Royal's Blog

Pastor's weekly musings

February 17, 2012

Giordano Bruno 1548 – 1600

Today is a reflective day.  For it was on February 17, 1600 that a 51 year old Dominican friar was burned at the stake for heresy.  What was Brother Giordano’s crime?  His taste for free-thinking.  Most of Giordano’s life was spent on the run.  Naples.  Geneva.  Lyon. Toulouse. Paris. Oxford. Wittenberg. Prague.  As a mathematician/astronomer, the young man found nowhere to rest his inquisitive mind because he followed the teachings of Copernicus.  He had abandoned the orthodoxy of a three-tiered universe and adopted the belief that the sun, not the earth, was its immobile center.  In fact, he promoted a radical concept that the earth actually orbited the sun once a year!!  Although some of his colleagues felt he “wandered” too far by suggesting there could be parallel galaxies with other inhabited planets!!

Had he stuck to star-gazing, Brother Giordano may have simply been condemned to some damp prison cell.  But, he dared to question a few holy doctrines – like the virginity of Mary, the incarnation and transubstantiation.  Questions like these still linger in the inquisitive minds of many of the faithful.  I find it interesting that on the 400th anniversary of Giordano Bruno’s death, the church hierarchy felt compelled to issue a statement that while Giordano’s conviction was a sad episode, his accusers were motivated by the desire to serve truth and promote the common good.  Why is it that the more things change… the more they stay the same?

 

February 10, 2012

The “magnificent” Père Dominique Pire

February 10 is the birthday of one of my heroes, Henri Dominique Pire.  I was only a little kid when Père Pire received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of World War II refugees.  The Belgium monk was celebrated for reaching across religious, national, racial and linguistic barriers while supervising the construction of seven villages in Austria and Germany to house the displaced.  These villages continue to thrive today.

After visiting Pakistan in 1960, Père Pire launched a “second career” that would become a model for modern global mission.  Combining local self-help with private international aid, he showed the world how to increase food production, improve medical services and develop educational and recreational programs.  His success can be attributed to the formation of “cooperatives” that initially draw support from outside technical experts and resources, but within six years are then turned over entirely to the initiative of the local inhabitants. 

The world could use a few more Dominique Pires, to be sure.  And yet, the gentle monk believed that if each of us endeavors to do some good each day, the world would become a “magnificently better place.”   In accepting the Nobel Prize in 1958…he said, “An initial act of love might only seem to benefit a few people, but eventually it affects the entire world.”