Saint Bartholomew and Armenia

Saint Bartholomew is commemorated on August 24^th.  I knew that Bartholomew was one of the 12 apostles, but I did not know he was the patron saint of the Armenians until I learned it from a cab driver in Los Angeles.

It happened this way.  I had arranged for a cab to pick me up early in the morning, and as we were leaving the driveway the driver asked me, “Is that a religious house?”  I said it was, and immediately came a second question, “Is it Christian?”  I answered again that it was.

At this point I did not want a non-stop interrogation, so before he could speak again I asked him, “Are you a Christian?”  He replied, almost indignantly, “Am I a Christian?  I’m an Armenian”, and his tone of voice said, “That means super-Christian”.  He then went on to give me a history lesson on how the Armenians became Christian.

Armenia was a small country wedged between two empires, the Romans and the Persians.  The Armenians did not want to belong to either, and wanted to find something to distinguish them from their big neighbors.

They had heard about the new religion in Palestine that claimed it was from God, and that its Founder had been raised from the dead.  So they sent messengers to Jerusalem to bring someone to teach them this new religion.

The Apostle Bartholomew was the one sent to teach them, and he became their patron saint.  Armenia was the first country to ask for missionaries to teach them Christianity, and in 301 A.D. was the first country to make Christianity the state religion.

The Armenians remained faithful to the Christian faith, though there were problems in Church teaching as the Latin language began to replace the Greek.  At the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) there were disputes about doctrine because the Greek speakers did not accept the Latin terms, and the Latin speakers did not accept the Greek terms.

The result was that they each went their separate ways, and so it remained for many centuries.  Then in 1973 the Armenian Pope Shenouda III went to visit Pope Paul VI.  On May 10, 1973 the two religious leaders issued a statement declaring their shared faith.  They recognized that “the differences between us were nourished by non-theological factors”, and proclaimed their resolve to be able to preach the Gospel together.

Long before this, the Armenian Church went through a dark and difficult period.  By the 15^th century Armenia was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire which meant it was under Islamic rule.  At first the Turks were tolerant of other religions, but things changed when the Empire began to decline and external enemies were threatening.

The Empire joined the side of Germany in World War One against Russia and the West.  The Armenians were considered as friendly to the Russians and internal enemies of the Empire.  This led to a process of re-locating the Armenians away from the border, to the Syrian desert and other remote places where they would be less of a threat to their Turkish masters.

The resettlement program began in the Spring of 1915, and it devastated the Armenian population.  Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, sick and healthy, were moved with no advance notice, and with no provision made for their transportation or feeding.  Thousands died on the journey, and the Armenians estimate that more than one million people perished during the resettlement period.

At the end of World War I in 1918 many Turkish officials were tried for the loss of Armenian lives in the resettlement program, but the main leaders evaded justice by fleeing the country. Armenians throughout the world chose April 24^th as the day to commemorate this sad episode of their history when so many innocent Armenians needlessly perished.

Armenia’s troubles did not end with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.  Following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, on March 4, 1922 Armenia was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where it remained for almost 70 years.  Then with the dissolution of the Soviet empire, Armenia became fully independent in 1991.

Armenian immigration to the United States began in the 1890’s as a result of the persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.  The immigrants settled mostly in New England, with Boston as their center.  A second wave came in the 1970’s due to unrest in the Middle East.  These settled mainly on the West coast with Los Angeles as their center.

My cab driver was probably one of these immigrants.  I appreciated him taking the opportunity to teach me about the Armenian people and their first Christian teacher, Saint Bartholomew.

Train of Thought

It began with a newspaper article from the Philippines last week.  The title of the article was, Sometimes the Catholic Church Falters Badly.  The writer, Maribel Ongpin, was  referring to current issues, like the RH Bill in the Congress of the Philippines, and the elephant Mali in the Manila Zoo, on which the CBCP (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines) had made pronouncements.  She warned the hierarchy that they must be well informed in making their pronouncements or they will just repeat the mistakes of the past.

“The past” was in the 1950’s when she was a schoolgirl.  She remembers two issues.  One was ballet dancing, which the bishops of the Philippines suddenly decreed was forbidden to all Catholics.  There was no papal bull, no dogmatic teaching, no theological argument.  Ballet was just banned.

The other issue was the reading of two books of the Filipino patriot José Rizal.  The two books, Noli Me Tangere and Filibusterismo were required reading for students in college.  The hierarchy opposed this requirement because the books contained criticism of the Church in the Philippines during colonial times.

Ongpin pointed out that with the passage of time ballet was quietly restored, and the two books became acceptable, without any of the dire consequences which the hierarchy had predicted.

I remember the crisis well, because I had just arrived in the Philippines at the time of the bishops’ protest.  I had never seen ballet as a threat to faith or morals, so I presumed the prohibition must have been for purely Filipino reasons.  I also read one of the books (my first reading of a book in Spanish), and found it so ordinary I wondered why it was considered objectionable.

Ms Ongpin was making the point that she thought the bishops should be adequately informed to pronounce on the current issues, or they might end up repeating the mistakes of the past.

That story about the past brought to my mind another national hierarchy blunder at an earlier time.  The country was Austria, and the year was 1938.  Hitler’s Germany was in an expansionist mood, and the prime minister of Austria saw his small country as a likely target.  He planned a plebiscite to block a possible take-over, but the day before the plebiscite the German army occupied Austria.

The Cardinal archbishop of Vienna welcomed the German occupation, thanking God it had taken place peacefully, and urging Austrian Catholics to support the new authorities.  Some days later the entire Austrian Catholic hierarchy issued a pastoral letter supporting the Cardinal.

To me this was incomprehensible.  With my Irish background, long resentful at being occupied by a neighboring country, I could not imagine that Church leaders would welcome the take-over of their country by a more powerful neighbor.  Was this just another instance of bishops, acting outside the area of their competence, making a big mistake?

The answer came many years later when I found Gordon Zahn, an American professor and peace activist who in 1963 produced a book, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars.  Gordon Zahn (1918-2007) was a co-founder of the peace movement Pax Christi.  He was a conscientious objector in World War II.

After World War II, he went to Europe to study how the peace movement in Germany had fared under Hitler.  He found that after Hitler took over, the peace movement disappeared practically overnight.  So he changed the focus of his study to how German Catholics responded to Hitler’s wars.

To his surprise he found that the German bishops’ wartime statements generally urged Catholics to loyal obedience to the legitimate authority, or more specifically rallied them to the defense of the German people and the Fatherland as a Christian duty.

Published in 1963, this book was an embarrassment to some of the German bishops still in place, who by this time were depicting themselves as staunch opponents of Hitler during the war.  There were some who said it was just impossible to oppose the Nazi regime, but that also was challenged in another book published by Zahn in 1964.

This book was titled In Solitary Witness, and told the story of Franz Jagerstatter.  Jagerstatter was a young Austrian farmer, with a wife and three young children.  He was also church sexton and attended daily Mass.  When called up to active duty in a war which he considered unjustified, he asked to be excused and refused to serve.  For this he was imprisoned, and in 1943 he was executed.

In researching his book German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars, Gordon Zahn met Jagerstatter’s wife Franziska, who was able to show him letters and testimonies her husband had written to her from prison.  Inspired by these documents Zahn was able to write and publish Jagerstatter’s biography In Solitary Witness.

The publicity given to Franz Jagerstatter by this book led to the introduction of his cause for sainthood.  On October 27, 2007, 64 years after his death, he was declared “blessed”, the final stage before being declared a canonized saint.

So the train of thought is this:  a Philippines columnist, to Filipino bishops, to Austrian bishops, to American Catholic layman, to German bishops, to Austrian Catholic layman.  Out of all these people, one is chosen for sainthood, a young Catholic layman.  Cardinal Newman reminds us that the faithful laity twice saved the early Church from error when the bishops were divided in their teaching.  The Church today is suffering from failures at different levels.  She once more needs the help of the faithful laity to find healing and renewal for the wounds of the recent past.

John Milton and Galileo

When the Roman Inquisition placed Galileo Galilei under house arrest in his home in Aricetri near Florence, Italy, in December 1633, they severely restricted his social life.  He was not allowed to leave his home except to visit the nearby convent where his two daughters, Sister Maria Celeste and Sister Arcangela were members of the Poor Clare community.  But he was allowed to have visitors provided they did not discuss scientific ideas with him.

One such visitor was the English poet and writer John Milton.  We learn of the visit from Milton himself in Areopagitica, a writing produced by Milton in 1644.  Areopagitica was a lengthy document directed to the English Parliament arguing against an order of Parliament requiring authors to submit their writings for government approval before publishing.  It was Milton’s appeal against censorship.

Milton gave the document its name to associate it with the Areopagus (the Hill of Mars) near Athens in Greece, where legend says that Mars, the god of war, was put on trial by all the other gods.  In classical times the Areopagus functioned as the place of the Supreme Court for the people of Athens.

In the lengthy document Milton tells his countrymen about scholars in other countries who complain about victimization and censorship, and who look to England as a beacon of philosophic freedom.  Among the victims visited by him he mentioned “the famous Galileo”.

“And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Commons, that these arguments of learned men’s discouragement at this your Order are mere flourishes and not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of inquisition terrorizes; when I have sat among their learned men – for that honour I had – and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while they themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning among them was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian.  There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner of the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought” (414-421).

Milton seemed to understand that Galileo was condemned not for challenging Church doctrine, but for challenging the prevailing scientific view at the time.  In the correspondence between Galileo and his daughter Sister Maria Celeste it is clear that Galileo’s faith never was in question.

Dava Sobel in her book “Galileo’s Daughter” draws attention to an interesting point.  At Galileo’s condemnation in Rome, the Holy Office presented him with a document to read admitting his guilt and promising future obedience.  Galileo objected to two clauses the document; one that said he had lapsed in his behavior as a good Catholic, and the other that he had acted deceitfully to get Church approval for one of his books.  Only after the Inquisition removed the two clauses did he agree to sign the document.

Galileo did not see himself as an unfaithful son of the Church.  He accepted what the Church taught as religious doctrine, and wondered why they would not allow him to teach science based on his scientific findings.

Galileo’s last years began badly, with the untimely death of his favorite daughter Sister Maria Celeste just shortly after he began his house arrest.  Then his sight began to fail, a sad fate for the man who once saw further into the universe than any man had ever seen before,

John Milton’s visit may have come at a good time for Galileo.  He needed something to help him believe in his achievements and to restore hope for the future.  Milton had been a victim of censorship in his own country.  His sympathetic visit must have boosted Galileo’s self-esteem.

I believe Milton’s international crusade must also have given Galileo hope for the future.  It gave promise that there will always be people who insist on the freedom to search for greater understanding, and, like Galileo, to claim the right to seek the truth wherever the search may lead.

Galileo’s Daughter

I first read “Galileo’s Daughter” about ten years ago, shortly after its publication.  The book appealed to me in many ways.  I thought it was well researched, well written and very readable.

The daughter in question was Virginia, Galileo’s eldest daughter, born in 1600 when Galileo was 36 years of age.  Galileo’s second daughter, Livia, was born the following year, and his son, Vincenzio was born in 1606.  In 1613 the two girls entered the convent of the Poor Clares in Arcetri, near Florence.  In 1616 Virginia professed her vows as Sister Maria Celeste, and in 1617 Livia was professed as Sister Arcangela.

The author of “Galileo’s Daughter”, Dava Sobel, is the author of an earlier work, “Longitude”.  In her research for that work, she was studying what Galileo had to say about longitude when she came across a fragment of a letter written to him by his daughter, Sister Maria Celeste.  The fragment was about the convent clock which the Sister had failed to fix, and which she was sending to her father for repair.

Ms Sobel said she was thunderstruck; first of all that Galileo had a daughter and second that she was a nun.  That led the writer to search for other correspondence, and she found more than 100 letters.  The letters revealed that Sister Maria Celeste was a person of great significance in Galileo’s life, and that led Ms Sobel to let the father-daughter relationship form the backbone of a book about Galileo’s fascinating and sometimes turbulent life.

The letters cover a ten-year period, from the death of Galileo’s sister Virginia in 1623 to Sister Maria Celeste’s last letter in December 1633.  That last letter was written to welcome Galileo back to his home in Arcetri where he would spend the rest of his life under strict house arrest after his condemnation by the Holy Office in Rome.

Galileo would refer to his house arrest as “my prison in Arcetri”, but that was better than the dungeons of the Inquisition in Rome where he had begun his sentence in June. He was not allowed to leave his home in Arcetri except to visit the neighboring convent where he could meet with his daughters.  Unfortunately even that pleasure was soon to be denied.  The tense and anxious time of Galileo’s trial in Rome had taken its emotional toll on Sister Maria Celeste.  Her health was in irreversible decline and only three months after Galileo returned to Arcetri she passed away on April 2, 1634.

Ms. Sobel’s treatment of Galileo’s life and trial is sympathetic and fair.  Her introduction of Sister Maria Celeste adds new color and humanity to the story.  Galileo was devastated by Sister Maria Celeste’s death.  Many notable people came to visit him during the remaining eight years of his life.  But no one could ever fill the emptiness left by the passing of the light of his life, the young woman now known to the world as “Galileo’s daughter”.