Hello,

Our family has special devotion for St. James Matamoros. Now we are looking for a statue of him. In an a-religious Europe this is hard to find.

Please can you help us? Maybe you can email us some links of stores where they make such statues, so we can buy via email such a statue. Or maybe you know some sculpture-makers so we can order one.

     Many thanks,

     F.V.L., Holland



TIA responds:

Hello F.V.L.,

It is really sad that today's religious authorities in Spain have stopped spreading the glorious devotion to St. James as Matamoros (Moor-killer). Over a door of the Basilica of Santiago in Compostela, there is a famous sculpture carved in stone celebrating the frequent appearance of the Apostle to fight for Catholic troops during the Spanish Reconquista.

We reproduce for you and your family some of the pictures of the great Apostle depicted as the Matamoros.

The first picture below is a 12th-century relief inside the Cathedral of Santiago in Compostela (timpano del Clavijo). For information on many others pictures click here.

We hope you can find a sculptor in Spain who still makes statues of St. James Matamoros. Regarding photos, you may order a good copy of one of these photos on the mentioned website or buy good quality prints here.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

Dear TIA,

In examining the pictures of the circuses at the Vatican, I had never seen how ugly and how evil looking the room in which they perform looks. In the lower picture of the Italy's American Circus, one can see some sort of sculpture to the left. It looks like a woman is coming out of a knotted, entangled mess.

There is a stained glass window that looks ugly and out of place with the rest of the room. The size of the place, the giant lights, the horrible statues. It is difficult for me to believe that this monstrosity is really at the Vatican.

Do you have any information on when that horrible place was built?

     Yours truly,

     M.R.



TIA responds:

Dear M.R.,

This modern hall was ordered by Paul VI to be designed by Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi. It was inaugurated 1971 and bore the name of Nervi Hall, until Paul VI passed away. Then it took the present day name of Paul VI Hall. It is conceived in a very modern style to encourage the general wave of modernization in Church buildings that took place under Paul VI's pontificate (1963-1978).

The sculpture you refer to, below first row, is supposed to be the Resurrection of Christ. Again, it does not correspond to Catholic traditional teaching on the Resurrection; rather it fits the idea of a Cosmic Christ, like the one preached by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. Indeed, the Christ of that sculpture made by Pericle Franzini rises from an eruption of the earth forces that seem to characterize a new stage of mankind. It corresponds to the Chardin thesis that Jesus Christ was just a super-evolved man who opened another stage of the universal evolution.

This building is situated some 100 yards to the left of the Bernini columns in St. Peter's Square. In the second photo below, taken from the St. Peter's Basilica cupola, you can see how close it is.

It serves to host papal audiences when the number of attendees is larger than the capacity of the Vatican rooms and smaller than a gathering in St. Peter's Square.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

Dear TIA,

With reference to Distributism and Vatican II, I would like to extend my sympathy and support for the young man (D.R.) contemplating a vocation to the priesthood but who feels intimidated by groups within traditionalist circles who impose Distributism as a sine qua non of Catholic orthodoxy.

Speaking as a traditional Catholic of many years standing long before Vatican II, my message to him is that he has nothing to feel ashamed of in rejecting Distributism, for it was never part of the magisterium; nor was it even mentioned in any papal encyclical or proposed as mainstream social teaching before Vatican II. The irony of the situation is that, like Ecumenism, Distributism was limited to a few early 20-century cranks convinced they knew what was best for the Church and society and then gained adherents in the novus ordo parishes who now promote both equally unCatholic philosophies.

There is plenty of evidence that traditionalist circles are being corrupted by the Distributist mentality. The latest casualty is The Remnant newspaper which is turning into a political opinion screed by pushing Distributism at its Roman Forum and advertising books on the subject. We are being lectured to by the new generation of Distributists who believe they have a manifest destiny to control the nation's productivity by their version of a planned economy. The idea that an elite group (even a traditional Catholic one) can come up with all the right answers is not only a form of conceit but is an absurd theory which is bound to end in social and economic chaos and a dramatic lowering of standards of living, not to mention possible violence and revolution.

However, arguing that economic planning has eventually failed wherever it was tried is not likely to have much impact. For some people, it is difficult to see that what the Distributists are offering is but a mirage and the road to ruin.

D.R. is right to love his country and its Constitution which was written to uphold individual rights and limit the power of those who seek hegemony over the masses. He is right to follow the Catholic Church which defends Christian freedom in pursuit of prosperity and security for individuals. God speed those who work to remove the cancer of Distributism from our midst.

     Dr. C.B.

TIA,

Oh dear, that is my new bishop, Salvatore Cordileone, in Ratzinger's Preference & Cordileone's Mandate by Lyle J. Arnold. He is now admonishing the faithful to receive Communion in the hand, rather than on the tongue.

Je pleure. I had high hopes for il mio 'Cuor di Leone'. (Cordileone must surely be a Sicilian descendant of Richard Coeur de Lion.)

     E.P.L.

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