little Lucy Defilippis), the young Roman virgin and martyr on whose intercession the Curé relied.  Authentic costumes and evocative masks create a vivid sense of early and mid-nineteenth-century France.

After the recorded musical overture by composer Randall DeBruyn, with swirling, supernatural imagery onscreen, I wondered how a former Shakespearean actor was going to manage in that interactive museum.  There were, in fact, initial rough spots as Defilippis tried to adjust to the basketball-court acoustics but then had to hurry to keep up with the digitized dialogue.  Furthermore the actor uses slightly exaggerated vowels and intonation to suggest a French accent, presenting another challenge for the listeners.  But once the pace was set and the audience grew accustomed to Vianney’s voice, the drama became intensely interesting and the two-plus hours passed quickly.

The wealth of incident in the life of the Curé of Ars and the formidable challenges that he faced in his priestly ministry make for dramatic variety, which is seasoned by samples of his forthright peasant humor.  After a while it doesn’t matter whether the actor onstage is conversing with someone onscreen or with a voice on the audio track.  The spectator’s imagination is engaged, and it almost seems as if he is reading a storybook illustrated with an occasional engraving.

That book would be the classic biography of St. John Vianney by Abbé François Trochu, which the script follows selectively but closely.  This means that practically all of the incidents portrayed are factual;  many of them were taken directly from testimony given during the canonization process.  When Vianney puts on his biretta and preaches, we hear excerpts from actual sermons.

Literary critics have often observed that in Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, the Devil “gets all the good lines”.  In Vianney he gets some very scary ones, but the real dramatic high points come when the humble Curé celebrates sacraments:  when he elevates the host at his first Mass or sits in the box and listens to a series of one-sentence confessions made by actors whose shadowy faces file past slowly in a montage.

I repeat:  Vianney is an extraordinary work of art.  It is a well-crafted work in which the whole Defilippis family collaborated.  It is a drama that can be appreciated by adults and youngsters alike (judging from the comments of several schoolchildren who saw the play and were interviewed afterward for the diocesan newspaper).  At the performance this reviewer attended, the audience of around two hundred included one auxiliary bishop and a dozen or more priests.  The play received a standing ovation.

The drama Vianney unforgettably depicts the trials and triumphs of a true pastor of souls.  In doing so it recalls the reasons why the Holy Father declared a Year of the Priest.  Anyone who sees it will be inspired to start praying, or to pray more fervently, for priests and seminarians.  The stage production is well worthwhile and highly recommended.

(This review was previously published in The Wanderer and is used by permission of the author.)

But years ago Father Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, published an essay applying the historical-critical method to the question of the Nativity story. (The essay is reprinted without cumbersome footnotes in Light and Shadows: Church History Amid Faith, Fact, and Legend [Ignatius].) He found that an unbiased examination of the historical evidence for the Nativity does not undermine, but corroborates, Christian Tradition.

Brandmüller cites the Anglican scholar J.A.T. Robinson, whose 1976 study Redating the New Testament challenged the 19th-century "scientific" consensus that the Gospels were written after 70 A.D. The late dating conveniently gave Scripture scholars maximum latitude for their speculations. Robinson points out that the Acts of the Apostles (the sequel to Luke) do not mention the deaths of Peter and Paul (circa 67) or the Roman-Judean war, which started in 66. Based on a careful evaluation of both internal and external evidence, he concludes that all four Gospels were written before 70 A.D.

Brandmüller comments: "The fact that the Gospels not only are based on eyewitness and hearsay reports but also were written for contemporaries made it impossible to include fictional accounts, which could have been exposed at any time as untrue by contemporaries who were still living."

He then presents the documentary and monumental evidence for the census of Caesar Augustus and the archaeological traces of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. "The mere fact that Emperor Hadrian found it necessary to replace the most popular Christian shrines with pagan temples so as to eradicate all thoughts of Christian salvation history-he even had a grove in honor of Adonis planted over the Grotto of the Nativity-shows that the memory of Jesus’ birth was very much alive at the beginning of the second century." Relying on the local tradition, Emperor Constantine had a church built over the grotto in the fourth century. "The Church of the Nativity is still standing there today."

The birth of Christ is anchored in time and space at least as securely as most other events in antiquity. Nevertheless, many people still balk at the story of the Magi and the Star. Over the centuries Christian writers have produced a bewildering array of explanations, many of them extremely fanciful. But they do not discredit the Gospel account any more than antiquated theories about crystalline spheres and interstellar ether disprove Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

To help sift through the interpretations of the Magi and the Star, let’s consult the commentary on the Gospel of Matthew by Cornelius à Lapide, S.J. (1567-1637), a Scripture scholar who taught and wrote in Rome. His encyclopedic work compiles opinions and excerpts from patristic, medieval, and contemporary commentators.

Who were the Magi? Father à Lapide notes that magi "is a common word among the Persians…meaning philosophers. The word seems to be Hebrew in origin…. The Chaldeans, following the Hebrews, were accustomed to call their philosophers Magi, according to Saint Jerome." Pliny and Tertullian also testify that Near Eastern peoples generally applied the name magi to their wise men and astrologers. (Therefore, when Matthew writes magi he does not necessarily refer to the hereditary Zoroastrian priesthood.)

What was their country of origin? Some Church Fathers "think that they came from Persia…. But the distance would seem too great…. Others [Jerome included] with more probability think that the Magi were Chaldeans…because [they] were addicted to astrology." Chaldea (Babylonia) was located along the Euphrates River, in the eastern third of the Fertile Crescent. À Lapide, however, deems it most probable that they were eastern Arabians. He cites Psalm 71[72]:10 in the Vulgate, "the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts," and Pliny’s observation, "Nowhere is there frankincense except in Arabia."

But the arguments for Arabia are weak. Trade routes crisscrossed the ancient Near East, and frankincense (like champagne) can be selected as a gift regardless of one’s nationality. In many translations Psalm 72:10 is a generic prayer for prosperity, not a prophecy. It is "fulfilled" in Matthew 2 only if you assume what à Lapide is trying to prove.

Jerome’s opinion is weighty because he was a multilingual scholar who worked in Rome and Bethlehem. Moreover, the Chaldeans had been keeping astronomical almanacs for centuries before the birth of Christ.

What was the Star? À Lapide’s commentary lists the possibilities: a comet, "certain signs in the stars," the Holy Ghost in visible form (as at Christ’s baptism), an angel, a nova, or "a new meteor formed by the angels out of air, and filled with an immense light…like the pillar of fire and cloud which guided the Hebrews through the desert." In advocating the last-mentioned hypothesis, à Lapide relies on an Old Testament parallel instead of examining the text of Matthew’s Gospel.

The Magi were "from the east" (Matt. 2:1), a plural expression in Greek: literally, "from the eastern parts." But when they say, "We have seen his star in the east" (v. 2), this expression is singular. In both Greek and Latin its primary meaning is "in the ascent" or "at its rising." This is technical astronomical language. It’s time to consult the astronomers.

Again, there are many theories about the Star of Bethlehem. Here are three of the most recent.

Michael R. Molnar, citing Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos , argues that the constellation Aries governed the Herodian monarchy in Judea, and on April 17, 6 B.C., Jupiter rose "in the east" in that sign of the zodiac, along with the sun and Venus. Unfortunately, Ptolemy’s astrological work was written a century later than the Gospels.

Frederick A. Larson, an Evangelical Christian lawyer and founder of The STAR Project , has synthesized astronomical findings, historical records, and scriptural allusions in an impressive video presentation that can be accessed online. He helpfully rules out several celestial objects: comets don’t rise; the nova recorded in 5 B.C. by Chinese observers would have been visible in Jerusalem, too, whereas Herod had to inquire about the time of the star’s appearance.

Larson identifies the Star of Bethlehem with conjunctions of Jupiter and Venus in the constellation Leo as an intensified "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" in 3 and 2 B.C., respectively. Between those two events, as Jupiter traveled across the night sky, its retrograde wobble made it appear to pass Regulus ("ruler"), the brightest star in Leo, three times back and forth. "The Planet of Kings dance[d] out a halo above the Star of Kings."

As spectacular as these coincidences are, when viewed with astronomy software, they are historically implausible. Pagan astronomers would not have associated Leo with "the lion of Judah" (Gen. 49:9). Even the expert Chaldeans charted the movements of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn only, since the proximity of Venus to the sun made methodical observations too difficult and imprecise.

Without computer simulations or sextants, the Magi could only observe the reappearance of a planet in the eastern sky, note its "stationary points" and its setting in the evening, record the dates, and then count the days between recurring events. Larson’s theory is just too sophisticated for their methods. It fails by a criterion that he does not mention: the Star of Bethlehem had to be predictable in order to be astrologically significant.

The late Austrian astronomer Konradin Ferrari d’Occhieppo collected and published much new evidence for the planetary conjunction hypothesis. The theory that the Star of Bethlehem was a foreseeable conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn goes way back: it is found in the writings of the medieval polymath Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly and the 17th-century astronomer Kepler (although they looked for it in the wrong years).

Ferrari studied the Babylonian calendar tablets for the year 7/6 B.C. At least four different original copies still exist-implying unusual interest in the celestial phenomena that they predicted: Jupiter and Saturn were to rise in the east on the same evening, September 15, 7 B.C., and have a triple conjunction in the sign of Pisces. "There is no doubt that the Babylonian astronomers of that time, from their knowledge of long planetary cycles, had a full understanding of the extraordinary rarity of the circumstances of that configuration."

The Magi could have reasoned astrologically as follows: Jupiter was the planet of their highest deity, Marduk. From the eighth century B.C. onward Saturn was associated with the Jews, and central Pisces with Palestine. The appearance of the star thus signified the birth of a Messianic King in the West, about whom the Babylonians, too, had speculated for ages.

This would have been sufficient reason for the Magi to journey to Jerusalem, without any visual guidance. When Herod’s scribes told them to travel five miles to Bethlehem, they set out due south along the main road at dusk. Directly ahead of them Jupiter (with Saturn) shone brilliantly in the southern sky, standing at the top of the cone of zodiacal light (an oval haze caused by sunlight reflected from interplanetary dust). For three hours Bethlehem’s skyline was silhouetted against that glow, which appeared to pour down from "the star." "And behold the star…went before them, until it came and stood over where the child was."

Brandmüller recalls that the Old Syrian version of Matthew’s Gospel translates "star" with the usual name for Jupiter. "And seeing the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."

Magi or astrologers from the East are well documented figures in ancient history. There are several plausible astronomical candidates for the Star of Bethlehem. If you accept the planetary conjunction hypothesis elaborated by Ferrari d’Occhieppo, then cuneiform tablets recording data calculated years in advance confirm the Matthean account in minute detail.

The venerable Greek liturgy testifies to the importance of this event in the early Church. In an oft-repeated hymn, the Troparion for Christmas, the faithful sing: "Your Nativity, O Christ our God, has shown to the world the light of wisdom; for by it, those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to adore You, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know You, the Orient [Rising] from on high. O Lord, glory be to You."

[This article originally appeared in Catholic World Report and is used by permission of the author.]

Christians in China is a treasure trove of Church history lovingly compiled by a French priest who spent thirty years in East Asia and is now the director of the China Service of the Paris Foreign Missions.  The author has made an effort, not just to chronicle missionary work, but to describe the dramatic encounter between the European and Chinese cultures.  He does this admirably in thirty chapters, divided into five parts. (Christians in China A.D. 600 to 2000. By Jean-Pierre Charbonnier (Ignatius Press, P.O. Box 1339, Fort Collins, CO 80522, 970-221-3920, 2007), 610 pp., PB $24.95.)

I. “Relics from China’s Past” include the earliest monumental and documentary evidence of Christianity in China (e.g. a lengthy inscription on a marble slab, manuscripts on silk).  The Mongol Dynasty established by Khublai Khan in 1279 was somewhat receptive to the Catholic faith, and Pope Nicholas I sent a delegate to China who headed a short-lived Franciscan mission and became Archbishop of Beijing.

II. China was not so easily conquered by Westerners as Mexico.  “The meeting of Catholicism and Confucianism” initiated in 1583 by Matteo Ricci, S.J., was an intellectual dialogue about natural theology, science and technology.  The reader finds memorable portraits of the first Confucian scholars to convert to Christianity and a chapter on Candida Xu, a 17th-century benefactress of the Church in Shanghai.  Jesuits served in the imperial court as astronomers and mathematicians, but dreams of a Chinese Constantine were disappointed.

III. The complex controversy over Chinese rites was decided by Rome in 1704:  Catholic converts were forbidden to burn incense in honor of their ancestors or Confucius.  This caused turmoil in the Catholic missions among the educated, and consequently “The Gospel [was] preached to Poor Peasants in the 18th and 19th centuries.”  This missionary outreach, conducted along more conventional lines, was slower but fruitful;  chapters are dedicated to the phenomenal ministry of an early native priest, to the work of lay catechists and to consecrated virgins.

IV. When China was forcibly opened up to Western trade in 1840, the missions came under a French protectorate backed by the military of several European nations.  Catholic and Protestant communities in China expanded during the colonial period, but the author notes disadvantages as well:  cultural tensions were an obstacle to further evangelization.

V. Under Communism, the Church in China was at first subjugated to the state and then, during the Cultural Revolution, practically destroyed.  Fr. Charbonnier judiciously outlines the respective positions taken by underground Catholics and members of the “Patriotic Church”.  In recent decades, as China has fostered ties with the West, the Church has revived.  Part Five also takes a wider perspective, surveying Christianity in Taiwan and in the Chinese diaspora and examining the effects of Vatican II on Catholic life in China.

Fr. Charbonnier’s book has been translated into crisp British English by M.N.L. Couve de Murville, Archbishop Emeritus of Birmingham, England, who also amplified the early chapters with background information, making the book more accessible to non-specialists.  The volume is illustrated with maps and photographs;  useful appendices include a chronological table, multi-lingual bibliography and index.

This highly readable church history concisely addresses theological, political, ecclesiological and cultural issues as they arise.  In his Conclusion, the author optimistically writes that, despite “centuries of repeated persecutions, … today Christians are fully integrated in their civilization, and they can work for the transformation of society.”

As the title suggests, Thomas was brought up (together with his younger brother, Myers) by his hard-working grandfather: a very early riser, no-nonsense disciplinarian, devout Catholic and American patriot. The boys attended St. Benedict the Moor grammar school in Savannah, where Franciscan nuns taught by word and example that all men are created equal. Young Clarence loved serving Mass and even attended minor seminary.

Though gifted with keen intelligence, he had to work harder than most students to learn standard English, Latin and study skills. He had already learned determination and discipline at home, and so he excelled in academics. His youthful idealism was shaken by painful encounters with racism, and he “lost his vocation” and much of his faith.

Thomas attended college and law school from 1967 to 1974 — turbulent years on American campuses. His interest in the civil rights movement influenced his decision to become a lawyer, and for a while he bought into black radicalism. He became uncomfortable with the practical consequences of liberal policies (e.g. busing students, racial quotas); reading books by Thomas Sowell helped him find the courage to think like a conservative.

After earning his law degree from Yale, Clarence Thomas worked for the attorney general in Missouri, John Danforth, who became a loyal friend and later a U.S. Senator. Through a combination of his outstanding abilities and fortunate career moves, Thomas soon headed the national Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he completely reformed. Yet in those same years he had to deal with divorce, lingering debt, the deaths of several close relatives and a drinking problem.

After a short stint as a judge on the District of Columbia Circuit Court, Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court. His calm yet intensely personal account of the confirmation hearings occupies the last third of the book. Those televised hearings degenerated into a media circus, a thinly-disguised attempt to smear a potentially anti-abortion candidate with racist stereotypes. Thomas famously characterized the proceedings as “a high-tech lynching”. This trial by fire brought him to his knees.

The memoir ends with the ceremony in which Clarence Thomas was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice. Readers interested in his years on the Supreme Court or his subsequent return to the Catholic faith will have to wait for a second volume.

Professional writers helped the author to shape the material for his book, but the “voice” is unmistakably the same one that you hear in Justice Thomas’ recent interview on the EWTN news program. His memoir reveals his profound love and respect for the grandparents who raised him, his powerful intellect and awareness of social inequities, his ability to look back with serenity at the political storms that he has weathered, and even a jovial sense of humor.

In the Preface, the author says that one of his purposes in writing was to set the record straight; “I didn’t want to leave the telling to those with careless hands or malicious hearts.” More importantly, though, Thomas’ book is a tribute to his grandparents and the many other people whose faith, work, sacrifices and good example helped and guided him through the years.

[This review originally appeared in Homiletic and Pastoral Review and is used by permission of the author.]

Baby boomers facing retirement hope for a bullish stock market. My brother and his wife hope to keep their jobs. Joe “the Plumber” hopes to hire an assistant without putting his business into a prohibitively high tax bracket. Can a government borrow billions, however, to tweak an ailing economy without causing more fiscal distortions?

It is a safe bet that most Americans are “pro-hope”. The neo-Marxist German philosopher Ernst Bloch maintained that human beings are hard-wired for hope, which defines how we exist and act in an incomplete world.

The personalist philosopher Gabriel Marcel, in a lecture given in 1942, noted that two elements are always found in hope: “a wish and a certain belief”. Some hopes are so “diluted” as to approach “the point of indifference”; for example, “I hope that James will arrive in time for lunch.” Yet in times of trial, when hope is full strength, it constitutes the “veritable response” of one’s whole being. (Marcel, by then a Catholic, was speaking during World War II in occupied France.) Transcending calculation, hope shares in the mystery of the human person.

Hope, then, is not rhetorical frosting, enthusiasm or a group dynamic. In matters of public policy, we should distinguish the two elements of hope. The “wish” is the object of hope: safer neighborhoods, lower taxes, a cure for diabetes, etc. The “belief” is the conviction, worldview or deeply held value that makes the object appear necessary or desirable.

Not all hopes can be fulfilled in the political arena at public expense. Furthermore fellow citizens hope for conflicting things. The task of politics is to prioritize and to arbitrate among the various objects of hope. This requires prudence and a keen sense of justice. Civility helps: courtesy toward one’s opponents implies respect for their beliefs (even as one argues that other objectives are more urgent or important).

Hope, like love, is noble but easily debased. Marcel observes that some slippage or “degradation” is inevitable.

“To hope in” becomes “to expect from” then “to have due to me”, i.e. “to count on”, and finally “to claim” or “to demand”…. We tend to substitute for an initial relationship, which is both pure and mysterious, subsequent relationships [that are] no doubt more intelligible, but at the same time increasingly deficient.

The object of hope (the “wish”) may remain the same while the kind of hope (the underlying “belief”) is transmogrified. Long-range trends in American society illustrate this: prosperity remains high on the wish list, but patriotism and a sense of civic duty have declined precipitously since the 1960’s, while the attitude of entitlement has proliferated.

Marcel warns that degraded kinds of hope can be more harmful than erroneous objects of hope. The soul is sorely disappointed whenever it presumes to “chain reality down in advance as one binds a debtor with an agreement.” Mistaking hope for a contract alters one’s mentality and diminishes the very capacity to hope.

It is indeed difficult to interpret as hope the idolatry which immense, fascinated masses show for leaders who have previously, by ceaseless propaganda, succeeded in paralyzing not only any critical spirit in their minions, but all true sense of values. All that we can say is that this idolatrous attachment is the miserable substitute… of the hope for which those same multitudes no doubt still have a nostalgic longing in the depths of their hearts.

Ersatz-hope does not empower; it disables genuine civic virtues. The French philosopher blames this phenomenon on the imperfect democratic process.

Democracy — not in principle but in its actual achievements — has perniciously helped to encourage claiming in all its aspects, the demanding of rights, and indeed to bring a mercenary spirit into all human relationships.

This occurs at the expense of “the idea of disinterested service born of fidelity”; the ideal of justice becomes jumbled with the fear that others might take advantage.

In 1984 (!) Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that one of the greatest threats to democracy is “a fanaticism that arises from a disgust with the status quo.” The traditional faith perspective is actually the most realistic.

Christianity… has not set its messianic hopes on the political realm…. From the very beginning it has insisted on leaving politics in the sphere of rationality and ethics…. But ethics alone cannot supply its own rational basis….

The Christian faith awakens the conscience…. It gives practical reason its contents and shows it the way…. The courage to be reasonable, which is the courage to live with imperfection, requires the Christian promise in order to stand its ground.

Americans hope that their elected officials will govern reasonably and responsibly. Let us hope — and pray — that they will allow moral reasoning to have its say.

[Originally published in the March 2009 issue of Catholic World Report. Used by permission of the author.]

So said David Bereit, national campaign director of 40 Days for Life, in a teleconference on December 9, 2008, at which he announced that their fourth nationwide campaign is scheduled to begin on Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2009.

This new form of prayerful, non-confrontational pro-life witness has proven to be very effective, has reenergized grassroots activism and consequently has spread rapidly.

From a Mustard Seed

The 40 Days for Life phenomenon began in 2004 as a local campaign in one town:  College Station, Texas, which is home to Texas A&M University, one of the largest in the United States.  The town and its sister city, Bryan, have a combined population of about 150,000; one third of the residents are college students and a good number of the locals are Hispanics.  Planned Parenthood built an abortion facility there at the cost of over a million dollars.  It opened its doors in 1999 and soon was performing 400 abortions a year.

Bereit admits that 40 Days for Life “was born out of frustration and prayer”.  He and three other staff members of the Coalition for Life, a grassroots pro-life organization that specializes in sidewalk counseling, gathered around a kitchen table to pray for an hour and brainstorm.  They “felt convicted” to do something for a period of forty days, because on many occasions in biblical history God used 40-day time frames to bring about spiritual change.  The group agreed that a project with a definite beginning and end would allow more people to get involved.

The three key elements of 40 Days for Life were all present from the very first campaign:

• asking people of faith to pray and fast for an end to abortion in that locality;
• keeping constant vigil outside the abortion facility over a forty-day period; and
• reaching out to present the pro-life message to the wider community.

Shawn Carney, executive director of the Coalition for Life in College Station and one of the original four planners, explains that they began their outreach program in 2004 by visiting churches and schools that already had some form of pro-life activity.  They met one-on-one with pastors over coffee, told them about the 40 Days for Life project and asked for the support of their congregations.  “Some of the first clergy we ran it by were priests, and they really jumped on board.”

A second component of the community outreach was visiting homes.  Carney, who had sold books door-to-door while living in New Jersey, trained a team of ten volunteers to pound the pavements and respectfully present a pro-life message.  “Most people didn’t even know they had a [Planned Parenthood] clinic in their town.”  The volunteers, who usually traveled in teams of two, explained the 40 Days campaign, invited the people they met to pray for an end to abortion, and told them about their website.

During the Fall of 2004 they contacted 25,000 households, many of which displayed “Kerry for President” signs.  “People are very receptive, even those who clearly don’t agree with you….  Besides going out there and actually praying at the site, there’s no stronger message that you can send to the clinic than to go door to door, because they know that you’re willing to spread your message to every single person who lives in that town.”

For logistical reasons the coordinators decided to avoid student housing.  Instead they obtained an on-campus permit to hand out flyers while tens of thousands of people, including visiting alumni, entered the stadium for home football games.

The first 40 Days for Life campaign produced tremendous results.  It brought more than a thousand people into the local pro-life effort.  At the end of the academic year the number of abortions in that town had dropped by 28%.  Several dozen people got involved in post-abortion healing ministry.  Planned Parenthood was kicked out of the public schools and the municipal chamber of commerce.

Moving Mountains

When the movement immediately spread to the Southeast, without any prompting or input from the original founders in Texas, they decided to take an active part in introducing 40 Days for Life to other localities.  In four years it has compiled an impressive track record.

During the third national campaign last Fall, 76,000 people from 179 localities in 47 states and two Canadian provinces participated; around 2,800 churches were involved.  As a result of the presence of pro-lifers praying outside of abortion facilities, 614 babies and their mothers were spared.  Eight clinic employees quit, one abortion mill went out of business, and there were many reports of post-abortive women who experienced healing.

More often than not the intense focus on prayer and witness over a forty-day period inspires the individuals who participate and galvanizes local pro-life activism.  In some places it has helped to overcome the fragmentation that is inevitable when groups take different approaches in promoting the pro-life cause.  After doing guard duty on the front lines, many pro-lifers seek training to become sidewalk counselors.  Others volunteer or take jobs at pregnancy centers.  A few have even decided to run for political office.

Participating in any phase of 40 Days for Life involves stepping out in faith to resist a widespread, deeply rooted evil.  It takes considerable zeal and a lively sense of solidarity to recruit many, many individuals and congregations to help cover 960 one-hour time slots.  It takes a supernatural perspective to witness to the sanctity of human life by standing silently outside a place where preborn babies are executed for a fee.  It takes moral courage to speak calmly and courteously about abortion after greeting a stranger at his door.

Those who participate in 40 Days for Life sometimes meet with vocal opposition.  Carney, who traveled to 44 cities during the Fall 2008 campaign, says that it is not uncommon for those keeping vigil near an abortion mill to encounter passersby making rude gestures, cursing, or screaming.  “Abortion has hurt so many people, so there’s a lot of pain there.”  Nationwide, however, there were only isolated incidents of potential harm:  objects thrown from moving vehicles, an SUV driven up onto a curb to threaten the demonstrators.  The “persecution” was nowhere near what it could have been—thanks, no doubt, to the constant prayer.

Pro-lifers in urban areas who want to implement the 40 Days for Life program often have security concerns.  Safe and successful round-the-clock vigils have been held in Houston, Texas, outside a Planned Parenthood facility in a rough area of the inner city.  The coordinators took due precautions:  they notified the police in advance and encouraged men to sign up for the hours between dusk and dawn and to bring flashlights and cell phones and cameras.  Members of the local K of C council considered it an honor to “work the Knight shift”.

Bereit noted that around one third of the campaigns in inner-city locations last Fall had 24-hour coverage.  The national organizers recognize, however, that that would not be a prudent approach in some places.  “Local campaigns… can make a better decision about what’s in the best interest of their people and what can be most effective in their community.”  The 40 Days for Life program is flexible:  in some localities participants adapted the schedule and maintained a prayerful presence for twelve hours a day, during the daylight hours or during business hours only.

The national team is always available to share their experience with local coordinators and to support them by their prayers.  During a forty-day campaign they issue daily e-letters with news, developments and inspirational readings.  In mid-November of 2008, they conducted an online survey for those who had just participated in the last campaign, and received over 6,000 responses.  Remarkably, 35% of the respondents (many of them young) said that the recent 40 Days for Life was the first time that they had been active in the pro-life movement.

The results from the survey have helped the national team to improve and streamline their training programs.  Most importantly, it gave them the green light to go ahead with two 40 Days for Life campaigns in 2009.

An Altered Landscape

The wide-ranging comments also confirmed that a shift of seismic proportions is taking place on the pro-life landscape.  As Bereit put it, “We can’t continue to focus effort on some areas as in the past; it just won’t be effective or fruitful….  Local pro-life efforts are more important than ever before.  Not a single abortion is performed in the Supreme Court….  40 Days for Life has taken up a strategic position on the cutting edge of the pro-life movement.”

A recent Planned Parenthood fundraising letter mentions 40 Days by Life by name among the “well-financed enemies of choice”.  Bereit points out that he is one of only three contract workers in a very simple national organization that relies exclusively on donations, spent less than $100,000 on its last nationwide campaign, and has had to raise funds only twice since 2007.

If 40 Days for Life has any clout, it must be due to the power of prayer and fasting.  Those who participate, in the hopes of restoring respect for preborn human life by changing hearts and minds, discover that they change their own first.  The overwhelming majority of respondents to the November 2008 survey reported spiritual growth as a result of their experience.  The supernatural motives and methods of the 40 Days for Life movement have enabled it to touch hearts, not only of women who are contemplating abortion, but also of many post-abortive women and men.

The 40 Days for Life movement mobilizes a large-scale, community-based Christian response to a formidable evil that has become entrenched in today’s neo-pagan culture.  It offers hope to abandoned pregnant women through the self-sacrifice, compassion and cooperation of the hundreds of believers who participate in any given local campaign.  Although Evangelical Christian in its inspiration, the movement was soon supported by Catholic chaplains and pastors and can now count on the collaboration of Priests For Life, American Life League, the Sisters of Life, and the Knights of Columbus.

[This article was first published in the February 2009 issue of Catholic World Report.]

The common university background suggests a way of expressing the questions that are on everyone’s mind: “What’s his field of specialization? I’ve heard that his seminars are demanding… is he a tough grader?” For some Catholics, the election of Pope Benedict XVI is like learning that the professor whose courses you’ve been avoiding has suddenly been made university president. “He’s an internationally renowned scholar, but what will he be like as an administrator?”

Cardinal Ratzinger had published so much that he was a known quantity when he entered the conclave. In book-length interviews that he granted in 1985, 1996 and 2000, he clearly set forth his positions on a gamut of issues facing the Church. With tireless urbanity he has defended Catholic teaching in novel ways against secular challenges. In return, the media have portrayed him as adversarial, militantly old-guard!

To this author, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger always seemed like that brilliant but unassuming professor whose sense of humor and unlimited patience enabled him to correct rafts of abysmal student papers in the cheerful hope that this served the cause of higher education. Far from being a reactionary, he responded to anyone willing to enter into dialogue with Catholicism.

But now that he heads over a billion Catholics, where will he lead them?

An essay written by the German theologian in 2000 offers us a window through which we can look out onto the Eternal City and the entire world with the new Holy Father. He wrote it as the Preface to a recent edition of his contemporary apologia for the faith, Introduction to Christianity, originally compiled from lecture notes in 1968.

In the thirty-plus years since the first edition, “world history has moved along at a brisk pace. In retrospect, two years seem to be particularly important milestones…. The year 1968 marked the rebellion of a new generation, which not only considered postwar reconstruction in Europe as inadequate, full of injustice…, but also viewed the entire course of history since the triumph of Christianity as a failure.” Western European intellectuals turned to “scientific” Marxism as “the sole ethically motivated guide to the future.”

During the post-conciliar ferment, many Catholic university student groups actively participated in that revolution. “This new fusion of the Christian impulse with secular and political action was like a lightning bolt; the real fires that it set, however, were in Latin America.” The theology of liberation appeared to point the way by which the Church could engage the modern world.

The Church could not simply “baptize” Marxism, however, as Thomas Aquinas had baptized Aristotelian philosophy. Adopting dialectical materialism means accepting “the primacy of politics and economics.” In such a scheme of human redemption, “God has nothing to do” and Jesus is reduced to a symbol and spokesman of the oppressed.

The other milestone was 1989 and “the surprising collapse of the socialist regimes in Europe, which left behind a sorry legacy of ruined land and ruined souls.” Unfortunately, “Christianity failed at that historical moment to make itself heard as an epoch-making alternative.” Perhaps the individualistic materialism of Christians in capitalist societies had lulled them, too, into the habit of acting “as if there were no God.” At any rate, the fall of communism dashed all hopes of salvation through politics.

Since 1989 most of Europe’s intellectuals have retreated into a philosophy of doctrinaire relativism. But any attempt to relativize the Christian faith changes it radically. “Instead of being the man who is God, Christ becomes the man who has experienced God in a special way.” Furthermore, to lump Christianity together with Eastern religions is to cease caring whether God is thought of as a person or impersonally.

These theological paradigm shifts have dire practical consequences. If Jesus is not God, He cannot be the Way. If God is not personal, He cannot communicate His will to mankind, and no objective basis for morality remains.

In concluding this brief summary of the 2000 Preface to Introduction to Christianity, I wish to emphasize two points. First, there is no danger that the reign of Benedict XVI will usher in an age of conservative “theocracy.” As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the new pope was an implacable foe of politicized religion. Second, the Holy Father is just as adamant in opposing attempts to detach twenty-first century Europe from its Christian roots. He knows that when faith in God is “deleted” from a society, the humanity of man soon follows.

“When I say Cardinal Ratzinger’s name,” the late Pope John Paul II once said of his co-worker, “I think of The Splendor of Truth and also The Gospel of Life.” So we may expect continuity between the teaching of Benedict XVI and that of his immediate predecessor. Still, whereas the ethicist from Krakow notably and eloquently defended the God-given dignity of the human person, I’m guessing that the theologian from Bavaria will emphasize the ongoing action of the Second Divine Person in history.

While not a forceful personality, Benedict XVI is much more than an intellectual. He is a cultured Christian gentleman who has worked for decades at the listening post of the world. He enjoys classical music and has written insightfully about liturgical singing. He is profoundly committed to the task of helping Christianity to “rediscover its voice” and of rebuilding Europe as a civilization with Christian principles.

Be sure to watch in August as he meets the “incoming class” at World Youth Day in Cologne.

Michael J. Miller translated the 2000 Preface to Introduction to Christianity for Ignatius Press.

This article first appeared, in slightly abridged form, in the National Catholic Register.

Fathers and Brothers

At one exhibit, while amplified patriotic music swells, visitors to the Constitution Center can become “signers” of the document that begins: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…. [do] establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” By encouraging such “participation,” the Center portrays the Founding Fathers’ composition as a living document that can adapt and endure in the third millennium.

The Catholic Church, too, has a document that authoritatively defines its structure and the dignity of its members: the Dogmatic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council entitled Lumen Gentium, a Latin phrase meaning “Light of the Nations” (see Lk 2:32). This Constitution on the Church is so fundamental that passages from it are incorporated into the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the new Catechism.

The big difference between it and the US Constitution is that the Fathers at Vatican II were not revolutionaries and founders. As Pope Paul VI explained in his “Address at the Opening of the Third Session” of the Council (September 14, 1964), the bishops had gathered in Rome, not as framers or innovators, but as caretakers, “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1). “We represent here the entire Church, not as delegates or deputies of the faithful toward whom our ministry is directed, but as fathers and brothers who personify the communities entrusted to the care of each one of us, and as a plenary assembly legitimately convoked by the Holy Father.”

Note that the language here is familial first, and only then political. The Church’s members have been born again as children of God, “members of the household of faith,” through Christ’s saving action in the sacrament of baptism. This crucial point is missed in attempts to view the Catholic Church as a democratic institution.

Paul VI suggests a more fitting image that goes back to the Old Testament: the Church is the “people of God,” which makes the council Fathers the elders of various related clans who have been called to consult with the anointed ruler.

While it is historically and theologically true that the Church is “the people of God,” it would be an exaggeration to claim that that tells the whole story. The first chapter of Lumen Gentium examines several Scriptural names for the Church: the kingdom or the building of God, the Mystical Body or the Bride of Christ. Each image expresses one aspect of the mystery, in much the same way that physicists describe the phenomenon of light both as packages of particles and as waves.

The Church founded by Christ is, in the words of the Dogmatic Constitution, “one complex reality which comes together from a human and a divine element. For this reason the Church is compared, in a powerful analogy, to the mystery of the incarnate Word” (LG 8). As Christ took on a human nature to serve as the instrument of salvation, so too the visible, social structure of the Church serves the Spirit of Christ which is its “soul” or life-principle.

Ecclesial Riches Common to All

The new emphasis on the human side of the Church as “the people of God” was meant to offset a traditional, legalistic way of talking about the Church. Instead of looking to canon law or to Scholastic theology, the Council Fathers turned to the Bible to develop their teaching.

Describing the Church as “the people of God” also corrected the impression sometimes given in official documents of the past, that the laity were the Christians left over after you had spoken about the bishops, priests, and religious. The structure of Lumen Gentium is deliberate. In Chapter Two it describes the ecclesial riches that are common to all members of the Church, the “people of God,” without distinction. Only then does Chapter Three explain the hierarchical structure of the Church and the duties of its clergy. The fourth chapter deals with the laity, defining them positively in terms of their particular task of sanctifying temporal or worldly activities.

A key insight is expressed in paragraph 9 of Lumen Gentium and repeated verbatim in #781 of the Catechism: “[God has] willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge Him and serve Him in holiness. He therefore chose the Israelite race to be His own people and established a covenant with it…. as a preparation and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ.”

Under the Old Covenant, God guided His people by sending them priests, prophets, and kings. Christ exercised these three offices in his own public ministry, shepherding and instructing the people of God and offering Himself as a sacrifice for their sins. Upon those who believe in Him and are baptized, He bestows the supernatural life of grace that makes Christians Christ-like. This makes the Church a “kingdom of priests” (Rv 1:6), “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Pt 2:9).

A scholarly article by Cardinal Journet, “The Mystery of the Church According to the Second Vatican Council,” summarizes and explains the teaching of Lumen Gentium. In his discussion of the priestly, prophetic, and kingly character of the people of God, he clarifies what it means specifically for lay Catholics:

“Those who are baptized form a priestly people. They are consecrated so as to offer to God their activities along with themselves as a holy and living sacrifice.” Sacramental ministry is reserved to the ordained, hierarchical priesthood. The common priesthood of all the faithful is exercised “by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, … [self-denial] and active charity” (LG 10).

The laity share in the prophetic office of Christ by professing the faith and witnessing to it by their lives. Cardinal Journet notes that when the faithful are governed by the Holy Spirit and loyal to the magisterium, then they are “protected from error…, sustained by a supernatural and infallible instinct that theologians call the sense of the faith, the sensus fidei.”

Christians share in Christ’s royalty by the gift of freedom from sin and the exercise of self-control. Then the laity are called to act as leaven in the community, “as members of earthly cities, of secular associations, of the kingdoms of this world.” Cardinal Journet explains what is required of them: “to devote themselves to these temporal occupations with the spirit and the charity of the Gospel in their hearts and so, without in any way confusing — or divorcing — the world and the Church… to work for the coming of a Christian temporal order… for a Christian culture that is truly, fully, and integrally human.”

Updating the Church, Renewing the World

At the pope’s request, bishops from all over the world gathered at the Second Vatican Council to discuss aggiornamento — ways to update the Church. They could not reform her essential structure (which is divinely founded and therefore unchanging), but rather sought to adapt her pastoral mission to contemporary men and women.

The laity, on the other hand, can best exercise their Christian freedom by helping to renew the secular world in which they live and work. “By reason of their special vocation, it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will” (LG 31). The faithful should “distinguish carefully between the rights and duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society. They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience” LG 36).

Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were deists and believed in a God who designed the world like clockwork and left it to run on its own. As Catholics, we believe in a loving God who has “visited and ransomed His people” (Lk 1:68) and gathered them into his Church.

With the US Constitution, the people of the American colonies founded the government of a new nation. But by initiating His merciful covenant, God Himself established a people to be peculiarly His own. We don’t sign papers to join; He “signs” us as Christians with the indelible character of baptism.

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive document. It legislates nothing and presents no novel teaching about the People of God. Instead, it meticulously maps out what it means to belong to the Church and, in particular, how lay Christians are called to “be in the world but not of it” as good citizens of the “City of God.”

Michael J. Miller translated the books entitled New Saints and Blesseds of the Catholic Church Vols. 1, 2, 3, and Married Saints and Blesseds for Ignatius Press.

This article originally appeared in Lay Witness, a publication of Catholics United for the Faith, Inc., and is used by permission. Join Catholics United for the Faith and enjoy the many benefits of membership.

Eventually the deposed emperor was unceremoniously taken by train to the Swiss border with his wife and small children.

Charles I of Austria, who was declared blessed on October 3, 2004, had ruled the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary from 1916 to 1918. From Switzerland the young monarch made two daring attempts to reclaim the throne of Hungary — the second time traveling incognito with his wife by airplane over the Austrian terrain from which he had been banished. Both times, however, the plan was thwarted by unreliable supporters and outright treachery in high places.

In October 1921, as prisoners of the British Navy, Charles and Zita were being transported by boat down the Danube River to the Black Sea and on to an undisclosed destination. During that voyage the empress recorded a remarkable entry in her diary:

“The emperor had a long discussion with [Captain] Snagge about military affairs. The punishment rate in British naval crews during the war dropped by 80% compared with peacetime — so high were the standards of conduct. There was no mutiny on a single ship. Result of the U-Boat war: a blaze-up of English patriotism.”

During the war, Charles of Austria had urged Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany not to order submarine attacks on the merchant ships of the western powers, arguing that such strikes were inhumane, violated international law, and would turn public opinion worldwide against the Germans. But Wilhelm, convinced by his military advisers that “total victory” was within his grasp, would not listen to reason. Captain Snagge’s statistics proved that Charles had been right.

Although he had been defeated militarily and deposed, even though his ancient empire had been carved up and he himself was being shipped away to permanent exile and an early death on the Island of Madeira, Charles I of Austria was vindicated — not politically, but as a man of principle, as a Christian sovereign.

Even his enemies admitted that the Emperor Charles was a peacemaker. As a young archduke he had had military training and courageously led troops into battle, yet he was firmly against war.

The task of ruling Austria-Hungary as emperor during World War I was thrust upon him suddenly. As an Infantry general and second in line to the imperial throne, he reasonably expected that he would not be crowned until he reached middle age (rather like the current Prince Charles of the United Kingdom). But his uncle, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated at Sarajevo in June, 1914. Given the complicated alliances and exaggerated nationalist sentiments of the day, this disaster set a world war in motion and abruptly placed Charles at center stage in European history.

When the Emperor Franz Josef died in November of 1916, Charles inherited a brutal, hopeless war and an intransigent, menacing ally to the north. His predecessor had cast a long shadow over the nominal parliament during his almost seventy-year reign. Consequently, there was a dearth of qualified statesmen in Austria, and Charles was handicapped in his conscientious efforts to rule as a constitutional monarch.

Nevertheless, Charles von Habsburg was a man of principle. Upon succeeding to the imperial throne, he proclaimed to his subjects on November 21, 1911:

I will do everything in my power to dispel the horrors and sacrifices of the war as soon as possible and to win back for my peoples the blessings of peace which are so dearly missed…. I want to be a just and clement prince for my peoples. I wish to uphold their constitutional freedoms and other rights and to guard carefully the equality of all before the law. It will be my unceasing endeavor to promote the moral and spiritual welfare of my peoples and to protect freedom and order in my countries.

Unlike the other major European powers at that time, the dual monarchy was not a nation, united by a single history, language, and culture, but rather a multi-ethnic empire which had grown mighty, not by conquest, but through intermarriage with other royal houses of Europe. Charles’s own wife was a Bourbon from a noble French line that had been influential in regions of Italy as well.

By virtue of his own lineage and upbringing, Charles viewed Europe, not as a compartmentalized array of political entities, but as a vast, interrelated Christian family. As emperor he immediately began secret peace negotiations with France and England through an intermediary, his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma. These promising efforts were ultimately frustrated because the hands of the western powers were tied by a previous secret agreement with land-hungry Italy (about which Charles knew nothing).

Charles’s attempts to restore the monarchy in post-war Hungary were likewise prompted by a sense of duty toward the subjects whom he had sworn to protect, and by the sincere hope of bringing peace and unity to Budapest, where the political scene had become chaotic and the Communist threat was real.

As a man of peace in an age of untrammeled nationalism, Charles von Habsburg was often misunderstood and despised by many of his own subjects. He suffered more than his share of calumny. The white-collar workers in the enormous Viennese bureaucracy tended to be “pan-Germanic,” feeling that they had more in common with their belligerent Protestant neighbor to the north than with their Catholic Hungarian and Slavic compatriots within the dual monarchy. They therefore looked askance at the Empress Zita’s French and Italian connections, and circulated rumors that she was a schemer who manipulated her weak, vacillating husband.

Then there was the notorious hoax in which an actress borrowed a sumptuous necklace from a jeweler and claimed that it was a personal gift from the emperor, whom she accused of being a drunk and a womanizer.

All of these charges were utter nonsense, though many of them persisted in biographies(1) written during the politically tense decades after the war ended. Charles was not a brilliant intellectual, but he was a man of principle. (When he was enrolled as a young man in an ancient chivalric order, he studied the Rule, which was written in Medieval French, so as to be able to carry out the duties entailed in membership!)

He was also a loving and loyal husband. Charles and Zita were the parents of eight children, the youngest of whom was born shortly after his death of pneumonia on the Island of Madeira. The exiled, impoverished emperor spent his final days of suffering in constant prayer and insisted that his oldest son, ten-year-old Otto, should be at his deathbed, so that he would see “how a Christian dies.”

The last words that Charles spoke were to his wife — “Ich liebe dich unendlich,” “I love you endlessly” — and to his Lord, whom he had just received as Viaticum: “Jesus, Jesus, come!” He died at 12:23P.M. on Saturday, April 1, 1922.

Besides the canonized kings and queens of the first Christian millennium and the Middle Ages, no other rulers or statesmen have been raised to the honors of the altar except Thomas More. St. Thomas remains a powerful intercessor for lawyers and government officials, but the moral dilemma which he faced and which led to his martyrdom was more medieval than modern: whether to obey the pope or the king.

Whereas the battle of wits between Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII was played out in an insular setting on the edge of Europe, Charles of Austria had to govern many peoples in the midst of an international upheaval. His faith and his character were tested in the crucible of war and the desolation of exile.

Blessed Charles will be a more fitting patron saint for modern statesmen and politicians, particularly in the European Union, because he ruled a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural empire and had to deal with tangled alliances and conflicting national interests. Yet through it all he remained a man of peace and a man of honor, because he was a man of faith.

Blessed Charles of Austria, pray for world leaders!

1. Reliable biographies of Blessed Charles of Austria, based in part on interviews with the Empress Zita (who died in 1989) are: A Heart for Europe, by James & Joanna Bogle (Gracewing Books, Herefordshire, England, distributed in the US by Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, PA, 1991), and The Last Habsburg, by Gordon Brook-Shepherd (Weybright & Talley, New York 1969).

Michael J. Miller translated the books entitled New Saints and Blesseds of the Catholic Church Vols. 1, 2, 3, and Married Saints and Blesseds for Ignatius Press.

(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)