APRIL 21, 2024 – ST. ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP.

• St. Anselm (1109). Bishop, Doctor of the Church. (Current, Traditional)
• St. Conrad (1894). Religious. (Historical)

ANSELM was a native of Piedmont. When a boy of fifteen, being forbidden to enter religion, he for a while lost his fervor, left his home, and went to various schools in France. At length his vocation revived, and he became a monk at Bec in Normandy. The fame of his sanctity in this cloister led William Rufus, when dangerously ill, to take him for his confessor, and to name him to the vacant see of Canterbury. Now began the strife of Anselm’s life. With new health the king relapsed into his former sins, plundered the Church lands, scorned the archbishop’s rebukes, and forbade him to go to Rome for the pallium. Anselm went, and returned only to enter into a more bitter strife with William’s successor, Henry I. This sovereign claimed the right of investing prelates with the ring and crozier, symbols of the spiritual jurisdiction which belongs to the Church alone. The worldly prelates did not scruple to call St. Anselm a traitor for his defense of the Pope’s supremacy; on which the Saint rose, and with calm dignity exclaimed, “If any man pretends that I violate my faith to my king because I will not reject the authority of the Holy See of Rome, let him stand forth and in the name of God I will answer him as I ought.” No one took up the challenge; and to the disappointment of the king, the barons sided with the Saint, for they respected his courage, and saw that his cause was their own. Sooner than yield, the archbishop went again into exile, till at last the king was obliged to submit to the feeble but inflexible old man. In the midst of his harassing cares, St. Anselm found time for writings which have made him celebrated as the father of scholastic theology; while in metaphysics and in science he had few equals. He is yet more famous for his devotion to our Blessed Lady, whose Feast of the Immaculate Conception he was the first to establish in the West. He died A.D. I109.

REFLECTION: Whoever, like St. Anselm, contends for the Church’s rights, is fighting on the side of God against the tyranny of Satan.

WORD OF THE DAY

GALILEO CASE. The celebrated case of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Italian physicist and astronomer, whose conflict with ecclesiastical authorities has become part of world history. In 1616 he was brought before the Inquisition on the charge of ignoring the implications of the Copernican (heliocentric) theory, which seemed to contradict the biblical story of the stopping of the sun in the Book of Joshua. Significantly, the Polish astronomer Copernicus in the previous century had dedicated to Pope Paul III in 1543 his published theory that the sun is the center of a great system and that the earth is a planet revolving about it. In obedience to the ruling of the Inquisition, Galileo promised not to teach Copernicus’ theory as anything but a hypothesis, as in fact the proofs for the theory (on modern scientific principles) were not conclusive. In 1632, Galileo was again asked to come to Rome, this time for alleged breach of contract, since he had meantime published a satirical work, Dialogue, bitterly attacking his opponents. He was detained for twenty-two days in the buildings of the Holy Office, and he promised not to urge the Copernican system as a proved fact. Before he died in Florence in 1642, he received the special blessing of Pope Urban VIII. No question of papal infallibility was involved. In Galileo’s case the Church defined nothing and uttered no doctrine. It made a disciplinary prohibition to protect the faithful from the disturbing effect of a then unproved hypothesis. St. Robert Bellarmine, who was involved in the Galileo affair, wrote that if a real proof were found that the sun was fixed and did not revolve around the earth, “it would be necessary to acknowledge that the passages in Scripture which appear to contradict this fact have been misunderstood.” Recent scholarship has shown that the document that led to Galileo’s trial in Rome (1633) was a forgery. It had been planted in the Roman Curia by an unscrupulous official. It falsely charged Galileo with having been enjoined seventeen years before from teaching the Copernican system. Galileo’s famous trial, therefore, was based on this “document,” which he had never before seen. In 1979, Pope John Paul II called for the formal exoneration of Galileo.

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

EASTER MEDITATIONS

Enjoy daily meditations this Easter from Fr. Richard Clarke, SJ. Short and powerful, written in 1880 for busy lay people to reap rewards through Eastertide: 23. — The Second Appearance of Jesus to the assembled Apostles.

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