Dear Editors of Catholic Exchange and Mr. Tsakanikas:
Your Dec. 8th Catholic Exchange article was really right on target from a European standpoint and I was so delighted and so surprised to hear things from an American Catholic as I have heard them here in Europe! I appreciate how nearly impossible it is for us Americans in America to understand or imagine what WWII really was — that is, the impact it had on lives and destinies beyond our borders. But to see it from over here, after years of being a part of this European fabric — speaking the language and being immersed in its history and culture — I see just how much we do not comprehend, and couldn't comprehend even if we wanted to. As a Catholic American in Europe, the view of history is breathtaking but it is also profoundly chilling, especially the view of WWII, which is still a very vivid issue here. Because it is far from being over yet.
You know, something amazing happened with the election of a German Pope (and that it happened to be Ratzinger and not just any German!). In the hours following his election there was suddenly a feeling that Germany had accomplished something like redemption or expiation: the nation that had given hospitality to Nazism would now be able to arise from the ashes of its moral debauchery through that portion of Germany which had remained holy and faithful. I am tempted to paraphrase St. Paul: if Germany sinned on account of one man, Hitler, then on account of another man, Ratzinger, Germany will be redeemed (it is also most interesting to note that Ratzinger (German), and Hitler (Austrian), were born within a few miles of each other on opposite sides of the same river Inn). And this brings to mind an alarming piece which appeared in one of the newspaper magazines last week and which was written by the esteemed journalist, vaticanist and close friend of the Pope, Renato Farina, who writes for several mainstream papers and magazines and is often a key guest on talk shows. This is what he said in an open letter to the readers of the news magazine Tempi:
I would like to speak to you about a person whom I care very much about. I am writing this in the pages of Tempi because I know you, the reader, will understand me better than most [Tempi is conservative and Catholic]. I am afraid that they will try to eliminate this person.
And I think not just morally but also physically. No one has ever dared to say the things that he has said. And not only are the wicked against him but now even […] those who are considered good and decent are against him.
This man's name is Joseph Ratzinger. […] I invite you to consider him for a moment devoid of his white vestment, of his pontifical authority and of the solemn air of the Vatican. Today he is defenseless and abandoned by everyone. They are counting his bones. He is truly the 'Alter Christus', the [poor] servant about whom the Gospel speaks, the one prophesized by Isaiah.
Sadly I must say that there are bishops who are now openly defying the Pope (regarding the Motu Proprio restoring the Tridentine Mass) together with many priests and this is a real shock for the faithful here in Italy. It is one thing to experience defiant priests in the USA, it is altogether another thing to see this happening right at the Holy Father's table, to witness this disobedience here is to see the Pope humiliated by his most cherished sons — and in public.
I've seen a lot since living over here, and as a Catholic and as an American I've had to re-think many things. I would wholeheartedly subscribe to your premise of America being like a "chosen" country.
The refrain from "America the Beautiful" comes to mind, "America, America, God shed his grace on thee." He did indeed, but clearly so that America might embody God's grace and be grace for all the suffering world: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…." God surely inscribed these words on our very hearts — as our holy calling. As for our participation in war and specifically in the war over here in Europe, America really was the hand of a merciful God. You have to see it from over here, and hear the stories of the people who remember everything as if it were yesterday. There've been lots of documentaries and plenty of war films, but all together they don't tell even half the story. Now, saying this, I don't mean to exonerate the many times we fell short of behaving like a chosen country.
But yes, I would say that we are a chosen country — perhaps much like the Roman Empire was a chosen country at the time of Israel's subjugation. Did Rome have any idea that it had been chosen for such a divine purpose and that it would have such a holy vocation afterwards and for all times? In any event I think this sense of being chosen should produce in us more humility and healthy fear more than pride. If we are to glory in our "chosen-ness", then let us be sure that it means to glory in the Cross.
A chosen country or a chosen people never has an easy lot (the Jews have everything to teach us in this respect). And that reminds me of something St. Paul says (and so appropriately in Hebrews! — 12:5), "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."
But then there is Mary! And she is the soothing balm on the wounds of God's discipline. This too, I think it can be said, is the purpose of so many apparitions — in those other chosen nations. For not only Italy but all of Europe was chosen. And this has been made manifestly clear considering the amazing number of heavenly interventions through so many apparitions not only of the Blessed Virgin but of Jesus himself, and of so many saints and angels that they cannot be counted. And then what we often fail to consider is that wherever Jesus is, wherever there is his supreme holiness, there is also Satan, the enemy of God, the enemy of the Son, the enemy of Christ the Church.
Logically, Satan has always concentrated his efforts around the Pope, and in and throughout the Vatican and therefore throughout Italy, and thus throughout Europe. Europe is Satan's chief battle ground and he has always been mercilessly assiduous in his attention and torments — and especially in the last century. I find it so interesting to consider how the 12 (original) countries of the European Union could perfectly represent the 12 apostles huddled all about the tiny state of Vatican City, our Church! our Lord! And I think it might be of interest to spend a word here on the origin of the present-day European flag. Forgive me if you know the story already but not even many Europeans know it and so it is natural for me to think that it could not be known in America. A Europe-wide contest was held for the design of a flag to represent the newly established European Union (I don't remember the year but it was shortly after the war). 101 designs arrived from around the world. And it is worthy of note that the commission jury chief was Jewish and so the choice of the final design did not hinge on Catholic factors.
The winning design was the flag as it is known today: twelve stars in a circle on a blue field, which originally was a lighter blue. The design had been created by one who was devoted to the Blessed Virgin and who happened to be reading the story of the Miraculous Medal at the time the contest was announced. The idea for the twelve stars in a circle came straight from the Blessed Virgin as she appears on the Miraculous Medal and the blue of the field was the blue associated with Mary. Naturally, this was revealed only long after the contest had been concluded. And a strange thing about this story is that a question came up about the number of stars because it was pointed out that as the Union would grow more stars would have to be added. Instead the commission decided that no new stars would be added to the flag and that the number twelve would remain like a symbol which in the Jewish and Christian faith indicates perfection and of wisdom (the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, etc.).
Then last but not least, there is this very curious coincidence: for purely bureaucratic reasons it happened that the date for making the flag official fell on a December 8th, feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Getting back to World War II, I feel it must be looked at from the point of view of our Catholic faith in order to understand it correctly (as much as possible) — and in order for us Catholic Americans to be more conscientious about our responsibilities and duties within the Church and before God — and you are so right to consider the events of the war bearing in mind all that transpired at Fatima. You might be also interested then to consider the apparition in Rome to a certain Bruno Cornacchiola who was on his way to kill Pope Pius XII when he was met instead by the Holy Virgin. Just to read that man's story before the apparition is a quick study of the evil which persecutes the Church in Europe and within her very walls. In the event you may have some scruples about it, I wish to point out that the Church recognizes this apparition which, however, has never received official status and only on account of a bureaucratic problem: it is the Bishop of the diocese who must first give his approval before it can come before the Pope — and the problem is that the bishop of Rome is the Pope. Well, it is a problem that has gotten resolved in typical ecclesial fashion: the Church has never said anything against it. And then it has had many 'guardian angels' among the Vatican prelates… and Popes. [The story of the apparition is found here, but you must scroll very far down the page to locate it. The date of the post is June 15, 2006.]
In any event, throughout the whole story of WWII there are more coincidences than you can shake a stick at. And a whole other reality comes forward in a picture that is more stupefyingly beautiful and frightening than all the natural and man-made wonders of the world put together. But it doesn't end there: it's like pulling a thread which you think is only an inch or two long and then to your dismay you see the whole hem coming undone the more you pull. If you don't have much time though, don't pull too much on the thread otherwise you'll find yourself all the way back to Adam and Eve.
Then before finally brining this to an end — with my apologies for the length of it–I thought you might appreciate this notice from the daily newspaper feature "The Saint of the Day" which appeared on July 8th in the newspaper, il Giornale.
Today is the feast day of the Blessed Virgin of Kazan, Patroness of all Russia. Her icon was regarded as miraculous especially for blind people which, once healed, would make a gift of emeralds to the Blessed Virgin.
In fact, the 'oklad' (the gold and silver plate which covered the surface of the icon leaving only the faces of the Virgin and Jesus exposed) was paved with these precious gems. It was discovered in 1579, the year in which a terrible fire destroyed the city of Kazan. The Madonna appeared several times to a ten year old girl indicating the place where the sacred image had gotten lost in the fire. Thus the icon was found underneath the rubble of a burned-down house, and since then it became the very symbol of Russia itself; and the victory over the Swedes and even more so, the victory over Napoleon was attributed to this Virgin's intercession. In 1917, the last official act of Tsar Nicolas II was to consecrate the entire Russian Empire to the Holy Mother of Kazan. But it was too late. A few days later he was arrested together with the rest of his family and was brutally murdered on orders of Trotsky. The icon itself got swallowed up in the Bolshevik revolution, but re-emerged, without its precious 'oklad' in 1965 at an antique dealer's shop in New York City. The Russians in exile were able to scrape together the immense sum of its sale price and so purchased it. It was kept in a bomb-proof shelter in Fatima, Portugal (on account of the prophecies of Our Lady of Fatima regarding Russia).
Pope John Paul II collected the icon in Fatima during one of his visits there, and after the fall of the Soviet regime, in the year 2004, Pope John Paul restored the icon to Russia. On August 28th of that year, Orthodox feast of the Dormition of the Blessed Vergine (the Assumption), in a great and solemn ceremony, the Patriarch, Alexis II was presented with the holy icon. It was placed in the restored Cathedral of the Dormition (Assumption) at the Kremlin.
Best wishes and Merry Christmas!
Catherine W. Zeppa Di Matteo
PS. and one last thing — the homily of Cardinal Ivan Diaz which he gave at Lourdes on Saturday Dec. 8th during the Mass celebrating the beginning of the Jubilee Year commemorating the 150th anniversary of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes.
This comes from L'Osservatore Romano – 11 December 2007:
"The Marian Apparitions: Saving Man from Sin"
The apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes, as in other marian apparitions, "are about the perpetual battle […] between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which began at the beginning of the story of mankind and will proceed until the end".
This is what Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of Propaganda Fidei, said during the homily of the Mass celebrated last Saturday (Dec. 8th) at Lourdes. [He] was there as the Papal envoy inaugurating the Jubilee Year marking the150th anniversary of the apparitions. With still greater emphasis the Cardinal added, "this battle is even more fierce today than in Bernadette's time. The world today is terribly entangled in the spiral of relativism which wants to create a world without God; of a relativism which erodes the permanent and immutable values of the Gospel; and of a [pervasive] religious indifference which remains unmoved before the greatly superior things of God and the Church." And again: "This battle is taking innumerable victims within our families and among our young people." The Cardinal then recalled what Cardinal Wojtyla said just a few months before becoming Pope: "We are facing today the greatest battle that humanity has ever confronted. I think the Christian community has not fully understood this yet. We are facing today the final battle between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel." These are words, said Cardinal Dias, which thirty years later resound prophetically, and which in any event were first pronounced years earlier in Marian apparitions: "Together with the spiritual ruin of certain countries, there will be a weakening of the faith, difficulties within the Church and an increase in the activity of the anti-Christ with his attempts to replace God in the lives of men." But precisely for this reason, added the Cardinal, "A Mother descended from Heaven, worried for her children who live immersed in sin and far from Christ."
In the great underground basilica of St. Pius X are thousands of attentive pilgrims who have travelled from countries all over the world to be in Lourdes for the solemn occasion of the opening celebration of the anniversary of "those apparitions — warned Dias — which are precisely a Marian incursion in the history of the world, and which mark the decisive entrance of the Virgin into the thick of battle between her and Satan as described in Genesis and in the Apocalypse." For this reason the Cardinal invited the faithful to not let down their guard, "at Lourdes as in the rest of the world. The Madonna is weaving a net with those who are devoted to her and who are her spiritual children which will be launched in a strong offensive against the forces of the Evil One and so prepare the final victory of her divine Son, Jesus Christ". Thus she, "calls us this very day to enter her legions and so fight the forces of evil." The weapons to use are "the [continuing] conversion of our hearts, a great devotion towards the holy Eucharist, the daily recitation of the Rosary, constant prayer without hypocrisy and the acceptance [and offering of our personal] suffering for the salvation of the world".
"The final victory" — concluded Cardinal Dias in his homily – "will be God's. And Mary will fight at the head of the army of her children against the enemy forces of Satan, crushing the head of the serpent." At the end of the celebration of the Mass, Cardinal Dias guided the long procession which, entering the Sanctuary from the gate of St. Michel, physically marked the beginning of the Jubilee Year of the 150th anniversary of the apparitions.
