October 18, 2010 – 11:24 am
On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – which is on the site where Christians believe is on the site where Jesus died, was buried and rose from the dead – to be destroyed. After the destruction, only the foundations of the church remained.
The reason why Al-Hakim destroyed the church remains unknown. At the time of the church’s destruction some speculated that it was in response to the large number of Christian pilgrims who were visiting the church, one Christian historian at the time speculated that Al-Hakim destroyed the church to quench rumors that he was secretly a Christian.
Europeans were horrified when they heard about the destruction of the church built by Emperor Constantine. Some blamed the Jews, leading to their expulsion from several French towns. The destruction of the church would also serve to motivate the later Crusades. Indeed Pope Sergius IV would reportedly issue a bull calling for Muslims to be expelled from the Holy Land.
For many years, Christians were forbidden to pray on the site of the former church. In 1027-28, the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire forged an agreement to allow the church to be rebuilt by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos in 1048.
October 17, 2010 – 6:32 pm
On 17 October 1521, Pope Leo X declared King Henry VIII the Fidei Defensor or Defender of the Faith. This title was given to honor Henry for his book Defense of the Seven Sacraments which attacked the theology of Martin Luther and was dedicated to Leo. This title was added to the full royal title of Henry as “Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith and Lord of Ireland”.
After Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, Pope Paul III excommunicated Henry and rescinded the grant of the title “Defender of the Faith” in 1538 but the English Parliament declared that the title remained valid.
Henry’s book was very popular and went through twenty editions in the sixteenth century.
October 16, 2010 – 8:06 pm
On 16 October 1367, Pope Urban V returned the see of the papacy from Avignon to Rome.
Urban had been urged to return to Rome by Petrarch and St. Bridget of Sweden, but he also hoped that a return to Rome would help restore the status of the Papal States. His decision to leave Avignon met with great opposition from the French cardinals who feared the loss of their influence as well as the departure from one of the richest cities of Europe to one that had fallen on very hard times.
When Urban returned to Rome, he was met with great hopes and expectations from the Roman people and quickly began work on restoring the condition of the city. However, Urban ran into conflicts with Roman citizens who found their independence had been somewhat curtailed by the newly arrived pontiff who wished to exercise a much stronger control over the city. Poor conditions in the city combined with continued complaints from the French cardinals and revolts in the Papal States persuaded Urban to leave Rome for a return to Avignon on 5 September 1370. This was despite a warning from St. Bridget that Urban would die if he returned to Avignon. On 19th of December, about three months after returning to Avignon, Urban died and was succeeded by Gregory XI who would permanently return the see of Peter to Rome.
October 15, 2010 – 9:29 am
On 15 October 1764, Edward Gibbon received his inspiration to write his famous The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which is seen as the beginning of modern historical writing on the Roman Empire and a tremendous influence on later historical writing.
Gibbon wrote in his Autobiography that it was as he heard Franciscan Friars singing Vespers in the Church of Santa Maria Aracoeli in Rome, which had been built on a site where there had previously been a Temple of Juno, where his desire to write about Rome began. Gibbon believed that he was on the former site of a Temple of Jupiter, but was mistaken. Gibbon’s first inspiration was to write about the city of Rome and only later concerned himself with the entire empire.
One of the main arguments of Gibbon in his magisterial work was that Christian hostility to the Roman Empire was one of the main reasons for the empire’s eventual collapse. Many historians today, however, reject this argument and instead point to economic and military reasons for the end of the Roman Empire in the West.
October 14, 2010 – 12:19 pm
On 14 October 1978, the conclave which would elect Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as pope to succeed Pope John Paul I began. It would last until 16 October 1978.
Pope John Paul I died on 28 September quite unexpectedly. While Wojtyła was not initially seen as a likely candidate for the papacy, but neither of the two initial names put forward – Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, and Giovanni Benelli, Archbishop of Florence, were able to get the sufficient two-thirds plus one for election. Cardinal Franz König of Vienna suggested Wojtyła as a compromise. When he was elected, Wojtyła, taking the name John Paul II, said, “With obedience in faith to Christ, my Lord, and with trust in the Mother of Christ and the Church, in spite of great difficulties, I accept.” He was the first non-Italian pope since 1523.
October 13, 2010 – 11:12 am
On 13 October 1917, 30,000 to 100,000 people in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal claimed to have seen the Miracle of the Sun. These witnesses reported seeing the sun move toward the earth in a zigzag pattern for about ten minutes and that their wet clothes became suddenly dry. The witnesses believed that what they had seen was due to the presence of Our Lady of Fátima and proof that the Blessed Virgin Mary had been appearing to the shepherd children of Fátima who had said that the Virgin Mary would provide a special miracle on the 13th of October “so that all may believe.”
Needless to say many are skeptical about whether a miracle took place and offer natural explanations for the event such as the effect of looking at the sun for too long or a result of atmospheric and weather conditions.
On 13 October 1930he Roman Catholic Church has stated that what happened on that 13th of October in 1917 was worthy of belief. Fr. Stanley L. Jaki, professor of physics at Seton Hall, said that he believes that what happened was a natural event but the fact that it happened on the exact date predicted was a miracle.
There have been similar miracles of the sun at other Marian apparition sites.
October 12, 2010 – 2:33 pm
On 12 October 1995, bishop Sérgio Von Helde of the Universal Church if the Kingdom of God [UCKG] kicked a statue of Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil, while on live TV in Brazil. Von Helde was attacking Catholic devotion to the saints and while verbally attacking the statue because it was unable “to see” and “to hear”, he kicked the statue so as to show that it was “unable to react, because it’s made of clay.” He also called the image of Our Lady a “horrible, disgraceful doll” and said that the “Catholic Church lies. This image can’t do anything for you.”
The broadcast caused a furor in the predominantly Catholic Brazil because it took place on the national holiday of Our Lady of Aparecida. Several of the churches of the UCKG were subject to protests and Von Helde had to be transferred to South Africa until the controversy ended.
Pope John Paul II urged Catholics not to “respond evil with evil” and the Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro called for calm so as to avoid a “holy war”.
October 10, 2010 – 9:29 am
On 11 October 1365, Peter I of Cyprus and his army occupied the city of Alexandria.
While part of the crusades of the West against the Islamic world, the crusade of Peter I was motivated primarily by economic desires not by religious goals. He attacked Egypt both to preempt a planned Egyptian attack on Cyprus as well as to direct more of the Mediterranean trade through Cyprus with the destruction of its rival. Peter I occupied and looted Alexandria but did not remain there because he did not believe he had the strength to rule it.
While a primarily economically motivated attack, the Knights of St. John did accompany the armies of Peter I. But the lack of religious motivation showed the declining interest in the Crusades in Europe and when Peter I later sought to assemble another crusading army Pope Urban V advised Peter to make peace with the Egyptian sultan.
October 9, 2010 – 11:54 am
On 9 October 1845, John Henry Newman was received into the Catholic Church by the Passionist priest Dominic Barberi at the College in Littlemore, England.
John Henry Newman, known for his writings on Catholic Education, turned toward Catholicism based upon his readings of the writings of Saint Augustine against the Donatist heresy. Newman wondered, if Augustine was correct in calling the Donatists heretics because they were separated from Rome, what did that imply about the Anglican Church in his time? He writes, “Who can account for the impressions which are made on him? For a mere sentence, the words of St. Augustine, struck me with a power which I never had felt from any words before . . . they were like the ‘Tolle, lege, — Tolle, lege,’ of the child, which converted St Augustine himself. ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum!’ By those great words of the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical history, the theology of the Via Media was absolutely pulverised.”
Newman would find confirmation his opinion about the need to enter the Catholic Church in the writings of other Church Fathers as well.
Newman’s decision to become Catholic would lead to breaks with family and friends. In October 1846, he was ordained to the priesthood in Rome. He was beatified on the 19th of September 2010.
October 8, 2010 – 9:10 am
From the 8 October to 1 November 451, the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon met to define the doctrine of the two natures of Jesus Christ as fully human and fully divine.
Those who did not accept the doctrine of the two natures [physis] of Christ would be called monophysites by the Chalcedonian Christians, though those who believe Christ had only one nature prefer to be called miaphysites. For both miaphysite and Chalcedonian Christians, Christ must be fully divine and fully human if he is to be the savior of humanity by reuniting God and Man after the fall of Adam. However, where the Chalcedonians express the union without confusion of divinity and humanity in Christ by using the terminology of two natures, the miaphysite Christians refer to two aspects of one nature. Unfortunately, historical misunderstandings and differences in theological language led to a split between the miaphysites who are represented today by the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Chalcedonians who are represented by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
The Council also passed a series of canons, including the 28th canon which sought to raise the status of the Patriarchy of Constantinople to the level of that in Rome. This 28th Canon would not be confirmed by Pope Leo in Rome.
catholicunderthehood.com 