MAY 31 – ST. PETRONILLA, VIRGIN.

AMONG the disciples of the apostles in the primitive age of saints, this holy virgin shone as a bright star in the Church. She lived when Christians were more solicitous to live well than to write much: they knew how to die for Christ; but did not compile long books in which vanity has often a greater share than charity. Hence no particular account of her actions has been handed down to us. But how eminent her sanctity was we may judge from the lustre by which it was distinguished among apostles, prophets, and martyrs. She is said to have been a daughter of the apostle St. Peter; that St. Peter was married before his vocation to the apostleship we learn from the gospel. St. Clement of Alexandria assures us that his wife attained to the glory of martyrdom; at which Peter himself encouraged her, bidding her to remember our Lord. But it seems not certain whether St. Petronilla was more than the spiritual daughter of that apostle. She flourished at Rome, and was buried on the way to Ardea, where in ancient times a cemetery and a church bore her name.

REFLECTION: With the saints the great end for which they lived was always present to their minds, and they thought every moment lost in which they did not mike some advances toward eternal bliss. How will their example condemn at the last day the trifling fooleries, and the greatest part of the conversation and employments of the world, which aim at nothing but present amusements, and forget the only important affair—the business of eternity.

WORD OF THE DAY

REFORMATION DOGMA. The dogmatic teaching of the original Protestant reformers. They were constrained by the logic of separating from Rome to defend their new doctrinal positions. Thus we find Luther writing numerous treatises on faith, grace, and justification, and John Calvin (1509-64) producing in 1536 his Institutes of the Christian Religion, as the first systematic compendium of Protestant doctrine. “My design in this work,” wrote Calvin in the introduction, “has been to prepare and qualify students of theology for the reading of the divine word.” The beginnings of the Reformation were thoroughly dogmatic in character. The earliest Reformation dogma was biblical in the direct sense. It did not take philosophy as a basis or ally. Its first business was to know and expound the Bible. It did not claim Aristotle and Plato as friends or forerunners. It used reason, but reason derived only from the Bible and put to a biblical use. Actually there was a philosophy behind this dogmatizing, notably the nominalism of William of Ockham (1280-1349), whom Luther called “my teacher” and rated in learning far above Thomas Aquinas.

Two strains in Ockham, sometimes called “the first Protestant,” became imbedded in the Reformation: a distrust of reason in dealing with religion, and a theory of voluntarism which made right and wrong depend on the will of God. The first strain appeared prominently in Lutheran or evangelical thought, with the emphasis on revelation and grace as the exclusive media of religious knowledge and salvation. The second affected Calvinism and postulated, in Calvin’s words, that “God chooses some for the hope of life, and condemns others to eternal death…. For all men are not created on an equal footing, but for some eternal life is preordained, for others eternal damnation.” The divine will, therefore, and not as in Catholic doctrine the divine wisdom, is the ultimate norm of man’s existence and destiny.

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!)

This article, MAY 31 – ST. PETRONILLA, VIRGIN. is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/may-31-st-petronilla-virgin/
Do not repost the entire article without written permission. Reasonable excerpts may be reposted so long as it is linked to this page.