Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Today Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a longtime Communio editorial board member and author, was named prefect of the congregation for bishops. Cardinal Ouellet has been the Archbishop of Quebec for the last seven years. Below are links to a selection of his articles (pdfs).

Paradox and/or Supernatural Existential (1991)

The New Catechism: An Event of the Faith (1994)

Woe to Me If I Do Not Preach the Gospel (1994)

The Mystery of Easter and the Culture of Death (1996)

Priestly Ministry at the Service of Ecclesial Communion (1996)

Jesus Christ, the One Savior of the World, Yesterday, Today, and Forever (1997)

Covenantal Justice (2000)

Mary and the Future of Ecumenism (2003)

Theological Perspectives on Marriage (2004)

Read more about Cardinal Ouellet here. See a complete list of his articles here.

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Music, Silence, and Technology

From the Winter issue:

Jonah Lynch, Music, Silence, and Technology (pdf, 2009)

From the text:

A few years ago, I received an iPod as a package deal with my computer. Everyone else was using them, so I filled it with beautiful music and put it on while biking to work. It was just like having a soundtrack to my life — gliding along K Street in Washington, D.C. I had the theme of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on, and everything was dreamlike and peaceful. Then it finished, the first variation started, and the very same reality seemed frantic and edgy. I rode harder, swerving through traffic. Then an epic-sounding variation made me feel as if I were in a film, invincible, untouchable — except that I was actually in a much harder, more dangerous world, riding between buses and lobbyists. I took off the iPod, and haven’t worn it on a bike since. . . .  Complete text (pdf).

Also by Jonah Lynch: Mirth and Freedom in The Magic Flute (pdf, 2006).

Peter Henrici: Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Sketch of His Life

From the Fall, 1989 Communio: The Life and Work of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Peter Henrici, S.J. Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Sketch of His Life (pdf, 1989).

From the text:

The third circle of friends, the widest in scope, came to him through the journal Communio. Year after year he organized the small meeting of the various editions in Basel. Year after year it was he who was the undisputed central reference-point of the larger international meeting. He made stimulating suggestions about each of the themes proposed, pointed out difficulties, and was able to name suitable authors – whether living or from the past. Only the friends themselves know of the trouble he took to build up and hold together this “fellowship” (communio!) of the twelve editorial teams from very different cultural backgrounds. Only they too can tell of the countless conversations on the fringe of the meetings.

It was after his return from the 1988 international editorial meeting in Madrid, which was preceded by a symposium on his theology, that news reached Balthasar of his appointment as a cardinal. Though tired and ill again, he this time accepted, out of obedience to the Pope, what to him was an embarrassing honor. He also undertook the journey to Rome to be measured for his cardinal’s robes (which, as previously with his theologian’s soutane, he would have left in Rome). But he knew in his heart that Heaven had other plans. “Those above,” he wrote to a friend, “seem to have a different plan.” Death came gently upon him. He more than once had to see those closest to him suffer an agony lasting months – “a death with the drop counter.” But he himself was allowed to pass away in a moment and while he was still fully active. It happened as he was preparing to celebrate morning Mass . . . .

Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis on Chaucer

The year 2000 marked the 600th anniversary of Chaucer’s death. The Winter, 2000 Communio published a short text in his honor by Erasmo Leiva, which we would like to present again now, ten years later.  Here is the article (pdf), and here is the link to the Winter 2000 issue. From the text:

Whenever I read the Canterbury Tales for any length of time, I afterwards feel a slight ache in the facial muscles: I realize that the entire time I have been either smiling or laughing. Both the smile and the laughter derive from Chaucer’s skill at evoking wit, that wonderfully ambiguous word that connotes both “wisdom” and “cleverness” and that is such a perfect example of the unity of the highest and the lowest in the medieval outlook. In what other cultural era would a Christian poet have dared to construct with utter mirth and boundless freedom of soul the dazzling analogy that opens the Tales?  . . .

As late as 1400, even after the devastation of the Great Plague of 1348, Chaucer still believes that, despite all the deformations in human beings, human nature is one and good and overflowing with possibilities. Human existence is unified and comprehensible. Much can be forgiven because human beings are ultimately not the masters of their own destiny. At each step they are faced with their own fallibility and corruptibility. It is God who is responsible for the intrinsic goodness of human nature, and not the individual who finds himself already to be a human being when first becoming aware of himself. The creature cannot be responsible for the whole, either the individual for his own life or mankind itself for all of society. But the mercy of God permeates both the individual and the world of nature and society, and this frees us up to enjoy, to laugh, to learn and to repent.

Also by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis:  The Anointed Imagination: The Character of Catholic Literature in the Twentieth Century (pdf, 1991) | The Catechetical Role of the Liturgy and the Quality of Liturgical Texts: The Current ICEL Translation (pdf, 1993).

Adrienne von Speyr: Holiness in the Everyday

From the archives: Adrienne von Speyr, Holiness in the Everyday (pdf) from the Winter 2002 Communio.

From the article:

The saints, too, have their everyday, just as God did while he was on earth. But if they are really saints, then it’s because this everyday became the expression of the most uneveryday thing, of the Father’s life, of his will in and through them. The saints burn with the fire of eternal life. And in our relationship with them we shouldn’t try to  dampen this fire. We shouldn’t trivialize them. We get to peek into their everyday. We get to look into the rectory at Ars or the Carmel of Lisieux. And so we can almost forget the holiness of the people who inhabited that everyday. We should avoid this danger. We shouldn’t follow today’s trend to “humanize” the saints and so overlook the greatness of the gift that God has given to Church and world in them. It’s quite otherwise when we put their everyday back into the heart of their confrontation with God. Then what looks to us like the quiet course of everyday life turns out to be the continuity of God’s molding them and of their surrender to his molding. Then one’s attention goes, not to the relative, even when the relative is a saint’s life, a saint’s soul and consciousness, but to the immensity of what God is doing. Then the everyday and all that fills it is no longer anything but a framework for the other, real life of the saint, something that helps us to situate this incomprehensible fact. But even this situating is important only insofar as it leads us to God’s unsituatability. The saints live in eternal life already here below. Once they cross the threshold of real sanctity, they are ready for heaven. Strictly speaking, they don’t really need to live on earth any longer. If they do keep living, then it’s as if they had volunteered to stay for the others in order to serve them with their love, their sacrifices, their sufferings, just as the Son voluntarily lived his whole everyday on earth, and in order to give the others their way (Francis gives the way of poverty, Ignatius of obedience, Therese gives the Little Way), just as the Son gave us all his divine way.

Read the article (PDF).

Back Issues of Communio: Archives

Please don’t forget to take advantage of our sale on back issues. Many fascinating early issues are available for $4, including:

Summer 1986, with early articles by Walter Kasper on “Church as Communio”; Leo Scheffczyk, “The Meaning of the Filioque”; Joseph Ratzinger on “Interpretation, Contemplation, Action”; and William Congdon, “An Artist, His Art, and the Christian Community.”

Spring 1995, on the commandment Honor Your Father and Your Mother, with articles by Julian Carron, Kenneth L. Schmitz, Joseph Ratzinger, Giorgio Buccellati, and Hans Urs von Balthasar (on Women Priests? A Marian Church in a Fatherless and Motherless Culture – pdf).

Spring 1996, on the commandment You Shall Not Kill, with articles by Marc Ouellet, Joseph Ratzinger, Ferdinand Ulrich, David L. Schindler, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Fall 1992, on The Theology of Henri de Lubac, featuring Xavier Tilliette, Peter Henrici, John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger, Antonio Sicari, Jean-Luc Marion, and Kenneth L. Schmitz.

View all the archives here.