"We could only find the worm in the apple so perfect, suspect that this unusual appearance of perfection hid the severity and depth of evil"
John Cheever Publisher: Joelle Losfeld
Published: 05/15/2008
The morning of October 20, 1958, wearing the hat and putting on the Roman long black comforter we went to the beads, as beautiful as a sun that is made in Rome in October, we walked almost to the tail-leu-leu, which started from the streets Campo dei Fiori for we go to Piazza Argentina where the bus was to take us to the gates of the Lateran for the opening of the Institute Jesus Magister. Not bus this morning in the Piazza. Instead, open trucks followed another for passengers. There were "sciopero" ie transport strike which was to write to Lionel, aka Brother Jean-Pierre "So standing in a Roman chariot ... we first crossed the path that would lead us to the doors of science. "( 1)
Everything was beautiful. Too good to be true. I was in Rome, the most fascinating cities to see and experience the heart of his heart, it pulsates with lasting memories.
I was enrolled at the Lateran, the most prestigious Catholic university, to be followed for three years during which I dreamed theology without yet believe.
I was surrounded by brothers, all imbued with the same ambitions of knowledge and radiating a joyous camaraderie of brotherhood enamel.
It was fine, everything was fine, I saw myself as the pampered child of the opportunity, the spoiled baby of Providence.
Yet, while all shone without, in my heart raged deep darkness. I was plagued by a nagging doubt. God was there and what god? Revelation? A projection of the mind? Nothing less.
A small issue date and place of birth, and with the same faith and the same doubts I participated in the bloodshed from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan where you could tell me like Bishop Remi in Clovis, "Curve Sicambrian your head proud, love what you have burned and burn what thou hast adored."
What is the duration of the eternal God? Which multiple images of God is the best? The god of today will be there again tomorrow? Why him sacrifice his life? ...
I flounder.
and vocation? The eternal times I had to do with each recollection of the month they were no obvious sign that I had the wrong path? I was not born to holiness or to the type of perfection centered on the renunciation of everything I tried. Some are color blind or do not about the mathematical genius or that of music. Wanting to make mathematicians or musicians would tempt fate or impossible. Perhaps it is the same with the spiritual sense. Bad start in life, it was too late to engage in reverse?
And life has a meaning? Demonstrated how far extended relativity by Einstein? I could not see absolute truth on which to anchor my quest for meaning. And followed all the myriad banners of disappointment, frustration already accumulated good batteries at the dawn of my thirties. These internal wrangling my appetite for life. Often times, I wanted to wake me death fell asleep!
I have seen Jesus as a Magister court cut the Gordian knot, which indicates no possibility of retreat, the way that all facades unmask the true and false, which separate the solid wacky The rock of sand, and Chinese lanterns real ray of light thrown by a real sun.
The truth, a truth, she will forge slowly during these clashes were numerous, as in a chess game, to penetrate the lines of protection of the adversary and to imprison his absolute , his king, in a final checkmate? The result of this match he will set me up well for me in the universe, in time, in life, in my life? That was the challenge of three years in Rome. I had hoped without much hope.
I once read that a guru was greeted a newcomer eager, willing to serve unconditionally. The place occupied by the guru was a mess. The young neophyte proposed to put order. He asks: "What do I do? I'm ready for anything . The guru said, "You see gallery there? Take it up, sit at least ten minutes on each of these boards until you've found your place, the best place, that your best comfort. "
After one hour, one day a week, the ardent neophyte, whose energies were wearing out and do nothing, returned to the master guru to ask him a task more urgent and useful. Each time he received the same answer: " Returns on the porch, when you've found your place, you really will know and only then you can effectively serve me."
Like the rich young man of the Gospel, no one knows what happened after a week or a month to the ardent neophyte.
This dish made me realize the importance above all to be good about yourself, to find the world a comfortable place.
theology at the Institut Jesus Magister, gleaming in all its new formula was also a worm that was eating into the silence of his nights and his between-row fruit that had taken centuries to mature.
These two words, and all that followed the speech delivered in Latin in the style of Cicero, seem to summarize the history of the creation of Jesus Magister.
Let me explain. BROTHER Brother Anselmo was the brother of the Christian Schools, the first non-clerical religious community assets, and dedicated to education of youth. This congregation founded in Reims in 1685 (4) created a new way of living consecration to God and has brought in famous peaks. One need only mention the universities, schools of high prestige created by the FEC to be convinced. Several brothers who have pierced the armor of anonymity belong to this congregation. It is believed here to Lockwell brother Clement, novelist, and Brother Marie-Victorin, founder of the Montreal Botanical Garden (5).
The reverse of this quality that leads to the heights of excellence, c ' is envy. The envy of the poor often pernicious as the Super-rich can be nauseating. In time, all male carriers cassock, not clerics, contemplative apart, were part of another class of religious, located on a bottom rung on the ladder of the Catholic hierarchy. To poor beggars or petty bourgeois in an assembly of nobles church.
A mother dreamed of having a son a priest. Especially the mothers of the high. I never heard of a mother who would have dreamed of having a son brother.
Between brothers and priests had slipped a sneaky rivalry. It is still nearby vocations. We strutted the deeds and institutions. Although not explicit, the pride of the brothers (some brothers) was showing particular interest are the bearers of belts bearing violet or purple that the brothers could do as well as clerics. A faculty of theology up by the brothers and the brethren in Rome in the Lateran was the ultimate who commanded that his words in Latin dress that morning, at the opening of Jesus Magister .
All these students, they were Italian, English, Vietnamese, Colombian or even English, included French better than Latin. And brother Anselmo spoke very well. But Latin had class. Decorum of ecclesiastical and clerical nobility seemed to require.
How did we respond to this reception? First with the fun. We gave Ave frater by it, and Ave fratres and there, we garrocha Latin phrases drawn from the pink pages of our dictionary we had a teacher once made to learn by heart or quotes from Cicero and Livy had inserted a sly in Latin-French dictionaries to help the " the Poor" students who had to spend their tank. Phrases like: "Si vis pacem para bellum" (free translation " If you want peace, go in a balloon ") or "Do Vestem pauperis" (in free translation " Gives jacket peupére ") or" Alea jacta is "or" In vino veritas " etc.. we had learned from our forays into the vineyards of the Latin culture.
This made me realize how much fun, the magic of osmosis, we were away from this obsession of power and prestige facades that seemed animate the brother Anselmo and please the major superiors of congregations who had consented to the creation of Jesus Magister.
standard of a world of rule and jurisdiction already gone or endangered.
We also realized that Latin was not so barbaric as that. After two or three courses in Latin, our ears quickly unmasking French and simultaneous translation was very acceptable.
After some time however, there was pressure for French dominates. It was not a big advantage. It we were easier to identify concepts expressed in Latin as well controlled in a French modulated chugging. Most teachers had a better practice of Latin than French.
So the pawn put forward by White (tradition), is easily countered by blacks (rebels). Ridicule kills sometimes.
The anti-modernist oath
After the monologue's brother Anselmo, we are in the Aula Magna (the Great Hall) of the Lateran University where we met the teachers and students the four faculties of the University. After the speeches-all in Latin, of course-from the tops of the Catholic upper crust, it was read in Latin the anti-modernist oath students and professors in Catholic universities around the world had to swear at the beginning of each year Since the publication of the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis by Pope Pius X, September 1, 1907.
We have not seen it coming. This ritual gives us a little stunned and pensive. Modernism! It is to breathe deeply and without the slightest remorse. Any new idea was then Welcome and aired without restraint. Why the anti-modernist oath? What is modernism?
Modernism is defined as the culture during the Industrial Revolution which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, has transformed the economy of the Western world as well as its political and social. It was not a doctrine or a philosophy but a trend, a mindset, a kind of blow of heart for all that was new, unpublished, in cultural expression as a literary and musical or pictorial.
In philosophy, early century, they began to look up on the scholastic and pay attention to the representations of the world fell for the existence rather than those based on the essence of all things. The moment, accidents, equipment, time spent before the eternal and the spiritual. Another world, the modern world was born in the West of the industrial revolution. We cheered.
This new thinking, without clearly defined doctrine became popular among all classes of society. Some clerics and theologians it did the promoters. Anime best of intentions they wanted, not bothering to challenge the Church nor dogma, nor to doubt of Revelation. They wanted to make the Church closer to this new world she had a mission to evangelize, to refine the understanding of Revelation in the scriptures applying the rules faced by the exegesis of ancient texts, refine the practice of faith Christian releasing the original meaning of the sacraments, connecting the dogmas promulgated by the Church to the sources of Revelation, etc..
whole structure of the Church to its foundations firmly rooted in tradition felt threatened by these ants glean, eager for revival: the inspiration of the Bible, human and divine Jesus and the Gospels, statements of faith in the dogmas promulgated, the divine origin of the sacraments, the supremacy of the Church on the State, that the spiritual over the temporal, and whatnot?
The opening paragraph of the encyclical says a lot about the state of panic who had seized the church at that time.
1. A mission that was entrusted to us from above to feed the flock of the Lord Jesus Christ has assigned a primary duty of keeping with jealous care the traditional deposit of faith against the profane novelties of language as contradictions of false science. Zero age, no doubt, that such vigilance will be necessary to the Christian people, for he never failed, raised by the enemy of mankind, to men speaking perverse (1), new tellers and deceivers ( 2), subject to error and leading to error (3). But it must be admitted, the number grew strangely in recent times, enemies of the Cross of Jesus Christ, with all new art and supremely treacherous, trying to undo the vital energy of the Church, and even if they could reverse from top to bottom the reign of Jesus Christ. Keep silent no longer appropriate, if we want not to appear unfaithful to our most sacred duties, and that goodness which we have spent so far, in the hope of amendment, is accused of forgetting our load. Pascendi # 1
The opening paragraph of the encyclical says a lot about the state of panic who had seized the church at that time.
1. A mission that was entrusted to us from above to feed the flock of the Lord Jesus Christ has assigned a primary duty of keeping with jealous care the traditional deposit of faith against the profane novelties of language as contradictions of false science. Zero age, no doubt, that such vigilance will be necessary to the Christian people, for he never failed, raised by the enemy of mankind, to men speaking perverse (1), new tellers and deceivers ( 2), subject to error and leading to error (3). But it must be admitted, the number grew strangely in recent times, enemies of the Cross of Jesus Christ, with all new art and supremely treacherous, trying to undo the vital energy of the Church, and even if they could reverse from top to bottom the reign of Jesus Christ. Keep silent no longer appropriate, if we want not to appear unfaithful to our most sacred duties, and that goodness which we have spent so far, in the hope of amendment, is accused of forgetting our load. Pascendi # 1
After denouncing the major modernists and insinuations in these items recalled the truths of faith proclaimed by the Church, the Pope orders drastic measures to curb its root in the modernist error.
Among these measures, he commanded by " motu proprio" any cleric seeking to prepare for the priesthood and all students and teachers in Catholic universities to pay annually the anti-modernist oath.
He commanded the bishops to denounce the Roman curia any writing that evokes modernist ideas or evidence sympathies towards them. Thus, in Quebec, Bishop Archambault, first bishop of Joliette, condemned Dr. Albert Laurendeau (grandfather of the journalist André Laurendeau) for publishing in 1911 without imprimatur, his evolutionary synthesis (Life - Considerations biological) that has tainted view of evolutionary concepts put forward by Darwin.
In addition, we began to I ndex all writings that were suspected of sympathies to the modern concepts.
With regard to studies, he wrote: "We want and ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences . In the next paragraph he adds: "That doctorate in theology and canon law not be conferred on people who fail to follow the regular course of scholastic philosophy; conferred, it is held to be void and of no value.
And, recalling Leo XIII, it prohibits anything that bears the stamp of novelty:
" We can not approve, in the writings of Catholic a language, based on a unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful, and speaks of the new order of Christian life, new doctrines of the Church, new needs of the Christian soul, of new social vocation of the clergy, a new Christian civilization, and things like that. (PG28). they do not suffer from these things in books or in the course professors.
modern personality
Among some of the most famous theologians who have been in trouble starting with the anti-modernism of the Inquisition we notice: Alfred Loisy , priest. It is undoubtedly the main headline of the modernist thesis. Refusing to recant it will be excommunicated from the publication of Gospel and Church in 1907.
Albert Lagrange, (1855-1938) First suspected of modernist sympathies, he managed to avoid conviction and be the Director of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, famous for his studies the Bible. The school will publish in 1956 the Holy Bible that has translated from Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic by applying the strictest rules of exegesis.
Henri de Lubac, a Jesuit. He was forbidden to write by his superior 
general. It will be rehabilitated by Pope John XXIII who made a cardinal and father of Vatican II.
general. It will be rehabilitated by Pope John XXIII who made a cardinal and father of Vatican II. The faith of Christians then formed to set the Council of Trent, synthesized in the diocesan catechisms was it really threatened by modernist theologians developed? The anti-modernist oath he managed to put the lid on the modernist thesis? In 2008, the arguments advanced by Loisy are they always wrong? Pope Pius X he saved the Church?
I did not matter jurisdiction to address these issues.
I must admit that in 1958 the Catholic University of Sacro-Lateran, the anti-modernist oath seemed to be more a formality, a kind of vaccine "in case" a shield against real poisoned arrows.
I do not think he noticed that the professor was teaching a distorted or compressed by any clause of the oath or the anti-modernist encyclical Pascendi. I do not remember having studied this encyclical or may have been mentioned in any of the courses I took, both in Dogmatic History of the Church or even Scripture.
had been understood as both sides that it was better to be silent than risk being sued or having to continue.
The obligation imposed on the anti-modernist oath Catholic universities was abolished by Pope Paul VI in 1967.
For me, who was full of prejudices about the scholastic Thomism, the philosophy of avant-garde and pretty nice to anything that was new, I pronounced the oath of the lip, what many have the Inquisition had done when its lit bonfires in Europe or the witch hunt was in the American sports.
I retain, however, barely three months after the start of classes at Jesus Magister, Pope John XXIII announced the holding of a council with the task of rejuvenating the face of the Church and to remove the wrinkles that had accumulated over the centuries.
studies quite avant-garde began to circulate without being denounced. Their authors were the true fathers of the council. They had names for Liege, Congar, Chenu, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Marc Prayer, Hans Kung, Henri De Lubac and many others.
Modernism was a wave, a wave that changed profoundly Western culture in the twentieth century. This wave first provoked opposition from the Church everything that was new. This opposition was followed by intense research by the theologians of Vatican II made the most important source of renewal of the Church that she has known, the starting point for rejuvenation and deepening unprecedented of the Christian faith. Vatican II will be the emergence of a new church, far and in many ways far ahead of all modernist movements condemned by it at the beginning of the century.
On my board, the anti-Modernist oath was a blow salty traditionalists (white), but the replica BLACK (the rebels) was absolutely fantastic. At the Institute Jesus Magister, despite an absolutely traditionalist, without fanfare, there was a leaven of renewal implanted in the minds of students that pierced the walls of the hallowed institution.
In the bath of the excitement in my Christian faith was reinvigorated for a moment. My doubts chronic fell silent. The BLACK enjoyed a slight advantage. However the game was not won. There are other pieces to play.
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1) See p. Lionel ... a life 104
2) Buridan Donkey (hesitating, perplexed as Buridan's ass). As someone who is sought with equal force to both sides at once and who knows what to do.
3) Some statistics were published in The Voice No. 1959 under the signature of brother Maximian on enrollment of the first students. Click JM
4) The Christian Brothers were founded in the late seventeenth century, well before all the other congregations of teaching brothers.
5) Other congregations of teaching brothers will be based until the early nineteenth century, in 1821 for Brothers of the Sacred Heart .
6) A document "motu proprio " applies mainly to documents under the pope's own initiative without involving the Sacred College or any other authority in the Church.
7) Having been lectured repeatedly for his writings which were inspired by the literary critic Alfred Loisy was excommunicated and condemned for refusing to withdraw after the publication of " The Gospel and the Church . Alfred Loisy is the main piece and the symbol of modernist theses condemned by the Church. For more details on his other writings and the circumstances of his excommunication click here.
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ephemeris Maximian
Brother Lawrence SC Normandin, aka Brother SC Maximian was among the pioneers of the eight brothers of the Sacred Heart enrolled for three or four years Studies in Religious Sciences Jesus Magister at the Institute of the Lateran University in Rome in 1958. During these years, Maximian brother wrote her diary regularly. As he made the voyage from Montreal to Liverpool with us (brother Raymond and myself) on the Empress of Britain ,
the scraps of his desk he gives us here, complete and Fortunately specify the account of this voyage that I published in serial No. 21 of my memoirs.
Brother Normandin, still in service, is currently agent Pastorale High School in Sherbrooke.
Cordial thank you to Lawrence, so warmly aka Bo-Max, for this important and generous contribution in memory of those times that we have made.
Florian
(To access ÉPÉMÉRIDES ... click here
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Next issue: # 24 - The understanding of faith
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