Showing posts with label Catholic Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic Church. Show all posts

December 8 – Mother's Day in Panama

Posted on December 8, 2019


Happy Mother's Day to all the moms in Panama!


Mothers in Panama are receiving flowers, gifts, and cards that express the gratitude and love of their children.

Many nations celebrate Mother's Day in the springtime or summer, but folks in Panama celebrate it on the same day as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

What's that feast all about?

In many forms of the Christian religion, there is a story that a Jewish woman named Mary conceived the baby Jesus even though she was a virgin (of course, I am using the English names for both Mary and Jesus). The story explains that later Mary married Joseph, and they had children together, but Jesus was special. Joseph was not his father, this story tells us, and indeed Jesus had no human father; in a way, God was Jesus's father, and in another way, Jesus was God.

In one form of the Christian religion, called Catholicism, there is another, similar story: Mary's conception was meddled with by God so that she was born without "original sin." This is often confused with the idea of a virgin birth, but it's different. Basically, the idea of Mary's "immaculate conception" is the idea that, even though she had a human mom and dad, Mary was special; she was born sinless, pure, better than other humans because of God's meddling at the moment of her conception.

Many nations of the world celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as a holiday. These nations include some from Latin America (such as Chile and Panama), some from Asia (like the Philippines and Macau), some from Africa (like Seychelles and Equatorial Guinea), and some from Europe (like Spain and Liechtenstein). From my research, it seems that Panama is the only nation that coupled this feast day with its Mother's Day celebration.





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October 31 - Reformation Day in Switzerland

Posted October 31, 2019

Back in the Middle Ages, and even the beginning of the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was really, really powerful throughout most of Europe. It was the only major institution in the region, after the Roman Empire fell, and the Church was a major landowner and also overlapped quite a bit with nobles who ruled politically. It was an important part of daily life - not just a special place for once-a-week services or the occasional wedding or funeral, but the keeper of time, the source of accumulated knowledge, the hierarchy that structured social life and to some extent the educational, lawmaking, and judicial systems rolled into one.

Some Catholic churches have displays
of Papal crowns or other golden-and-
bejeweled religious items.
Like all powerful institutions, the Church attracted power-hungry people as well as devout and humbled believers. And like all human institutions, the Church had flaws. In the early 1500s, there was lots of evidence of corruption. Some priests lived lives of enormous wealth - clearly they were guilty of greed and skimming monies that were meant for the Church.  Religious posts were often sold to the highest bidder, and perhaps worst of all, the Church sold forgiveness from sin for money!!

Martin Luther was one monk who felt he had to call out the corruption. He wrote a long list of problems with the Church and, on this date in 1517, he nailed it to the door of the local church in Wittenberg, Germany. 


Most scholars count this as the beginning of the reformation - a time when Christian believers, clergy, and theologians split from the Catholic Church and formed their own version of Christianity. 

These new churches are called Protestant because they were formed by those who "protested" the status quo of the Catholic Church.

Even though Germany is considered the birthplace of Protestantism, many Swiss people were early adopters, and Switzerland gained quite a bit of its national identity during the formation of Protestant churches. Much of the French speaking portion of Switzerland pulled away from Catholic France and was bound tighter to the German speaking portion of Switzerland because of religion, and even the German speaking regions pulled away from Germany because the Swiss leader of Protestantism, Huldrych Zwingli of Ulrich, disagreed with the German leader Luther on many points of theology. 



Nowadays Switzerland is a big mix of religions, with some (but not many) Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and other non-Christian practitioners, about 5% Muslims, almost 40% Catholics, and around 25% Swiss Reformed Church. Interestingly enough, the non-religious and unaffiliated Swiss are about as numerous as the Swiss Reformed members - and historians have shown that Protestantism in Switzerland has been halved as the number of non-religious citizens has increased!

Switzerland is famous for its Alps, its banking system, its chocolate, the classic book / movies Heidi, and the tennis legend Roger Federer.










 



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January 21 - Altagracia Day in the Dominican Republic

Posted on January 21, 2018


"Bring me a painting of Our Lady of Altagracia," a young woman asked her father, according to legend.

Altagracia means "high grace" in Spanish. The legend goes on that the father, a wealthy merchant, complained to his friend that nobody knew anybody that went by that title. This occurred as the two sat outdoors after dinner, in the town of Higuey on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

"This is what you are looking for," a passing stranger said. And he handed the merchant a painting of Mary and Jesus.

The merchant placed it on their mantle, but the painting magically disappeared - and reappeared outside. The puzzled merchant brought it inside again - and once again, the story goes, it went "poof!" and reappeared outside. So the merchant donated the clearly miraculous painting to the Catholic Church, and a suitable shrine was built on the spot where the painting wished to reside.

This really old drawing of the first European
settlement in the New World, Santo Domingo,
is still almost 200 years after its founding in 1496.
All of that was supposed to have happened a really long time ago - and, actually, the painting is really old! It was apparently painted in Spain around 1500, and by 1502 it had been taken to Santo Domingo, the first European settlement on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola - actually, the first European settlement in the entire "New World" - in other words, the first permanent European settlement in the Americas! 

Two of the earliest European settlers were the brothers Alfonso and Antonio Trejo, and they were the ones who owned the painting. At some point, they donated the painting to the Church, and a shrine was built to house it. The shrine was completed back in 1572, and at some point Our Lady of Altagracia was adopted as the patron saint of the settlement - and later the colony and nation of the Dominican Republic.

After 500 years or so, the painting was moved to a more modern church, where it still resides. It was old enough that candle smoke and oils from human hands had made it very dark and dull - almost unrecognizable - so in 1978 it was carefully restored.
The old home of the painting, above.
The new home, below.


Not just the painting was moved - the feast day of Altagracia was also moved. It used to be every August 15, but it was moved to January 21 to celebrate a victory over French forces in 1690. 

Now the day is a public holiday in the Dominican Republic.



The Dominican Republic is a nation of contrasts. For one thing, it is a major tourist mecca, with popular resorts and beautiful beaches. Also, there are a lot of rich people living there, with modern cities and every comfort.





On the other hand, there is also a lot of poverty, child labor, and a huge gap between the rich and poor.







(Third Sunday in January)
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