Rome

March 30, 2021 Peace and Good, I hope your Holy Week is going well. Just this morning the city of Rome cancelled the red zone for a while (until Holy Saturday). When you went out in the street, you had to have a written form where you were going and what you were doing. The weather is getting better. Spring has arrived, but it is still quite cool. I will be leaving for the States this Thursday and spend time in Ellicott City until I am able to get my vaccine and do a couple of visits to the doctors and dentist. I am flying out Lufthansa. I have already gotten three reminders to have my covid test before I get to the airport. Germany has closed down entry to anyone who has not gotten it. We are meeting in our definitory meeting. We will finish sometime tomorrow afternoon. I have finished some reading: Ice by Ed McBain This is one of the Ed McBain detective novels about a police headquarters and the detectives who work there. There is a series of murders committed with the same gun, and there seem to be connections with a cocaine ring. The story is very well done. Red Rain by Dean Koontz This is one of the novellas in the Nameless series. Nameless is a man who works for an unknown operation that tries to determine the truth of murders which are true evil. In this case, he finds an arsonist and his accomplices and sets them against each other. The story is well done. The Mercy of Snakes by Dean Koontz This is the fifth of the Nameless series. He is an avenger for those whose connections to people in power are protected and who do evil things against others. This issue deals with a doctor who owns a five star elderly facility. He hires a detective to discover those who have a relative who wouldn’t mind if the resident were to die early. He and his nurse/lover then kill that person and he get a share of the inheritance. Typical of the series, Nameless is able to engineer a falling out between the co-conspirators. Photographing the Dead by Dean Koontz This is an episode in a series called the Nameless series of an operative who seeks revenge upon notoriously evil characters. In this case, it is a rich young man who likes to kill anonymously simply for the joy of the kill. Koontz is a very, very good author. The History of Spain by Joyce Salisbury This is a Teaching Company course on Spain from ancient times to the present. The professor is good, but I found that she felt that the ancients, the Muslims and Jewish people were fine, while her treatment of Christianity is not all that good. Nevertheless, it is a good account, including many of the cultural elements of Spanish culture. Classics of American Literature by Arnold Weinstein This is a very, very long series from the Teaching Company by a literary critic from the time of the early republic up to the present. Some of the insights of the professor were quite interesting, others were very, very odd, almost as if they were the personal pet peeves of the author. There were 84 episodes in the series. Have a good Triduum. Shalom fr. Jude

Assisi - Rome

February 18, 2013 Peace and Good, Well, our General Chapter has come to an end. We had the closing Mass yesterday and travelled back to Rome. Today we have a definitory meeting to try to set up the full team for the next six years. Then tomorrow I head off to Baltimore. I will be there and in California for a few weeks. In Baltimore, I will be taking care of annual check ups with various doctors. Furthermore, I must visit the doctor for a problem with my rotator cuff. In California, I will be visiting a minister provincial who was ill and could not attend the General Chapter. I will be coming back to Rome on the 7th of March, so I should be back in town when the conclave begins, unless they move it forward. The first two weeks of the General Chapter involved an evaluation of where the order is now and what we have done the past six years. Then we had the elections for the Minister General and his definitory. After that, we began to look at proposals for the next six year mandate. There are not a lot of changes. Some provinces are joining together such as five provinces in central Italy and two provinces on the east coast of the US. There is a new province: Mexico. There is an old province that will be downgraded: Holland. The liturgical celebrations in Assisi were magnificent, but it will also be good to get a few celebrations in these days that are not huge musical presentations. The basicila choir was incredible. They must have practiced for months and months. Here are some books I have finished: He Who Hesitates by Ed McBain This is another of the detective novels written by Evan Hunter under the pseudonym Ed McBain. It is quite different from the other volumes that I have read so far. While those center on the action of a group of detectives in a police station in a big city, this volume deals with one individual and the people he meets. He feels that he should report something which he did (probably a crime), but he continues to hesitate all throughout the story. It is well done, leaving one wondering exactly what happened right up to the very end. Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman This is another of Hillerman’s books on two Navaho policeman, Lt. Joseph Leaphorn and Jim Chee, and their investigations on and near their reservation. The title comes from a native American custom to have a group of clowns perform during sacred ceremonies. These clowns mimic certain activities and serve as a kind of examination of conscience for the tribe as to whether they are maintaining or abandoning tribal customs. There is a major theme in this book about the difficulty of understanding other’s cultures. This is applied both to a question of tribal laws concerning marriage and how Chee’s girlfriend who is half Navaho but was raised off reservation cannot fully understand Chee’s difficulties, and also how one tribe finds it difficult to understand all the nuances of certain activities within another tribe. The whole series is well done. The characters are well developed, and they provide a good insight to another world of thought and custom. Devil and the White City by Erik Larson This is actually a double story. On the one side, it is the story of a mass murderer who killed many, many people in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. Chicago was growing rapidly, and any number of young women travelled there from their small villages to find a new life. They were often lonely and naive. This murderer played upon this and murdered them, at times even using their bones to form medical skeletons. He was not caught until much later when he was convicted for insurance fraud for murdering his partner and then collecting his insurance policy. The other part of the book is the story of the 1892 world’s fair in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Christopher Columbus. It was called the “white city.” It was a magnificent presentation that marked the moment when Chicago, then the second largest city in the country, came to central stage. The architect and landscape designer, famous even in those days, created a masterpiece. The architect was Daniel Burnham who designed some of the most famous buildings in Chicago. The landscape designer was Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park. This was where a number of new inventions were first presented: cracker jacks, cream of wheat, juicy fruit gum, Pabst Blue Ribbon, shredded wheat, Quaker Oats, and electricity with alternating current, etc. There was a tremendous challenge to be more beautiful, larger, etc. than the Paris exposition. The Ferris, in fact, was the attempt to make something more grand than the Eiffel Tower. The book is very good. The only critique is that the author has the tendency to tell one what people were thinking when he in fact has no way of knowing it. Have a good week. Shalom fr. Jude

Rome

December 10, 2012 Peace and Good, I hope you are all well. I have been in Rome for the past week. We are getting ready for our General Chapter, and I have been asked to translate some of the documents for that chapter. This includes the Minister General’s report and the new proposals for the next six years. (We call this the Instrumentum Laboris, or the “working document”). I was at the meetings that put together these documents, so I know a lot of the reasons why things were said the way they were. There is just over 100 pages to translate. So far it is going well. I have finished one entire document and am about a third of the way through the second one. I should finish everything by this Saturday, which is very good because the next week we have a General Definitory all week long. Furthermore, the General Secretary was hoping to e mail these documents out to all the friars who will be present at Chapter sometime before Christmas, and my translation will be ready in plenty of time. We have been celebrating our novena for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception this past week. Every evening we have Mass and a different cardinal is invited each day. I was one of the main concelebrants two of the evenings. This is the first time that I concelebrated with a cardinal. It has been very, very cold in Rome these past week. It is always a bit damp, but it has been bitterly cold also (at least bitterly cold by Roman standards – the Minnesota folks would consider this to be a balmy Spring day). I finished a few books: A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre I listened to this book in an abridged form. It was one of those books that was so good that I wish I had the unabridged version. It is about a young man from Chechnya who had been arrested by the Russians, the Turks and even the Swedes. He is seeking asylum in Germany. He also turns out to be the heir of a considerable fortune left him by his Russian father (who had conceived him by raping his Chechen mother). Issa, the young man, seems out to be an absolute innocent. He is helped by a German asylum lawyer and the banker who cared for his father’s fortune. The secret services of Germany, Great Britain and the US all get involved. One ends up wondering who is telling the truth and where moral good and evil actually lie. It is very, very good. The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstein This is a series of essays on the various colonies and what made each tick. We hear about the Puritans of New England. They were not all that concerned with doctrinal purity as much as unity in government. There were the Quakers of Pennsylvania who were so concerned with doctrinal purity (which included pacifism) that they did not foresee protection against the Indians for their settlers in more dangerous areas. Then there were the planters of Virginia who founded an aristocracy which controlled the government of the colony. Borstein then passes on to culture. He speaks of how culture developed differently in America than it had in Europe. It was not bound by history and tradition. The book continues with all sorts of issues such as the colonial attitude toward literature, the press, the military, etc. The book is well documented and helps you to understand what our country was like before our revolution. It is not a difficult read, and it is insightful. One comes to realize how much of a miracle it was that the thirteen separate colonies with their separate cultures, religions, etc. were able to gel as one nation. Widows by Ed McBain This is another of Ed McBain’s detective novels. He presents some detectives in a precinct and usually deals with two crimes which they must solve. In this case, a girl friend, a wife and a former wife along with a man and his dog are all gunned down by a mysterious killer. The other case is the father of one of the detectives is murdered in his shop by a couple of drug addicts. The novels are a good read, but they are a bit confusing when you first start reading his worked because he shifts from one character and story to another without any notice. Eventually you get used to it and they are an entertaining read. Hope you have a good week. Shalom Fr. Jude

Geneva - Rome - Bacau

April 29, 2012 Peace and Good, I hope you are all well. I have spent the last week in Rome. I flew back there last Sunday from Geneva where I had been attending a meeting of the Board of Directors of Franciscans International. This was a week to catch up with some work. I had to translate a document from Italian into English. It was about 7 pages long, so it too a full day just to do that. Then there was another day spent working on daily reflections. I have most of May done and sent in to be posted. I also attended a few meetings. On Monday, there was a reception of the executive committee of the men's and women's conference of major superiors. These are organizations that represent reliigious men and women in the United States. Then, on Tuesday, there was a reception for the leaders of religious communities in Rome and those from the States. Finally, on Friday, I had a meeting with one of the provincials of one of the United States provinces who was in Rome for some other meetings. This is the province that is preparing for an extraordinary chapter on May 15th, so we were able to take care of some preliminaries. I will be heading there when I get back from Romania. Yesterday, I flew back into Romania. I am giving another two retreats here to the friars who have finished initial formation. I will be in the same retreat house where I was at the beginning of Holy Week. Here, like Rome, spring has arrived. I should really say early summer because it is quite warm. That is fine with me, given that it was very, very cold in the retreat house last time (especially since it is in a valley). I will be here for two weeks. Here is some of my reading: Killer’s Choice by Ed McBain Ed McBain is a prolific author of a series of police stories. He is also the author of a book that was made into a film in the 50’s, Blackboard Jungle. This story involves the murder of a young woman who proves to be much more complicated than one would first suspect. It is almost as if she were living a triple and quadruple life. Some reviewers speak of this as a literary version of some of the police dramas on TV in the 70’s. It is an easy read, not all that challenging in characters or action. The Countess of Escarbagnas by Moliere This is a short play by the 17th century French author (read in English) which makes fun of a countess who at best can be called nasty and the servants and suitors whom she encounters in the provinces. It is a strange little production, intended to be a farce mocking the pretensions of the upper class in Moliere’s France. Princes of the Church by Dominic Aidan Bellenger and Stella Fletcher This is an overview of the cardinals of England over the ages, going from the earliest cardinals either residing in Rome or in England to the latest ones. It is an informative volume which gives some insight into why certain men were chosen and what they did or did not do for the church. There is no great polemic in the volume, no axes to grind. Have a good week. Shalom fr. Jude