Catherine of Siena: Fearless and fiery...

But not a Savonarola.

Catherine wrote a lot of letters, but they were private - not for public consumption. Raymond of Capua wrote her biography. He was also her spiritual director and knew her soul. She never acted on her own. She never had a bonfire of the vanities. She never was able to ascend a pulpit to condemn or deride the evils of the day. She didn't walk about Siena or Avignon, or even Rome, trying to make a name for herself.

She wrote letters. She met with important personages who sought her counsel, she was a spiritual guide for many, and she even reprimanded, albeit charitably and privately, the Pope and civic leaders.

If she had a blog or wrote books would she have been like us and publicly condemn and deride and scoff like we do? I don't know. I doubt it very much. Would she approve of some of our more searing posts against others? I doubt it even more. All I know is that she rarely if ever went public with her rebukes and condemnations, she wrote in confidence, moved by divine inspiration. As she wrote to one of her spiritual sons, a priest:

“I am ignorant and not very insightful. Everything else is from supreme eternal Truth: give him the credit, not me.” - Catholic Exchange review of Fearless and Fiery, Letters of St. Catherine

Perhaps if any one of us aspires to be like Catherine, we should first pray for the grace to imitate her penance, her solitude in the cell of self-knowledge, imitating her prayer, which lifted her soul in heroic charity - intense love of God and neighbor.. - then those of us who dare, may try to reform the Church.  Remember, perfection lies in union with God through charity...

Another Holy Fool: Peter Maurin

Peter Maurin died on this date in 1949.

Maurin was co-founder and co-worker with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker.  Dorothy Day considered him the holiest man she had ever known, as well as something of an eccentric.  Nothing wrong with that.

When Peter Maurin died on May 15, 1949, the New Deal order of welfare capitalism was ushering in an unprecedented period of prosperity that promised to satisfy every imaginable material desire. Catholics benefited materially from their support for this order, yet lost the family stability and communal solidarity that had marked them as a people apart in an earlier era. Twenty-five years later, when New Deal “statism” could no longer deliver the goods, many Catholics simply changed partners and danced to the tune of modern materialism’s other siren song, capitalism At present, we appear to be at the end of this second cycle of prosperity. As we ponder our next economic option, we might consider why it is that family and community structures that endured through centuries of material poverty have not been able to survive two generations of material prosperity. Which is more foolish: to think that social stability requires the subordination of material to spiritual ordering principles, or to affirm that social stability and spiritual renewal are compatible with the constant expansion of opportunities for material self-advancement? In reflecting on this question, few guides could be more reliable than Peter Maurin. - Peter Maurin:  A Fool for Christ

I think Pope Benedict would very much approve of Peter Maurin.  This past weekend while visiting Arezzo, and the Franciscan Shrine of La Verna, the Holy Father called on Catholics to show solidarity with the poor and 'to go beyond the purely materialistic ideologies that often mark our age and end up clouding our sense of solidarity and charity.' 

“Since the remotest times, attention to others has moved the Church to show concrete signs of solidarity with those in need, sharing resources, promoting simpler lifestyles, going against an ephemeral culture which has disappointed many and determined a profound spiritual crisis,” he said. - VIS