A Homily by Father Paul D. Scalia on the Conversion of St. Paul

Caravaggio - "Conversion of St. Paul" - 1601

Homily of Reverend Paul D. Scalia

Pastor

St. John the Beloved Catholic Church

McLean, Virginia

January 25, 2009

The English Concert - "O Sing Unto the Lord a New Song" - Georg Friedrich Händel

The English Concert is a baroque orchestra based in London. Founded in 1972, the orchestra plays on period instruments and has been led by Nadja Zwiener since September 2007.

A Great Web Destination - New English Review

We were humbled and grateful for the following plug today from the New English Review, one of our favorite websites. The very prestigious New English Review is a rich source for the finest scholarship and writing to be found anywhere. We know our readers will also appreciate this superb journal.

The Guid Scotts Tongue

Sunlit Uplands has YouTube videos of this interesting documentary hosted by Robert MacNeil which traces the influence of Scottish and Irish Gaelic on the language and the influence of the Scots-Irish in North America, especially the English spoken in the Appalachian region of the United States.

If you haven't visited Sunlit Uplands before, have a look around. It's a high quality blog with many interesting posts.

League MVP Quits to Become a Priest

Grant Desme discusses decision to become priest

From The San Francisco Chronicle
By Susan Slusser

Outfielder Grant Desme just told reporters on a conference call that he truly felt called to the priesthood and that he will enter a Catholic seminary, St. Michael's Abbey in Orange County, in August.

Desme, the Arizona Fall League MVP, said he has been considering becoming a priest for a year and a half, but he had decided to play last season as almost a test of sorts. His sensational season of Class-A ball, and his fine Fall League, convinced him all the more that he must follow his calling to the church.

"I'm doing well in baseball," he said. "But I had to get down to the bottom of things, to what was good in my life, what I wanted to do with my life. Baseball is a good thing, but that felt selfish of me when I felt that God was calling me more. It took awhile to trust that and open up to it and aim full steam toward him.

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"The Story of English: The Guid Scots Tongue" with Robert MacNeil

Continuing Robert MacNeil's fascinating examination of the history of the English language, this fourth episode traces the influence of Scottish and Irish Gaelic on the language and the influence of the Scots-Irish in North America, especially the English spoken in the Appalachian region of the United States.

Israeli Newspaper on the 'Much-Maligned Pontiff'

From Haaretz
By Dimitri Cavalli

Some things never go away. The controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II was recently reignited when Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree affirming that his predecessor displayed "heroic virtues" during his lifetime. When the pope visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on Sunday, Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community, told him: "The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done."

This was not the first time the wartime pope, who is now a step closer to beatification, has been accused of keeping silent during the Holocaust, of doing little or nothing to help the Jews, and even of collaborating with the Nazis. To what extent, if any, does the evidence back up these allegations, which have been repeated since the early 1960s?

On April 4, 1933, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state, instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies.
On behalf of Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli drafted an encyclical, entitled "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Anxiety"), that condemned Nazi doctrines and persecution of the Catholic Church. The encyclical was smuggled into Germany and read from Catholic pulpits on March 21, 1937.

Although many Vatican critics today dismiss the encyclical as a light slap on the wrist, the Germans saw it as a security threat. For example, on March 26, 1937, Hans Dieckhoff, an official in the German foreign ministry, wrote that the "encyclical contains attacks of the severest nature upon the German government, calls upon Catholic citizens to rebel against the authority of the state, and therefore signifies an attempt to endanger internal peace."

Both Great Britain and France should have interpreted the document as a warning that they should not trust Adolf Hitler or try to appease him.

After the death of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elected pope, on March 2, 1939. The Nazis were displeased with the new pontiff, who took the name Pius XII. On March 4, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, wrote in his diary: "Midday with the Fuehrer. He is considering whether we should abrogate the concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as pope."

During the war, the pope was far from silent: In numerous speeches and encyclicals, he championed human rights for all people and called on the belligerent nations to respect the rights of all civilians and prisoners of war. Unlike many of the pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well. After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: "In a manner never known before the pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report.)

In early 1940, the pope acted as an intermediary between a group of German generals who wanted to overthrow Hitler and the British government. Although the conspiracy never went forward, Pius XII kept in close contact with the German resistance and heard about two other plots against Hitler. In the fall of 1941, through diplomatic channels, the pope agreed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that America's Catholics could support the president's plans to extend military aid to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by the Nazis. On behalf of the Vatican, John T. McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, delivered a well-publicized address that explained that the extension of assistance to the Soviets could be morally justified because it helped the Russian people, who were the innocent victims of German aggression.

Throughout the war, the pope's deputies frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews. Up until Pius XII's death in 1958, many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts. To cite one of many examples, in his April 7, 1944, letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest, wrote: "It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews ... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."

The campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure because his detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him - that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews - with evidence. Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation.


Dimitri Cavalli is an editor and writer in New York City. He is working on books on both Pope Pius XII and Joe McCarthy, the late manager of the New York Yankees.

Jim Lee First to Sign Club for Growth 'Repeal It!' Pledge

Jim Lee, the principled, grassroots conservative candidate challenging Bob Inglis, became the first candidate in the Fourth Congressional District House race to sign the Club For Growth's Repeal It! pledge:

The candidate pledge reads:

"I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government."

Mauldin businessman Jim Lee, the only veteran in the race for the Fourth Congressional District seat, said, "The pledge does not simply represent saying 'No!' to our out-of-control and overreaching federal government. It also represents saying 'Yes!' to work for 'We the People' to develop real solutions that are consistent with the conservative principles of smaller government, fiscal restraint, personal responsibility, and individual liberty. Real solutions that will actually result in lower health care costs without growing government and raising taxes."

Lee continued, "If the health care legislation currently before Congress were truly about reforming the system and not simply satisfying their own greedy self-interests, those of the lobbyists and other special interests groups, legislators wouldn't be prostituting themselves in secret back-room dealings to extract bribes in exchange for their votes. The process by which the proposed federal health care takeover has occurred is shameful. It is all too clear we don't just need different Representatives in Washington, we need different representation."

For more information, see Jim's website.