Ordinariate, the Baldwins and Québec . . . quite a combination . . . quite a week!

Following the momentous election in Québec this week I had an interesting exchange with a relative who drew my attention to the following article about a fanatically anti-Catholic 19th century Anglican bishop, Maurice Baldwin, a family relation on my wife's side. He once served a church in Montreal.

My relative pointed me to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography article with the following note and link:

Do you know this Baldwin?

Biography of Maurice Baldwin

Regards, M.

The article gave me a chance to explain to family and friends something about Canadian history as it connects with our decision to enter the Ordinariate and to open a wider discussion as Jane and I prepare for a pilgrimage this July to Québec City, D.V. 

As previously noted on this blog, we hope to visit the Holy Door of the Cathedral Notre-Dame de Québec for the 350th Jubilee of the Church in Quebec. Québec has been honoured with the first and only Holy Door outside of Europe.

I also want to encourage all our Canadian friends as well as Americans, Brits and others to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Door. 

Show your support for our Québecois brothers and sisters who have clearly voted that they want to maintain the Canadian federation.  

Show your support for the Catholic witness which is renewing the culture and life of  La Belle Province and give their economy a boost.

This is a great opportunity to re-connect bringing Canada together in the spirit of faith. 

With the kind permission of Cardinal Lacroix, I am hoping to celebrate the Ordinariate Use Mass on Saturday, July 5 in the cathedral - details later. 

Here is a contact link for those interested in exploring a pilgrimage or visit:

Notre-Dame de Québec - 350th Jubilee Pilgrimage

Finally . . . here is my response to the article sent by M., my relative. 

Dear M,

Thanks for your note which gives me an opportunity to "sound off".

I didn't know Maurice Baldwin personally, and though I am a great deal older than you, I was a little young in the 19th century. However, I certainly knew of him and his notorious anti-Oxford Movement sentiments. I think if we'd met he might have challenged me to a duel.

On this one, I would have to side with Bishop John Strachan (who refused to ordain him) and your ancestor, the Hon. Robert Baldwin, both of whom would have known Maurice B. well.

The Hon. Robert Baldwin, co-premier of Canada

The Rt. Rev. John Strachan, 1st Anglican bishop of Toronto 

Both Strachan and Robert Baldwin were sympathetic to the leaders of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Maurice Baldwin's opponents. These leaders included: Blessed John Henry Newman (later received into the full communion of the Catholic Church), Edward Pusey (Oxford scholar, founder and supporter of Anglican religious communities for monks and nuns) and John Keble, the great Anglo-Catholic poet, famous for his "Assize Sermon" excoriating British parliamentarians for "national apostasy". In the words of John Lennon to a police officer in the movie "HELP":  "Great train robbery, eh . . . how's that 'goin then?" 

These were the "good guys" of the Oxford Movement. Newman and others were seeking to bring Anglicans into full communion with the Catholic Church . . . which has now finally been achieved with the Ordinariate over 100 years later, pace Maurice Baldwin and company.

You likely know that Robert Baldwin's daughter, Maria, entered into full communion with the Catholic Church in Québec City where she was educated by the Ursuline Sisters (their foundress St. Marie de L'Incarnation was just canonized by Pope Francis this past month). 

We plan to visit her Ursuline convent in Québec in July when we make the 350th Jubilee Pilgrimage to the Holy Door of Notre-Dame-de-Quebéc, D.V..  

Robert, of course, was the great friend and co-premier with Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, a trusted friend of the Québecois and very  sympathetic to Catholicism. 

In fact, the Orange Order (boo, hiss) managed to defeat him once because of his Catholic sympathies in an election in which he was running in a York riding. Robert Baldwin promptly stood in a Québec riding and won handily with the support of French and Irish Catholic voters.

You probably know that there is a Robert-Baldwin Riding in Montreal, where he is still held in great regard. The riding, like so many, went to the federalists on Monday. Robert would have been smiling at the election result while chatting warmly with Blessed John Henry Newman et. al. in Jerusalem the Golden, with milk and honey blest!

Maurice B. may be somewhere a bit cooler . . . according to Dante anyway.

Thanks for the chance to share my moderate opinions. I shall pass this along to some interested parties and American friends whom I am 'tutoring' in Canadian history . . . "round up the usual suspects."

JH

A Benedictine conversation about the election in Quebec

From Dom Charles Gilman, o.s.b.April 7, 2014

Dear friends,Tonight Philippe Couillard became the Premier of Québec and his party, the Liberal Party of Québec, has a comfortable majority of seats in the Legislature for a four year mandate. They are the federalist party.  In other words, they are happy for Québec to be part of Canada.

Dr. Philippe Couillard, new premier of Quebec

I was moved to tears when our new Premier said in his speech tonight that "the time of division is over, now begins the time of reconciliation." He held out a very big welcome to all of us who have moved here from outside Québec and told us that we are at home.  One only has to live here for a time to know that the separatists want to sow the seeds of prejudice against everyone who is not a native born francophone Québecois.  I know the reality of this very real prejudice.

Pauline Marois resigned this evening as the head of the separatist Parti Québecois.  She was not re-elected in her own district as a member of the Provincial legistature.  This is one of the worst defeats ever for the PQ.  They sowed the seeds of their own destruction in calling this election and in the way they conducted themselves during it.  The reactions that I saw this evening in their leaders were the reactions of enraged ideological fanatics.

Needless to say I am very happy with the outcome of this election.  It gives me hope for the future including that of my own community.

God bless,Chip (aka Fr. Charles)St. Benôit-du-lac, Québec, CANADA

St. Benôit-du-lac

To: Dom Charles S GilmanApr 8, 2014

Deo gratias, Father,  I am so pleased for you, for my brother and his family in W. Quebec and for all our confreres in the province and Canada.  

My prayer is that the forces of faith and virtue will overcome the darkness of the PQ vision of isolation and prejudice once and for all. 

On a personal note, I see that the federalist forces were victorious in my home riding of Pontiac and in the riding of Robert-Baldwin (Montreal West Island) named for the great Canadian patriot and champion of Responsible Government.

Robert Baldwin with Louis H. LaFontaine were co-premiers of the first government of the united Canadas in the 1840s. The riding is named for him because of the great respect they had and continue to have for him in French Canada. 

When his colleague, LaFontaine, needed a seat in the legislature Baldwin supported his run in York (Toronto area) and then later, after the Orange Order defeated him by nefarious means, he ran himself in Rimouski, Quebec where, as an anglophone, Robert Baldwin was elected by French Canadians. 

All of this was accomplished with little violence between the French and others.  It has been said: "This non-violent tradition we owe to Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, who refused to abandon principle, and who walked away from retribution."  J.R. Saul

Let us pray that the new premier and his government will follow their example of principle and justice.

Robert Baldwin is my daughters' great X 4 grandfather on their mother's side. He was a devout Anglican and I am sure his prayers are with the new premier of Quebec.

JH
Fr. John L. Hodgins, 

St. Thomas More Catholic Church,

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St.  Peter, 

Toronto, ON

St. Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church, Brampton and Ukraine - The Lord will rebuild!

Many in Toronto were saddened this weekend with the loss to fire of the beautiful St. Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church building, a structure built in the traditional Eastern tradition.

The faithful people of St. Elias will rally with the wider Catholic community and others to re-build. There is, however, a great sense of loss and much time and energy will be required to re-establish the pattern of worship which has characterized this devout congregation with many young singers and attracting Catholics from around the city.

Some of our parishioners have attended St. Elias as have a number of former Anglicans now in the Ordinariate, sensing a kindred spirit with our non-Roman but fully Catholic co-religionists.

Having recently gone through a fire at the school chapel where I worked, I know something of the time and disruption caused.  Our prayers are with our brothers and sisters in Brampton as indeed we pray also for the people of Ukraine as they seek to establish their nation on a firm and independent footing.

LENT 5 – PASSION SUNDAY STM, TORONTO APRIL 6, 2014

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live.”  John 11: 25

In the face of what many modern people find to be the most challenging Christian doctrine – the resurrection of the dead – today’s Gospel begins with details about a particular situation, in a particular location with particular friends of Jesus. Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary.  

In the particularity which speaks of detail and of humanity, we are told at the beginning of John 11 that it was this Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus,  who had anointed our Lord's feet in a foreshadowing of his death. (John 11:2) 

Jesus’ disciples then raise their very human concern with death, warning Jesus against returning to Judea. Thomas even predicts that they will “die with Him” if they go back. These are specific people in very specific and challenging situations.

When Lazarus is raised, St. John, the beloved disciple, reports that his tombstone is taken away. John also records Lazarus’ burial cloths and head covering. These are all details that he later reports from Jesus’ empty tomb. (John 20:1,6,7)

This connection to the details of death means that Jesus is connected to us – to our humanity, our vulnerability and our death. We are his beloved friends as Lazarus is his friend. Since we are his friends who have been baptized into his death which he shares with us, we also share, by grace, his resurrection.

Like the blind man in last week’s Gospel, Lazarus represents all humanity – our humanity. He represents all who will die – everyone. Lazarus is a specific example that Jesus loves all of us and that he wants to liberate all from sin and death.

St. John also recalls the blind man in his account read today ( John 11:37). Like the man’s birth in blindness, Lazarus’s death, the difficult fact which challenges our faith, is interpreted by Jesus to reveal “the glory of God”. (John 9:3)  Jesus’ words and deeds give us insight, insight for those who believe: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:40).

When we believe, we see that Jesus loves each of us in particular just as he loves Lazarus. We see that Jesus calls us out of death and into new life. 

In the economy of salvation we are not prevented from falling into sin and death but Jesus redeems us and raises us individually from death, if we put our faith in him.

By his raising of Lazarus and by his own Resurrection, Jesus has fulfilled Ezekiel’s promise in today’s First Reading. Jesus has opened the graves so that we rise with him.  

He has given us his Spirit so that we may live now and forever with him. This is the Holy Spirit that Paul writes of in today’s Epistle. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead gives life to us who were once dead in sin.

Faith and its sacraments, the particular graces of the Church for each of us, are the key. We believe, as Martha does, that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. 

We sing that with the Lord there is forgiveness and salvation. The Psalmist assures us: “O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy.”

“I have promised and I will do it,” God assures us in the reading from Ezekiel.

We live by sharing his life of grace, by sharing in Christ's body at Mass and by living in grace, serving Jesus in and through others, other particular people whom we encounter on our path to Jerusalem, the Golden.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live.” 

Holy Week and Easter at St. Thomas More Catholic Church, Toronto

St. Isidore of Seville, Doctor of the Church (560 - 636) – a patron saint of learning

St. Isidore of Seville 

Isidore was born in Seville in about 560 and after his father’s death he was educated by his brother Leander, Archbishop of Seville. He was instrumental in converting the Visigothic kings from the Arian heresy which all but swamped the Catholic Church with the belief that Jesus was a creation of God, not God Incarnate.  Varieties of Arian thinking persist to this day.

St. Isidore was made Archbishop of Seville after his brother’s death; and he took a prominent part in councils at Toledo and Seville.

The Council of Toledo laid great emphasis on learning, with all bishops in the kingdom commanded to establish seminaries and to encourage the teaching of Greek and Hebrew, law and medicine.

The ancient institutions and classic learning of the Roman Empire were fast disappearing when Isidore was ordained. In Spain a new civilization was beginning to evolve itself from the blending racial elements that made up its population.

For almost two centuries the Goths had been in full control of Spain, and their contempt of learning threatened to put back her progress in civilization.

Realizing that the spiritual as well as the material well-being of the nation depended on the full assimilation of the foreign elements, St. Isidore worked to weld together the various peoples who made up the Hispano-Gothic kingdom.

Arianism, which had taken deep root among the Visigoths as, as mentioned, defeated. Isidore promoted the study of Aristotle. This was long before the Arabs discovered him and seven centuries before 13th-century medieval Christian philosophers, Aquinas and others recovered the work of Aristotle.

Isidore was the first Christian writer to compile a summa of universal knowledge.  His encyclopedia summarized all learning known to the time. In it many fragments of classical learning are preserved which otherwise would be lost.

Isidore was the last of the ancient Christian Philosophers, the last of the great Latin Fathers. He had immeasurable influence on the educational life of the Middle Ages.

Once you were in darkness

FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT     Homily at STM - Toronto 

Laetare/ Mothering Sunday

March 30, 2014 

“Once you were in darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of the Light.”            Ephesians 5

Laetare or “Mothering Sunday” (as it is known in the English Catholic tradition) is a moment of light in the midst of the Lenten journey. Laetare means “be joyful” and comes from the incipit of the Introit Psalm at Mass, "Laetare Jerusalem" (O be joyful, Jerusalem).  

Traditionally the Church uses rose coloured vestments to focus on the joy that arises from the hope visible to all who will look for and see the mercy of God.

Our way of seeing, unaided by grace, is not God’s vision. The OT reading and the Gospel illustrate this for us today in reference to human vision.

First, by human estimation the elder sons of Jesse appear to be the candidates for the kingship but this vision is not in accord with the will of God and so is not the Vision of God. 

The light shines on David, the youngest and least likely candidate for kingship in the human view but God looks upon the heart and soul.

In the Gospel, Jesus shows us how a blind man comes to see but the Pharisees, those who claim to know the law and the right path, are blind. 

The blind man represents all humanity. “Born totally in sin”, as those around him say, Jesus helps him to become  a new creation through the saving power of God.

Scripture lyrically describes how God fashioned humanity from the clay of the earth as the poetry of Genesis tells us (Genesis 2:7). In parallel with this ancient story, Jesus gives the blind man new life by anointing his eyes with clay (John 9:11).

God breathed the spirit of life and movement into the first human (H’adam) and so the blind man is not healed until, moved by the Holy Spirit, he washes in the waters of Siloam, a name that means “Sent.”

Jesus is “sent” by God, the Father to do God’s will (John 9:4; 12:44) and with life-giving water, the Holy Spirit brings us into the Light at our Baptism ( John 4:10; 7:38-39).

In the Exodus story we see the Holy Spirit shedding light upon God’s chosen king, David.  A shepherd, like Moses before him (Exodus 3:1; Psalm 78:70-71), David is also a sign pointing to the Good Shepherd, the king who is coming – Jesus (John 10:11).

The Lord is our shepherd, we sing in Psalm 23. By his life, death and resurrection Jesus has made a path for us through the valley of the shadow of death, the valley of sin and despair, and so he leads us to the verdant pastures of the kingdom of light which is the Church, the Church Expectant and Triumphant.

In the waters of Baptism God refreshes our souls. He anoints our heads with the oil of Confirmation and spreads the Eucharistic table before us, filling our cups to overflowing. 

“My cup runneth over; surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord, forever.”   Ps 23

As Jesus called the man born blind to sight, we too are called into the light where we see by assured means of divine grace mediated to us in the Sacraments of Baptism, Confession and the Holy Eucharist. In Lent we are called to examine ourselves in the Light of the Lord and to confess our sins so that we can continue walking in the light of the resurrection.

We can say with the once-blind man as we enter God’s house to give praise and to renew our vows at Easter, we say with him:  “I do believe, Lord.”

“The Lord looks into the heart,” we hear today. Let Him find us, as St. Paul advises in today’s Epistle, living as “children of light” - trying always to learn what is pleasing to our Father.

1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13;
 Psalm 23:1-6; 
Ephesians 5:8-14; 
John 9:1-41