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Felicity
Posts: 4
Joined: Mar 2005
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April 21, 2005 9:44 PM
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How extraordinarily moving. Thank you, Father Mitchell.
It brought a smile to my face that you commented, "Even in Rome, we're getting the latest news from the internet." In these days since John Paul II's final illness, I've come to think that the internet may be the most powerful tool placed at the Church's disposal since the printing press. I used to deplore the eradication of the time lag between event and dissemination. I used to believe that we don't really need the news NOW; we would do better to wait for considered, deliberate reportage. However, as I devoured the coverage of the Holy Father's passing and then of his funeral, the immediacy of the updates -- and, crucially, the wide variety of voices, including yours, that one can find on the internet -- gave me a sense of truly witnessing events that television, with its spurious "stories" and annoying soundbites, has never offered.
Of course, I DIDN'T witness the funeral. Let's not lose sight of reality. I live on the other side of the world (in a country impervious to Christianity, where the Pope barely makes it into the headlines). But the internet made me aware of what was going on while it was going on, so that I could weep and pray in the same subjective timeframe as my brothers and sisters all over the world. I had never before felt that I was actually sharing in an event in a distant country. Even the live coverage of 9/11, I remember, was merely exciting -- it didn't touch my emotions at all, much less palpably affect my soul. But the Pope's funeral was different. The explicit reminders from our bishops and cardinals that this was an event affecting the entire Church underlined its mystical dimension. When Vatican spokesman
Joaquin Navarro-Valls said of the outcome of the conclave, "I prefer not to know. It will be an event that we will all live together, at the same level," I think that he meant "all" quite literally. This prophecy would have come true with or without instant communications -- the Holy Spirit works among us unseen and sometimes unfelt -- but new technologies allowed it to come true almost literally, affording us rich opportunities for subjective gratitude, veneration, and prayer.
This possibility of living an event together, simultaneously and CONSCIOUSLY, is unprecedented in our communion, and I think it can only enhance it. After all, what is a Christian community but a group of people bound together in subjective time, sharing information and witnessing God's works together? I'm a convert. I think the internet has potential to expand our subjective communion (as it exists in each individual's consciousness) from local communities to the worldwide community. Godspy itself, for that matter, is helping to realize this potential -- the potential of communications technology in all its forms to galvanize Christ's mystical body, allowing all its parts, all of us, to breathe and move together, as a subjectively enfleshed body, simultaneously.
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JoanLorraine
Posts: 2
Joined: Jun 2005
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June 18, 2005 8:13 PM
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 I am so glad that my first contact with this Website was reading Letters from Rome. This Priest has been blessed with the gift of communication that gave yet another dimension to the historic events surrounding the passing of this Great Saint of God - John Paul II. If it were not for JPII's passing, I would not have gone to our local Cathedral, just as an interested and saddened citizen of my city, to sign the Book of Condolances. While there, realizing I'd never been in this church before, not being catholic - or anything else - I decided to step into the main sanctuary and take a "brief tour" of it's own historic architechture. I have yet to take that tour. I was immediately struck by 'a Presence' which nearly doubled me over, I immediately began to weep, and felt only the overwhelming urge to fall on my face before the high altar before God and spend the rest of my life there. I know now that it was the Presence of Christ, present in the Monstrance, and the Holy Spirit present in the sanctuary. It has been 180 degree turnaround for me since. I feel as if I have come home after 55 yrs. of living on this earth without Christ. I am currently in the last few weeks of Veritas, already signed up for RCIA in September, attending Mass as much as possible, certainly Sunday's, but morning Mass as much as my work schedule allows, learning so much as the "new catholic" learning curve is steep, so much new stuff to memorize just to participate in Mass without being attached to books and paperwork. Started learning the Rosary just this week, what a wonder that is. I live each day in amazement at how this happened when I wasn't looking for it, but I think God was looking for me, and like the 'Letters from Rome' article says, when the seed fell in the ground and died, it bore fruit - and that was what John Paul II accomplished for me. I have always admired and respected him as a politician, world leader, peace keeper, and as an aside - leader of the catholic church. I believe he is smiling at my, and many other stories like mine I'm sure. He is my hero now too. I send prayers his way already. And God is my Salvation.
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JoanLorraine
'Baby Catholic'
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troubledgoodangel
Posts: 29
Joined: Dec 2006
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February 09, 2007 3:10 PM
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So, Father Mitchell, you are a 31-old who has discovered the greatness of the Polish Pope. Good for you!So did I, and many others. John Paul II was a great Saint, but not the only Saint in the Church on that day. There were many Saints at St. Peter's Square when the Pope was being mourned, but you do not write about them! Those were the people demonized, and marginated, and excluded from ministries. Those were the people banished from ministry for speaking out against homosexuality.
Those were the people who were standing right there beside you on that Square when the Pope passed away, and they were far more "moved" than you were, but far less happy with the Church than you were, and I happened to be one of them. Before you were born, many of us, true Poles, knew Karol Wojtyla and know more about him than you ever will. And we appreciated him a thousand times more than you could ever understand. This is why I read with some scepticism the barrage of words which you have written out on the occasion of the Pontiff's death! It's emotional, it's OK ... but it doesn't say it all! Why have you become so fond of him after death? Why so suddenly? When the Pope was still alive, did you fight for justice, holiness, and truth in the U.S. seminaries and Catholic Universities as I did? I doubt, for you would have never been consecrated! And in Rome, had you have to fight for long six years just to survive at the Angelicum because the Church had denied me housing and scholarship? I doubt! How many years have you spent corresponding with the Pope as many of us did, since he became Pope? Did you advise him on matters of truth, as I have? Probably never! Were you alive when Karol Wojtyla worked at the Solvay quarry, when my grandfather was being tortured and killed at Auschwitz only miles away? I was. Where you there when Karol Wojtyla was at the underground seminary in Kracow, when my 23 -year old mother was killed near Lodz? I was. Karol Wojtyla became a priest soon after, in 1946, after only three years of seminary. Do you know how many years I have tried to be a priest now? I will tell you, 28 long years! After having done ten times more studies than Karol Wojtyla, the Church is still refusing to consecrate me! How many years have you waited to be consecrated? I venture to say that you waited less! This is why, when I was in Rome, at St. Peter's Square, although deeply moved by the Pope's passing away, I did not climb a column to vent my emotion! I simply stood there for hours, in silence, empty. I was not as enthusiastic and happy as you were, and if I am not telling why, it is only out of respect for John Paul II. But my unhappiness was with the Church, with many leaders who promoted you, but made my life hell ... but this is not the forum to speak about this, anyhow. What I am trying to say is this: Not all people are happy with the way the Church has treated them! Not all people are as enthusiastic about the truth which the Church lives by! But you do! Why? Because, like Karol Wojtyla, you only encountered the favorable wind! Is there anything wrong with that? No. God has the right to give Grace to whom He wants! But don't expect me to respect your writing just because you made it and I didn't! The bottom line is: and I repeat what I have said before: many people know thousands of times more about truth then people like you who have had it all too easy!
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