TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION Sometimes, this “Treasures” column can seem to be a species of crib-notes for Catholic Jeopardy. Indeed, you may never know when knowledge of our particular vocabulary may come in handy. Such is the case with papal bulls, which conjure up all sorts of images, but are actually not what you might expect. A bull is a papal letter on a matter of…
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Catholic Tradition (Page 4)
TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION In recent decades, attention has shifted away from headgear as a symbol of a bishop’s authority to a more substantial symbol: the chair, called the cathedra. The word comes from the Latin word for a chair with armrests. It is exactly the reason why dining room sets were marketed in this country a few years…
TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION Long ago, a signet ring was an essential part of the wardrobe of influential people. A letter or document would be sealed with hot wax, and a signet ring pressed into the wax would affirm the origin of the document. In the case of the pope, at least from the thirteenth century, the ring was used to seal public documents with hot…
TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION Sometimes the treasures of art can provide us with clues about traditions. Take, for example, the miter, the conical hat with lappets, or back-flaps that fall to the shoulders. This cap is worn by bishops in the Catholic West. Eastern Catholics favor a crown, but we have this curious headpiece. In Greek, the word means “turban.” Old paintings…
TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION It’s almost midsummer day! One of the great hidden treasures of our liturgical calendar occurs this week. There are only three “nativity” feasts on our calendar: for the Lord, the Blessed Mother (September 8), and the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24. Friday’s date is anchored by the Annunciation (March 25), when Mary learns not only of her own child’s…
El día 9 de junio del año 1597, falleció el jesuita José de Anchieta proveniente de las Islas Canarias, España. Este santo “apóstol de Brasil” fue beatificado en 1980 gracias a sus grandes esfuerzos hu-manitarios, literarios y evangelizadores en Brasil. Llegó a Brasil en 1553 donde aprendió Tupí, el idioma de los nativos. Enseñaba a los indígenas, evangelizándolos con la doctrina cristiana…
Unless Professor Einstein’s theory of relativity can be translated into any useful kind of time-travel, most of our clues about life in the early church will have to come from ancient letters and ancient prayer texts. A prayer text from a dusty library may yield, for example, an understanding of what “presbyters” actually did. We have such a prayer from the early…