Saint Nicholas

God and the Emperor

Aquinas Visited Yugoslav Abortionist in Dream, Now Defender of the Unborn

Madrid, Nov 12, 2008 / 09:21 pm (CNA). — The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic (pictured, right), who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.

“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported. “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.”

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint. He didn’t recognize the name”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.

“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,’ St. Thomas told him.

“Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

“That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion—something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc. The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby’s heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being,”

After this experience, Adasevic “told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions. Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university.”

After years of pressure and on the verge of giving up, he had another dream about St. Thomas.

“You are my good friend, keep going,’ the man in black and white told him. Adasevic became involved in the pro-life movement and was able to get Yugoslav television to air the film ‘The Silent Scream,’ by Doctor Bernard Nathanson, two times.”

Adasevic has told his story in magazines and newspapers throughout Eastern Europe. He has returned to the Orthodox faith of his childhood and has studied the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

“Influenced by Aristotle, Thomas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization,” Adasevic wrote in one article. La Razon commented that Adasevic “suggests that perhaps the saint wanted to make amends for that error.” Today the Serbian doctor continues to fight for the lives of the unborn.

The Coronation of Blessed Charles

Blessed Emperor Charles was crowned as Apostolic King of Hungary on the 30th of December in 1916. It was the last Hapsburg coronation to this day. For those interested there are two accounts which do justice to the sacred rites. One is by that most devoted admirer of the Hapsburgs, Gordon Brook-Shepherd, in his excellent biography of Charles, The Last Hapsburg. (Brook-Shepherd also wrote excellent and quite readable biographies of the Empress Zita, of Crown Prince Otto, of Chancellor Dollfuß, and Baron Sir Rudolf von Slatin Pasha).

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Charles & Zita

October 21 was chosen as the Feast of the Blessed Emperor Charles not because it is the date of his death — which is 1 April 1922 — but rather to commemorate the marriage (photo, below) between Archduke Charles of Austria (as he was then) and Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma in 1911. While Charles died a mere thirty-four years of age, Zita lived on to ninety-six before passing away in 1989 (when I myself was four).

Not very long ago I was in Quebec City, which was where the Empress Zita and the Imperial Family spent their exile during the Second World War. The Hapsburgs, dispossessed first by the Socialists and then by the Nazis, were then so poor they had to collect dandelions from which to make a soup, but they took poverty in their stride. Passing a grassy bit near the Chateau Frontenac, I wondered “Did Crown Prince Otto once pluck weeds from this plot to feed his hungry mother and siblings?”

Also in that ancient Canadian city is La Citadelle, that great hunk of stone and earthworks, perhaps the oldest operational military installation in the New World. There we were lucky enough to be granted access to the tomb of the greatest Canadian, Major General the Rt. Hon. Georges-Philéas Vanier, Governor-General of Canada from 1959 until his death in 1967. General Vanier and his wife had such a reputation for Christian charity and piety that the Vatican is collecting evidence towards their eventual recognition as saints. Their son is Jean Vanier, the founder of the famous l’Arche communities that care for the handicapped and the disabled. I wonder if the Hapsburgs and the Vaniers ever crossed paths in wartime Quebec…

St. Juan Macias

Posted in aid of a friend’s intention.

Cry God for Britain, Harry, and St. Aidan?

“He also makes a good patron saint of Britain because of his character. He was particularly humble and believed in talking directly to people. When he was given a horse by King Oswald of Northumbria, he immediately gave it away because he was worried that he would not be able to communicate properly.

“He was also not shy of reprimanding the mighty and powerful about their failings. He saw it as part of his job to remind secular rulers not to get above themselves. At a time when we are thinking about what makes Britishness, he had a sense of openness and diversity for his time that I think makes him a good candidate as the patron saint of Britain.”

Find out more in this article:
“Home-grown holy man” (The Independent, 23 April 2008)

On a somewhat similar note, here’s Aelianus (one of our favourite bloggers) writing on British Identity last September.

St. George

Today is St. George’s Day.

On this day in 303, St. George was killed; in 997, St. Adalbert of Prague died; in 1014, Brian Boru defeated the Vikings at Clontarf; in 1348, the Order of the Garter was founded by Edward III; in 1564,William Shakespeare was born; in 1616, both Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare died; in 1635, the Boston Latin School was founded; in 1661, Charles II was crowned at Westminster; in 1725, St. Gerard Majella was born; in 1775, J.M.W. Turner was born; and in 1794, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes was guillotined for his defense of King Louis XVI before the Convention.

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A Miracle from Blessed Charles

Vatican to Review Case of Inexplicable Healing of Florida Woman

The seemingly inexplicable healing of a Baptist woman from Florida may provide the miracle necessary for the canonization of Emperor Charles of Austria. The woman, in her mid-50s, suffered from breast cancer and was bedridden after the cancer had spread to her liver and bones. Despite treatment and hospitalization, doctors diagnosed her case as terminal. But after intercessory prayers to the Emperor Charles, the woman (who wishes to maintain her privacy and remain unnamed) was completely healed.

The story begins when Joseph and Paula Melançon, a married couple from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and friends of the healed woman, travelled to Austria, where they met Archduke Karl Peter, son of Archduke Rudolf, and grandson of the holy Emperor Charles. The Archduke invited the couple to his grandfather’s beatification in Rome in 2004. Mrs. Melançon gave the novena to Blessed Charles to her sister-in-law, Vanessa Lynn O’Neill of Atlanta.

“I knew that when I got that novena — I knew that my mother’s best friend was sick — I just knew at that moment that it was something I was going to do,” Mrs. O’Neill told the Florida Catholic in an interview. “And that is how I got started, I just prayed the novena.”

The woman’s recovery was investigated by an official church tribunal consisting of Father Fernando Gil (judicial vicar of the Diocese of Orlando), Father Gregory Parkes (chancellor of canonical affairs of the Diocese), Father Larry Lossing, diocesan notary Delma Santiago, as well as an unnamed medical doctor. The tribunal examined the evidence at hand and invited the participation of medical experts, who could find no earthly explanation for the woman’s recovery.

“Other alleged miracles attributed to the intercession of Blessed Karl I are currently being investigated in different places in the world,” Fr. Gil said.

The sixteen-month investigation has now concluded, and the conclusions have been signed by the participants, sealed, and placed in special boxes which are then themselves tied, sealed with wax, and sent to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in Rome via diplomatic pouch. The Congregation will examine the case further and then present its findings to Pope Benedict XVI, who will decided if a miracle has taken place. If the Pope is convinced by the evidence, then the Emperor’s canonization can proceed.

The future emperor, 1889

Blessed Charles’s reign as Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary began in November 1916 during the First World War. The Emperor realized the heavy toll the Christian countries were suffering and almost immediately began to make peace manouevers. The insane obstinacy of both his German allies and the enemy alliance of France, Great Britain, and the United States, however, meant that Charles’s multiple attempts to negotiate a mutually-acceptable end to the war were not even considered.

After the war, President Woodrow Wilson insisted on dismantling the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Emperor was forced into exile, first in Switzerland and finally, after two attempts to regain his Hungarian throne, on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Charles had always been particularly devout, and his devotion to God only increased when he caught a severe case of pneumonia on Madeira. He died from the illness in April 1922.

The English writer Herbert Vivian wrote that Charles was “a great leader, a prince of peace, who wanted to save the world from a year of war; a statesman with ideas to save his people from the complicated problems of his empire; a king who loved his people, a fearless man, a noble soul, distinguished, a saint from whose grave blessings come.”

Even Anatole France, the radical French intellectual and novelist, wrote “Emperor Karl is the only decent man to come out of the war in a leadership position, yet he was a saint and no one listened to him. He sincerely wanted peace, and therefore was despised by the whole world. It was a wonderful chance that was lost.”

Recent history has come to fulfil the expectations of Pope St. Pius X, who received Charles when the Austrian was a young archduke and not in direct line to succeed to the throne, saying “I bless Archduke Charles, who will be the future Emperor of Austria and will help lead his countries and peoples to great honor and many blessings–but this will not become obvious until after his death.”

Mourning in Vienna

The Blessed Emperor Charles at the funeral of the late Emperor Franz Joseph, the saint’s great uncle, in November 1916. Between the Blessed Charles and his Empress, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, is Crown Prince Otto. Otto lives today, and is the head of the Hapsburg family.

Category: Monarchy | Previously: Our Holy Emperor

Sinterklaasfeest

Wishing you all a very blessed Saint Nicholas day!

‘First of Britain’s Sons To Die’

Saint Alban, June 22

These were the words to the school hymn at St. Alban’s College down in Argentina, which I briefly had the privilege of attending and which is currently celebrating its centenary year (more on that in another post). It was down beneath the Southern Cross that I first became more closely acquainted with good Saint Alban, who was the first Christian martyr of Britain.

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Martyrs of Spain, Pray for Us!

POOR, PITIABLE SPAIN. So rich in saints in Heaven, but, to the outside observer, so poor in saints on Earth. There were days, of course, when Spain was governed by saints and holy men and women, but today Spain is ruled by the wayward, the foolish, and perhaps even the downright evil. Error is proclaimed truth, wrong is called right, and evil hailed as good.

Of course, these things that happen today have happened in the past as well, and even within living memory — less than a eighty years ago. It is announced from Rome that, with the approval of the Holy Father, two more groups of Spanish martyrs for the Christian faith are to beatified, and that, owing to the number of souls, the beatification will be held in the Eternal City itself. The mass beatification will be held this October on the Feast of Christ the Universal King. The feast is significant for these martyrs on a number of levels, namely that it was proclaimed by Pope Pius XI, during whose pontificate these martyrs sacrified their earthly lives, and that “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” or “Long Live/Hail Christ the King!” was their motto. One group is composed of those martyred during the leftist Asturias rebellion of 1934, and the second group is composed of martyrs killed in 1936 and 1937 during the Civil War. Each case has been the subject of deliberative study first in Spain and then in Rome for decades before beatification is approved.

In total, 498 names will be added in October to the list of those already beatified or canonized. Among those 498 names are a number from the many killed in the massacres of Paracuellos de Jarama. Coincidentally, Gerald Warner recently touched upon this place of death in a Scotland on Sunday column on the occasion of Edinburgh University revoking the honorary degree bestowed upon Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. In the column, Gerald discussed various honorary degrees which had been bestowed upon monsters, tyrants, and evil men, and finished his column with a case from Spain.

“That pilot,” Gerald concluded his column, “deserved an honorary degree”.

There is a good website which lists many of the Catholic martyrs of the Spanish Civil War; it starts here and carries on for sixty pages. The list also contains photographs or images of the individual martyrs when it has been possible to obtain them. Look at these photographs, see the faces of these holy men and women who now intercede for us in Heaven. They are priests and bishops, nuns and brothers, penniless Franciscans and wealthy aristocrats. They are fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, workers, craftsmen, students, nurses, teachers, young and old. In many cases, entire monasteries and convents were killed en masse, their cloisters flowing with blood, and the bodies of the martyrs dumped by the sides of highways, their killers vainly hoping their names would be forgotten and struck from history. But, as has oft been said before, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. We are human, and can only see with our eyes. Who knows what untold and unseen burdens have been lifted from Spain’s shoulders by the intercession of their prayers?

For Saint George

THE CROSS OF SAINT GEORGE snaps proudly from the flagpole above Westminster Cathedral, the Administrator of which, Msgr. Mark Langham, has given us a special St. George’s Day treat by revealing the newly-commissioned designs for completing the mosaic work in that cathedral’s chapel dedicated to the patron saint of England.

James II, Our Catholic King

THIS PAST SATURDAY was the anniversary of the birth of King James II and VII of England and Scotland. The third son of Charles I, he was baptised into the Anglican church six weeks after his birth and was created Duke of York at eleven years of age. In 1660, James married Anne Hyde, the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, by whom he fathered eight children, though only two survived past childhood. In 1664 the Duke of York equipped an expedition to relieve the Dutch of responsibility for their colonies in North America, and henceforth New Amsterdam and New Netherland were known as New York after their new Lord Proprietor.

A miniature of James, Duke of York, c. 1660.

Sometime during the year 1670 both the Duke and Duchess of York were received into the Catholic Church and stopped attending Anglican services, though the conversion did not become public knowledge until the Test Act (requiring officeholders to receive communion in a Church of England service and take an oath against Transubstantiation) was passed three years later. James was forced to renounce his offices, such as Lord High Admiral of England, though not his titles. At any rate, Anne, the Duchess of York had died in 1671 only a year after her conversion. He married Princess Maria of Modena in 1673.

The Protestant oligarchs felt threatened by the prospect of a Catholic king and thrice tried to pass laws barring James from succeeding to the throne. However his elder brother Charles II, the reigning king, dissolved parliament each time before the bill was to be passed. King Charles II died in February 1685, (having reconciled himself to the Catholic faith before his end) and thus the Duke of York was proclaimed James II of England and VII of Scotland. A private Catholic coronation was held at Whitehall Palace on April 22 before the public coronation the following day on the feast of Saint George, which was performed according to the rites of the Church of England.

James II’s seal for use in New York, in which a colonist and a native show their loyalty to the King. James had appointed the Catholic Thomas Dongan, 2nd Earl of Limerick, Governor of New York in 1682.

The Protestant oligarchs’ fears that James would end their hegemonic grip on Scotland and England proved well-founded as in 1687 he issued a Declaration of Toleration as King of Scotland, allowing Catholics, Episcopalians, and other non-Presbyterians to hold public office and the right of public worship, and a Declaration of Indulgence as King of England removing the laws penalizing non-attendance or non-communion at Church of England services, permitting non-Anglican worship in private homes or chapels, and abolishing religious oaths for public offices. Furthermore, James had allowed Catholics to hold positions at the University of Oxford for the first time since the Protestant Revolution. More provocatively, he tried to transform Magdalen College Oxford into a Catholic seminary. He had already reckoned with the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth who proclaimed himself king two years earlier but had been captured, tried, and executed for treason. With the birth of a Catholic son and heir, Prince James Francis Edward, in 1688 a cabal of seven Protestant nobles issued an invitation to William of Orange, the Protestant Stadtholder of the Netherlands. A few months later, William of Orange duly arrived and usurped the throne, having already married James’ daughter Mary from his first marriage. The two ruled jointly as William and Mary.

Unwilling to create a popular martyr as had happened with the executed Charles I, William allowed James to escape and fled to France where Louis XIV gave the exiled monarch the use of a palace and an ample pension. James was intent on returning to his birthright, however, and took advantage of the Irish parliament’s refusal to recognise William’s usurpation of the throne. The King landed in Ireland in March of 1689 at the head of a Franco-Irish army but was defeated by William in the famous Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, and returned to his place of exile in France.

There, Louis allowed him to live in the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and offered to get James elected King of Poland but James felt this would prevent any chance of a Stuart again holding the throne of England. From that time onwards, James led a simple life of penance in reparation for his sins (he had had a number of mistresses in his younger days) and finally died in 1701. He was entombed in the Chapel of St. Edmund within the English Benedictine church on the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, while his brain was sent to the Scots College in Rome, his heart to the Visitandine Convent at Chaillot, and his bowels divided between the College of St. Omer (the exiled English Catholic school, now Stonyhurst in Lancashire), and the nearby parish church of St. Germain where they remained until they were desecrated by a Revolutionary mob and lost forever. His monument at Saint-Germain, however, was rediscovered in 1824 and is proudly displayed there to this day. There is also a monument to James and the Stuarts in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (c.f. Roma – Caput Mundi).

While I am told that Padre Pio asserted that either Edward VII or George V had a deathbed reception into the Church, so far as it historically verifiable James II was the last Catholic king (and as neither Edward nor George reigned over New York, James is even more certifiably so for us). There is a lovely coronation ode to James which I just might bring to your attention someday. But for now, reflect and remember our monarchs of old and pray that God in His mercy might grant us good Catholic rulers in stead of the shabby lot we elect today.

Gabriel García Moreno

Ecuador’s Saintly President

WE LIVE IN an age which is almost completely devoid of Christian statesmen. In their stead, we are today ruled by faceless bureaucrats and vapid masters of spin. Gentlemen once sought public office in the hopes of ensuring order and the public good while dark and knavish men sought the same in their lust for power. The politicians of today, meanwhile, tend to be of neither inspiration but rather seem all too often to have engaged upon the ‘career’ of ‘public servant’ because they lack any of the skills necessary to succeed in any real, productive employ, station, or vocation. Given the sad state of affairs in our day, we must look to the past — to another age and indeed another continent — in our search for models of Christian leadership in the temporal realm of a modern republic. In this search, the name of the journalist, scholar, statesman, and saint, President GABRIEL GARCÍA MORENO of Ecuador, stands taller than any other in the Americas. (more…)

St. John Nepomuk Neumann

TODAY IS THE feast of St. John Neumann, the saintly Bishop of Philadelphia. St. John was born to a Czech mother and German father in Prachatice (Prachatitz), Bohemia and attended the Charles University in Prague with the intention of being ordained to the priesthood. His bishop, however, decided against any new ordinations as there were too many priests in Bohemia already (Just imagine!). John, fluent in six languages, wrote to other bishops in Europe seeking ordination until he decided to appeal to the episcopacy of the United States. He became the first Redemptorist in the New World when he took his vows in Baltimore in 1842. Six years later he became an American citizen, and just ten years later he was consecrated Bishop of Philadelphia.

St. John Neumann built ninety-eight schools, fifty churches, and began construction on a cathedral, as well as writing two catechisms. His earthly remains are on view in Philadelphia to this day.

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The Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Holy Father has declared a plenary indulgence for this day, which is also the patronal feast of the United States.

The following Act of Consecration was supposedly composed by Archbishop John Carroll, the first bishop of the United States (or Foederatarum Civitatum Americae Septentrionalis, to give it’s official Latin name).

O Blessed Nicholas

A very happy and blessed St. Nicholas Day to you all. St Nicholas is, as you all know, the patron saint of New York owing to our Netherlandish forefathers. Above you can see Lumen Martin Winter’s mural of St. Nicholas leading Peter Stuyvesant’s legion on their way to attack and take the Swedish fort of Christiania in New Sweden. The account of the battle by Washington Irving is hilarious and counts among my favorite selections of comic writing.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Nicholas, the St. Nicholas Center is a good place to start, as well as the holy bishop’s entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

It’s also Sofie von Hauch’s birthday. Tillykke med Fødselsdagen!

Previously: The Feast of St Nicholas

St. Edith Stein: Martyr for Truth

The 20th witnessed great advances in science and medicine. But it was not an era for truth. Research uncovered remarkable facts about the physical world, but philosophers and even average people were gripped by the idea that we cannot know anything for certain. Today, many — especially the most educated — allow that we all have notions of true and false, right and wrong, but that no one can claim anything is really the truth.

It is a hopeful sign, then, is that one 20th-century martyr made an extraordinary journey through modern uncertainties, and not only embraced, but was willing to die for the truth of the Catholic Faith.

Edith Stein was born to a well-off Jewish family in Breslau, Germany. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother was a very devout Jew and powerful woman. Edith early showed exceptional intelligence and, when few women pursued higher education, enrolled at the university. Along the way, she had lost her childhood Jewish faith, but her studies were to lead her to quite an unexpected rediscovery of God. [Continue]

Edith Stein — Convert, Nun, Martyr

Edith Stein is one of those people whose entire life seems to be a sign. She was born on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, in 1891 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), the youngest of eleven children in a devout Jewish family.

When she was not yet two years old her father died suddenly, leaving Edith’s mother to raise the seven remaining children (four had died in childhood) and to manage the family business. Brought up on the Psalms and Proverbs, Stein considered her mother a living example of the strong woman of Proverbs 31, who rises early to care for her family and trade in the marketplace. By her teenage years, Stein no longer practiced her Jewish faith and considered herself an atheist, but she continued to admire her mother’s attitude of total openness toward God. [Continue]

More:
Carmelite Saints – The Life of Edith Stein
Edith Stein: A Brilliant Scholar Called to Share in Both the Virtue and Martyrdom of Christ
Women for Faith and Family – Saint Edith Stein (includes collect prayer, reading, and homily from canonization by John Paul II)
Association of Hebrew Catholics