Pope Francis - Quotations from an address on the Family - HOLY FAMILY SUNDAY, STM TORONTO

QUOTATIONS FROM A RECENT ADDRESS GIVEN BY POPE FRANCIS

“The crisis in the family has produced an ecological crisis, for social environments, like natural environments, need protection. And although the human race has come to understand the need to address conditions that menace our natural environments, we have been slower to recognize that our fragile social environments are under threat as well, slower in our culture, and also in the Catholic Church. It is therefore essential that we foster a new human ecology.”

“It is necessary first to promote the fundamental pillars that govern a nation: its non-material goods.  The family is the foundation of co-existence and a remedy against social fragmentation.  Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.

The Holy Father goes on to say: “That is why I stressed in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium that the contribution of marriage to society is “indispensable”; that it “transcends the feelings and momentary needs of the couple.” (n. 66)

POPE FRANCIS WITH MSGR. STEENSON, OUR ORDINARY

The Church affirms that at the heart of the family is the beauty of complementarity between man and woman in marriage.  This is not a cultural or social construct but is foundational to human flourishing.

Pope Francis again: “Do not fall into the trap of being swayed by political notions. Family is an anthropological fact – a socially and culturally related fact. We cannot qualify it based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history. We can’t think of conservative or progressive notions. Family is a family.”

Pope Francis:  “I urge you to lift up yet another truth about marriage: that permanent commitment to solidarity, fidelity and fruitful love responds to the deepest longings of the human heart.  I urge you to bear in mind especially the young people, who represent our future. Commit yourselves, so that our youth do not give themselves over to the poisonous environment of the temporary, but rather be revolutionaries with the courage to seek true and lasting love, going against the common pattern.”

English language translation of Pope Francis' Italian address, delivered on November 17, 2014 in the Vatican Synod Hall, at the Colloquium on the complementarity of Man and Woman.

CELEBRATE THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

Mystic Nativity

ST. THOMAS MORE, TORONTO

Holy Family Sunday – Sung Mass

 Dec. 28  -  1:45 p.m.

MUSIC: Byrd: Mass for Four Voices,

O Magnum Mysterium

Mary, Mother of God – Vigil Mass

Wednesday, Dec. 31  -  5:00 p.m.

MUSIC: Victoria, Missa Dixit Maria;

Byrd, Beata Virgo

Mystic Nativity by Botticelli

Our thanks to Peter Mahon and the Parish Choir for their outstanding efforts this Christmas season. They have truly assisted us in the praise of our incarnate Lord and inspired us in the service of God and our brothers and sisters.  Many thanks all.

A Letter from Miguel

During Advent some of us entered into an agreement to pray the Novena of Our Lady Undoer of Knots.

In my work as a hospital chaplain I have gotten to know a boy who is very prayerful though suffering from cancer. For the sake of his privacy we will call him Guillermo.  

At the same time a number of us have been working to bring back to Canada a man who was refused asylum here and had to return to Mexico to reapply. That was two and a half years ago.
". . . the laws delay"  as Shakespeare numbered it amongst the trials of this world. 

We have been praying for both Miguel and Guillermo and ask people to continue to share in the Novena or rosary for their intentions/

Following is a letter sent by Miguel:

Good morning Father John, of course I would be honoured to be a partner in prayer with Guillermo. Once again, a sign that the thought of one's problems are too big are wrong or unfair, there is always someone who lives more difficult and complex situations. Please, Father John, I

appreciate that you give him the following message:

Hi Guillermo, as Father John told you, my name is Miguel and with all due respect, I write the following for you:

There are people in the world that we have never met and may never crossed our paths. But we are indisputably connected by the same humanitarian sentiment, by ties of honour, by ties of righteousness, goodness ties, by ties of love. 

Therefore you should never feel lonely or sad; God has plans for each of us, but sometimes we can not understand or think that they are insignificant, I think that all these projects are chained, are intertwined, for the same and big goal. Only God knows the way each of us and only he knows and decides our today and our tomorrow. 

You must have a lot of faith, because miracles exist and are in the hands of God. With all our heart, my wife Guadalupe  and I, pray to God and the Virgin of Guadalupe for you and your family. This Friday you, my wife and I and all the people who love you, be united in prayer. 

Give a hug to your parents and let them know that we share their feelings, but also share their faith and hope.

God bless you Guillermo.

Miguel

NOVENA WEBSITE

http://archden.org/novena/

Christmas Offerings at STM Toronto

Your offerings at St. Thomas More (STM) support the ministry of Christian Unity, which is at the heart of the mandate of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter (POCSP) as part of the Church’s New Evangelization worldwide.

In 2014 STM was able to continue our commitment to offering the highest level of liturgical music in Toronto from the Anglican and Catholic patrimony.  STM offers weekly Sunday Sung Mass at 1:45 pm and on some Solemnities and days of obligation.  By God’s grace, STM made a modest beginning with BALDWIN ACADEMY, an educational ministry for home-schooling students where qualified teachers focus on tutoring and supplementing home education curricula.  Homeschoolers and other children learn choral music with our children’s choir, ST. THOMAS MORE CHORISTERS, directed by Katharine Pimenoff Mahon. More details about times and locations early in the new year.

In 2015 we hope to maintain and extend the musical and educational ministry of STM with continued focus on patrimonial music and Christian Education in a Catholic context.  Your prayers and financial support are greatly valued as our congregation enters its third year, now as a quasi parish of the POCSP. Ten per cent of offerings go towards supporting the mission and outreach of the POCSP in North America.

Next Sunday, Jan 4 – STM welcomes Fr. Derek Cross, as celebrant and preacher.

Msgr Steenson's writes . . .

Ordinary's Christmas Letter 2014 

Dear People of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter,
In Rome on Christmas Day, 1852, Pope Pius IX received into the Catholic Church Dr. Levi Silliman Ives, the second Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina.  It is a fascinating, little-known story about a courageous soul involved in the Oxford Movement that re-introduced Catholic teaching to Anglican life.

Blessed John Henry Newman was the progenitor of the movement, which was perhaps to have its greatest impact on these shores.  Ives’ theological formation came as this Catholic movement began to influence a new generation of Anglican clergy and laity.  In 1822 he married the daughter of Bishop Hobart of New York; the father must have been pleased, since he ordained him the next year.  In 1831, at the age of 33, he was elected Bishop of North Carolina.


His episcopal career was a difficult one.  The diocese did not welcome his high church ways.  A diocesan commission took up charges that he was teaching confession, transubstantiation, reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the need for Anglicanism to be reunited to the Catholic Church.  Bishop Ives was forced to backtrack and assure the diocese that he was unreservedly Anglican.

But it didn’t work.  One’s conscience cannot survive such convolutions, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience” (¶1790).  In 1852, the bishop asked the standing committee for a sabbatical, for health reasons, and journeyed to Rome.  Perhaps we in the Ordinariate have some sense of his struggles and the relief that came when the decision was finally made.  Three days before the Pope received him, he wrote to his diocese to resign his office so that he might obey his conscience, informed by “clear and settled convictions,” and make his submission to the Catholic Church.  He would later write a moving account of his journey, Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism: A Letter to His Old Friends(1854).

The response from his old friends was not so gracious.  To leave the Episcopal Church back then was regarded as an act of apostasy.  Such converts (turning around) were then called perverts (turning in a bad way).  He was said to be suffering from a form of mental illness: “the bishop had been in a state of mental illness that impaired his judgment.” Thankfully today we are in a (mostly) different place!

Dr. Ives returned to America to teach at an institution that would later become part of Fordham University.  He and his wife had found the peace and joy that full communion brings.  These courageous pioneering souls laid the foundations for the ecumenical progress that would one day come in Anglican-Roman Catholic relationships.  They were the “first fruits” of the work of Christian unity, the legacy that now falls on us to continue.

“This is a strange Christmas letter,” you may be saying.  But his Christmas reception would not be coincidental.  Dr. Ives would find his life’s work in the founding of the Catholic Protectory in the Bronx, the largest Catholic orphanage of its day.  Just as St. Joseph, he would find his vocation in the nurture and care of God’s little children.  In 1867, Dr. Ives died with these words on his lips: “Oh, how good God has been to me!”  He was buried at the Protectory, today St. Raymond’s Cemetery, a wonderful witness to the social and doctrinal integrity of Catholic life.

The Son of God came to share not only his Father’s mind but also his heart.  Dr. Ives’ journey to full communion began as deep theological engagement, but his act of conscience would become a life of service.  And this is how he would be remembered, his work inspiring the foundation of many such orphanages throughout the Catholic Church in America.

Pope Francis spoke in this way of St. Joseph on his feast day this year:  “How does Joseph respond to his calling to be the protector of Mary, Jesus and the Church?  By being constantly attentive to God, open to the signs of God’s presence and receptive to God’s plans, and not simply to his own.”

May God bless you with a joyous and holy Christmas!

Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson

P.S.  Full credit to Prof. William Tighe of Muhlenberg College, who introduced me to Ives’ inspiring story at the time of my conversion. 

SACRED MUSIC FOR CHRISTMAS

NINE LESSONS AND CAROLS WITH BENEDICTION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT

Robert Baldwin - The Great Reformer - A forerunner of the Ordinariate?

Could we say that Robert Baldwin, the nineteenth century architect of the union between colonies in British North American in what was to becmme the united Province of Canada, was a forerunner of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter?

Portrait of the Hon. Robert Baldwin, the Reformer,
a 1st Co-Premier of the united Province of Canada

Were Baldwin's religious views such that he was moving towards unity in religious matters as well as political? 

These intriguing questions have their roots in the life of the Honourable Robert Baldwin (1804 - 1858). Born in Toronto (York) he was a contemporary of John Henry Newman and was, by his own admission, a high church Anglican who was conversant with the ideas of the Oxford Movement as they became known in the British colonies.

Certainly Robert Baldwin, was a lifelong Anglican (technically a member of what was known as the Church of England in Canada at the time). His family had emigrated to North American in 1799 when his father, William Warren Baldwin and grandfather, known as Robert the Emigrant, left County Cork in Ireland.  

The Baldwin family  had long experience co-operating with Catholics in the politics of Ireland. In fact, it was this experience of the Baldwins, many of whom were lawyers and involved in the administration of the Ireland, which moved them to promote what they termed "Responsible Government" i.e. government that was responsible to and/or elected by the population that it served. In the case of Ireland, the vast majority of these folk were Catholics.

The idea of Responsible Government was not pure democracy (if there is such a thing) but it did give the franchise initially to men who owned property and had a material stake in the welfare of their community.  

The closure of the Irish Parliament and the concentration of power at Westminster in England at the close of the 18th Century was the last straw for Robert's grandfather, Robert the Emigrant.  He picked up with his son William Warren Baldwin (The Reformer's father)  and made for Upper Canada (later to become Ontario).  There they hoped to work in the new world for Responsible Government still loyal to the British Crown.

Statue on Parliament Hill, Ottawa:
Robert Baldwin and Louis Lafontaine,
Co-premiers of the Province of Canada 1843 - 1848

Long an opponent of aggressive Protestantism, Baldwin's Secret Societies Bill, sought to outlaw the Orange Order and its political violence. His alliance with Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was more than simply political. They were close friends and because Baldwin did not speak French, he saw to it that his children were all educated in French in Québec. His daughter Marie was reconciled to the Catholic Church following her education at the Ursuline Convent in Québec. She did not marry and nursed Baldwin in his final illness until his death.

Robert Baldwin had become, he told John Ross in December 1853, “rather a High Churchman as I understand the distinction between High and Low Churchman, though I trust without bigotry or intolerance.” (Dictionary of Canadian Biography). His concern was with maintaining the traditional internal government of the church and his insistence on the separation of the Church from the power of the state was, he had argued, necessary to prevent the Church from becoming a political football. 

He did not approve of any democratization of the Church in line with the what the Oxford Movement held: The Church must be governed according to her own apostolic principles and governance. He advocated for the right to Catholic Education against Protestant prejudice and the Orange Order. 

Baldwin worked with both high and low churchmen as president of the Upper Canada Bible Society until 1856.  

Statue of Robert Baldwin
outside the Legislature in Québec City.

All of this and much more Baldwin and his colleagues accomplished with virtually no bloodshed, unlike the what was the case in the  American, French and other republican revolutions. Truly Baldwin was a man committed to unity based upon tradition.  He affirmed the role of the Crown as well as the church as arbiters of continuity. 

We can argue that Baldwin would see the Ordinariate and its witness to unity as a development which he and Newman could support.  Never afraid  to do the principled thing, Baldwin was a great ally of the Catholic Church and of the unity to which she calls us. 

STM Children's Choir to sing for the first time at Sunday Mass - December 21, 1:45 P.M.

Our Lady of Guadaloupe, Blessed John Henry Newman and Untying Knots

This Friday is the Feast of the Queen of the Americas. Catholic churches from the North Pole to the tip of South America will celebrate their Queen and ask for her prayers.

Our Lady of Guadaloupe in Mexico

I will be offering Mass for the intentions of a boy and a man with whom I have been working.  

First, the youngest of the two, who turns thirteen this weekend; I will call him Guillermo (to preserve his confidentiality).  Guillermo (pronounced GEE-AIR-MO with a hard G - Spanish for William) is suffering from advanced stage cancer.  His family is from South America and is very supportive and prayerful. His mother, who is at his side most of the time, goes to daily Mass at noon when she can.

The second man, Miguel, is at the end of a very long bureaucratic process which has required him to leave Canada for two and a half years as the machinery of Immigration grinds on.  His application is to return to Canada to take up a job which he was doing when he first came to Toronto seeking asylum from extortion in Mexico, a situation which saw his brother, a businessman, murdered by criminals.

Miguel was so valued by his employer that this employer has footed his legal costs to return.  Why it has taken more than twice the expected time is a mystery and a knot that needs to be untied.


PARTNERSHIP IN PRAYER
Guillermo and Miguel have agreed to be prayer partners. We are asking that as many people as can join them, attend Mass this Friday (and as many of the following nine days as you can) and offer prayers for Guillermo and Miguel with Our Lady Untier of Knots (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) and Blessed John Henry Newman. 

In the case of Guillermo we are asking for healing -- a miracle from the intercession of Blessed John Henry Newman with Our Lady which would be for his canonization. 

We know that all this is possible with God and though we do not have a relic of Blessed John Henry Newman (if anyone can loan us one we would be grateful) we will be invoking his name and prayers for both our friends.

Pope Francis has been one of the chief promoters of “Our Lady Undoer of Knots.”  As a young man, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was studying in Germany. He was very taken by a Bavarian painting of “Holy Mary, Our Lady Untier of Knots.” He acquired a copy of the painting and brought it to Argentina with him. He promoted devotion to Mary under this title and  apparently it has caught on with the faithful of Argentina. It is interesting that this Marian devotion of Pope Francis is rooted in Bavaria –  a bridge between the Pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI and that of Pope Francis. Some time ago, Cardinal Bergoglio had an image of Our Lady Undoer of Knots engraved into a chalice and presented it to Pope Benedict XVI.

THEOLOGY

Something about the theology surrounding this Marian Devotion, thanks to Dr. Taylor Marshall:

The theology of Mary untying knots goes back to the second century – less than one hundred years after the death of the Apostles. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons wrote “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the Blessed Virgin Mary set free through faith.” (Adversus haereses, 3, 22) This is one of the earliest examples of describing Mary as the “New Eve.” Eve, standing next to Adam, is the “co-peccatrix” (co-sinner) Mary, standing next to Christ crucified, is the “co-redemptrix” (co-redemptress). This does not mean that Mary directly saves or redeems us. It means that Mary consents and participates in the redemptive action of Christ. Her role is congruent and relative to the condign and absolute role of Christ.

Our Lady Undoer of Knots is Patristic and may be the way forward for establishing and expanding Marian theology. The doctrine of Mary’s universal mediation and her subordinate role to Christ in human salvation is beautifully summed up in this saying of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons. The fact that it goes back to the second century reveals that this is not a medieval accretion. It’s a doctrine deriving from the Apostles themselves.

You can share in the Novena to Our Lady Untier of Knots. One form is found here which is easily modified for your own intentions:

Novena: Our Lady Untier of Knots

INVOCATION

PRAYER FOR A MIRACLE

We know that Blessed JHN had a deep and abiding devotion to Our Lady under her many titles. He was a patristic scholar and prayed for the untying of many knots in his very rough journey of faith into the light of unity in the Catholic Church.

The second phase of our partnership in prayer is to offer the following prayer invoking the intercession of Blessed John Henry Newman at Mass and daily prayer for nine days:

God our Father, who granted to thy servant Blessed John Henry Newman wonderful gifts of nature and of grace, that he should be a spiritual light in the darkness of this world, an eloquent herald of the Gospel, and a devoted servant of the one Church of Christ.

With confidence in his heavenly intercession, we make the following petition: [here make your petition]

For his insight into the mysteries of the kingdom, his zealous defence of the teachings of the Church, and his priestly love for each of thy children, we pray that he may soon be numbered among the Saints.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.  AMEN.