John Paul II’s Penitential Practices: The Opus Dei Connection

As a supplement to what I posted here recently about Pope John Paul II’s penitential practices, I’d like to offer readers a brief overview of some resources for further study.  These resources focus on a particular topic—namely, the use of self-flagellation and other penitential practices such as wearing chains with sharp points that dig into the skin (cilices) by a contemporary Catholic movement, Opus Dei.

Since not all readers may be aware that there is at least one group in the contemporary Catholic church which encourages its members to whip themselves, to wear cilices, and to sleep on the floor or on boards, I’d like to draw attention to the important body of literature that has developed to study and critique Opus Dei’s penitential practices in recent years.  It’s also significant that John Paul II was closely connected to Opus Dei and actively promoted and protected this controversial religious group—about which more below.

Archbishop Chaput on the Devil's Growing Influence

With the return of talk about self-whipping and wearing barbed chains (cilices) that jab into the skin, the Catholic church seems to be going positively medieval these days.

So perhaps it’s fitting that one of the princes of American Catholicism, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, has just delivered a lecture to the symposium on priests and laity in Rome in which he calls for a revival of discourse about the prince of this world and of darkness, the father of lies: Satan.  As the headline about this lecture in Archbishop Chaput’s Catholic News Agency site says, the Denver archbishop is urging us to fight Satan.

John Paul II’s Penitential Practices and Competing Narratives about Sanctity in the Postmodern Church

There was a time, before the Second Vatican Council prompted religious congregations to return to the charisms of their founders, when practices of self-abnegation including self-flagellation were de rigueur in some communities.  Some orders, in fact, practiced self-flagellation in a communitarian setting.  A Redemptorist priest I once knew described to me how his community would gather on designated evenings in a dark hallway, where they’d recite the penitential psalms while whipping their bare backs.  They also wore cilices, little devices for self-torture with sharp points, which are tied tightly around one’s thigh to induce pain when one moves.

These practices—in particular, the enforced, institutionalized, all-together-now mortification of the flesh in a communitarian setting—tended to go by the wayside in religious life with Vatican II.  They did so for a good reason: they ultimately had little to do with what being a nun, priest, or brother was really all about.  They had little to do with the charisms and missions of religious communities, with the calling of a community to tend to the sick, live among the poor, teach, provide shelter for the homeless, assist immigrants, etc.

Still Here . . . .

Dear Friends and Fellow Pilgrims,

Just a quick note as a long day ends to tell you I'm still here.

I've just uploaded a posting to the new collaborative Open Tabernacle blog, a link to which is in the upper right-hand corner of this page.  As you'll see if you visit that site, the post is lengthy--and that explains why I haven't found a moment to post here in the past day.

Because the new blog is a collaborative venture, and since a number of us are occupied with our own tasks right now, I wanted to offer this post to readers at that site first, to help it in a period when new postings aren't coming to the site routinely.

And there's an outstanding piece by Frank Cocozzelli there today, too, about his call for lay Catholics to practice remonstrance with pastors who betray Catholic values and teaching.  I highly recommend it to you, as with everything Frank writes.

More from me here tomorrow, when my cramped fingers and frazzled mind recover a bit from a day's writing about John Paul II and his practice of self-flagellation.

The State of the Union and the President's Attempt to Re-Brand Himself: Who Is Mr. Obama?

On the eve of the State of the Union address, things are not looking sanguine for Mr. Obama—to say the least.  The fury of the hard right (which is to say, the entire GOP as it now exists) was to be expected.  What I don’t think many of us anticipated at this point in what seemed an extremely promising new presidency was the sharp sense of betrayal and outrage among the Democratic party’s progressive base—as well as among many of the independent swing voters who helped elect Barack Obama with high hopes that he represented a departure from business as usual in the American political context.

Cooking to Save the Planet: Pumpkin Pasta

Back last October, I told you all that I often buy pumpkins in the fall of the year, particularly when they go on sale after Thanksgiving, and bake their flesh to use in soups and pastas during the winter.  I freeze the baked pumpkin in meal-sized containers.

From Roman Polanski to Benedict: Bernard-Henri Lévy vs. the Howling of the Pack

When I read Bernard-Henri Lévy’s defense of Pope Benedict XVI at Huffington Post several days ago, I wondered how soon it would be before various Catholic media sites would pick this article up, and use it to suggest that Benedict has been unfairly treated by the media.