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Calendar of Saints, Christian Witness, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Saints and Martyrs

May 10

Joseph Padewski, Bishop and Martyr, (1951)
St. Calepodius, Martyr, (222)
Saints Gordian and Epimachus, Martyrs, (250)

Bishop Joseph Padewski

Bishop Joseph Padewski was born February 18, 1894 in Antoniów, a small farming village near Radom in Poland. He emigrated to the United States in 1913 and moved to Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit he came into contact with the Polish National Catholic Church. In 1916 he entered the PNCC Seminary. He was ordained to the priesthood on December 16, 1919 by Prime Bishop Francis Hodur. He celebrated his first mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Plymouth, Pennsylvania.

In 1931 Father Padewski was sent to Poland as part of the PNCC mission of evangelization in Poland, and to work on consolidating the structures of the PNCC (PNKK) in Poland. He was appointed assistant to Bishop Leon Grochowski.

In January 1933 at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the PNCC in Poland attended by Bishop Hodur, Father Padewski was appointed administrator of the PNCC in Poland. At the Second Synod of the PNCC in Poland in April 1935 Father Padewski was elected Bishop. Father Padewski was elevated to the Episcopacy on August 26, 1936 in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Before the Second World War the PNCC had 100,000 members, 52 parishes, 12 affiliate churches, and 52 priests in Poland.

On September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west and the Soviet Union invaded from the east. The losses to Poland and to the Church in Poland during the Nazi German and Soviet occupation were devastating. Over 6 million Poles died including 3 million Polish citizens of the Jewish faith. Many priests were sent to concentration camps. In all, 28% of PNCC priests were killed.

In part, Bishop Padewski was able to save the church from complete liquidation by bringing the church under the control of the Old Catholic Church’s Bishop in Bonn, Erwin Kreuzer.

In 1942 Bishop Padewski was arrested by the Nazis and was held at the Montelupich prison in Krakow. He was then transferred to the Tittmoning POW Camp in Germany where he was held for 18 months. Through the intervention of the Swiss Red Cross he was freed and returned to the United States in March 1944.

Between 1944 and 1946 Bishop Padewski served as pastor of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Czestochowa Parish in Albany, New York.

Bishop Padewski returned to Poland on February 20, 1946 to resume his duties as Bishop of the Polish branch of the PNCC.

Shortly after his return, the Soviet Union completed its takeover of Poland and asserted Communist control. In this atmosphere of Stalinist terror, Bishop Padewski was arrested by the Communist Secret Police (UB) in Warsaw and was held at their prison on Rakowieckiej Street.

Bishop Padewski died on May 10, 1951 as a result of secret police questioning and maltreatment.

Bishop Padewski with Servicemen and Gold and Silver Star Mothers and Wives in Albany, NY

Current Events, Perspective, Political, Saints and Martyrs,

Doing the devil’s work

From the AP via the International Herald Tribune: Iraq’s Christian minority flees from violence

BAGHDAD: Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living in a multiethnic neighborhood in the capital.

Then, two months ago, al-Qaida gunmen kidnapped him and demanded his family convert to Islam or pay a US$30,000 ransom. Two weeks later, he paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria, joining a mass exodus of Iraq’s increasingly threatened Christian minority.

“There is no future for us in Iraq,” Mansour said.

Though Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before, bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest attacks have taken on a far more personal tone, with many Christians being expelled from their homes and forced to leave their possessions behind, police, human rights groups and residents said.

The Christian community here, about 3 percent of the country’s 26 million people, is particularly vulnerable. It has little political or military clout to defend itself, and some Islamic insurgents view it as a fifth column —” calling Christians “Crusaders” —” whose real loyalty lies with the U.S. troops they are fighting.

Many churches are now nearly empty during religious services, with much of their flock either gone or too scared to attend. Only about 30 people sat scattered among the pews at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in the relatively safe Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah during this week’s Sunday Mass. About two dozen worshippers took communion in the barren St. Mary’s Church in the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday…

After I had read that article, I came across an article on church closings at the Buffalo News. In Under canon law, Catholic parishes rarely ‘close’ I found the following:

Closing a parish is a rare and rather involved legal process that extends all the way to the Vatican.

…

—No parish is really ever closed unless there are no Catholics left there,— said Litwin. —In reality, what seem to be closings are not really closings. You’re closing buildings perhaps, but you’re merging parish boundaries.—

The Vatican clarified the issue last summer in a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in which Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, a high-ranking prelate, wrote: —Only with great difficulty can one say that a parish becomes extinct.—

—A parish is extinguished by the law itself only if no Catholic community any longer exists in its territory, or if no pastoral activity has taken place for a hundred years,— Hoyos wrote, according to the Catholic News Service…

President Bush has done quite the job in ridding Iraq of Christians. By 2108 the Canons regarding church closings will become operative. No Christians, no pastoral activity, no churches in Iraq.

Mr. Bush is the real problem, not the jihadists pushing dhimmitude, who in reality have been given license to run rampant under the ‘government, we don’t need no stinkin’ government’ situation in Iraq.

I would say, beyond much doubt, that President Bush considers the Christians of the Middle East anything but Christians, maybe dogs, but certainly not Christians.

You see, our President is firmly aligned with the Evangelicals whose rhetoric, practice, and belief, denies the fact that anyone of the ‘catholic’ persuasion is a Christian at all.

  • Christians in Lebanon – nope.
  • Christians in Iraq – nope
  • The Orthodox, Romans, Orientals – who dat.
  • Christians in Israel – just those awaiting the rapture

Mr. Bush, pay attention to scripture. A house divided and all…

You are working against these ancient communities of faith, and the responsibility for their fall lies at your feet. You’ve just about accomplished what the Roman Emperors, the Hun, the Horde, the Sultans, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong-il, all combined couldn’t accomplish. You’ve just about rid a huge chunk of the earth of Christianity.

Saints and Martyrs

May, the month of Mary

Mary in blue

O You, whose image is seen in every Polish cottage,
Church, and store, in every sumptuous apartment,
In the hand of the dying, and over the child’s crib,
And before whom both night and day shines the eternal light.
You who bear pearls from kings, gold from knights,
In whom even those believe who believe in naught,
Who sees us all with thy beautiful eyes…

O Ty, której obraz widać w każdej polskiej chacie
I w kościele i w sklepiku i w pysznej komnacie,
W ręku tego, co umiera, nad kołyską dzieci,
I przed którą dniem i nocą wciąż się światło świeci.
Która perły masz od królów, złoto od rycerzy,
W którą wierzy nawet taki, który w nic nie wierzy,
Która widzisz z nas każdego cudnymi oczami…

–Jan Lechoń From the poem Matka Boska Częstochowska

Saints and Martyrs, ,

Updates to the Imieniny widget

I’ve updated the Imieniny widget as follows:

  • Added support for setting time offsets in the administrative interface.
  • Added support for re-naming the widget title in the administrative interface.
  • Cleaned up the code

Special thanks for the guidance from Kaf Oseo at guff szub. See WP plugin: My Widget – example WordPress widget.

The current version is alpha 0.3. The download is available from my Downloads page.

Saints and Martyrs

From today’s Office of Readings

From The Five Hundred Chapters by St. Maximus the Confessor

A mystery ever new

The Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them he is born as an infant as he fashions himself in them by means of their virtues. He reveals himself to the extent that he knows someone is capable of receiving him. He diminishes the revelation of his glory not out of selfishness but because he recognises the capacity and resources of those who desire to see him. Yet, in the transcendence of mystery, he always remains invisible to all.

For this reason the apostle Paul, reflecting on the power of the mystery, said: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today: he remains the same for ever. For he understood the mystery as ever new, never growing old through our understanding of it.

…

The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery for ever. How can the Word made flesh be essentially the same person that is wholly with the Father? How can he who is by nature God become by nature wholly man without lacking either nature, neither the divine by which he is God nor the human by which he became man?

Faith alone grasps these mysteries. Faith alone is truly the substance and foundation of all that exceeds knowledge and understanding.

And this conference would have been interesting…

Saints and Martyrs,

One project down – what’s next

As many of my regular readers may know, I spent 2006 transcribing and posting daily prayers from Żywoty Świętych – a Polish language lives of the saints. That book was published in 1904 by J. Steinbrenner, Catholic Book Publishers. Its author was the Rev. J.A. Łukaszkiewicz.

For 2007 I will be posting the PNCC Calendar of Saints on a daily basis. I will also be transcribing Polish Language hymns from the Śpiewniczek Kościelny on occasion.

The full title of the book is:

Śpiewniczek —“ zawierający Pieśni Kościelne z Melodyami – Dla Użytku Wiernych (Hymn Book —“ inclusive of the hymns and melodies of the Church for the use of the faithful)

The book was assembled by the Rev. Jan Siedlecki and was published in Poland in 1901, imported and sold by Regulski-Polaski, Inc., 21 Murray St., New York, NY.

As to the PNCC Calendar of the Saints and the Sanctoral Cycle:

The calendar was developed from a review of the many thousands of saints that are commonly recognized by Catholic bodies throughout the world. The Church has not included every recognized saint, but rather has provided a selection of at least three commemorations for each day.

The clergy of the Church are not required to observe commemorations, but are encouraged to do so to add variety to Eucharistic worship and as an expression of union with the rest of the Catholic Church.

Saints were included based on:

  • Commemorations that are universally and traditionally honored on certain days.
  • Individuals who by their lives and work reflect universally accepted Catholic teaching.
  • Saints reflected in the early PNCC work, “33”
  • Polish saints
  • Bishops Hodur and Padewski

It should be noted that general rules of precedence apply to the Sanctoral Cycle:

Solemnities
of our Lord
of the Blessed Mother
of St. Joseph, Guardian of our Lord
of All Saints
of St. John the Baptist
of St. Stephen, Proto-martyr

Feasts
of Holy Angels
of Apostles
of Evangelists
of All Souls

Memorials
of Old Testament Saints
of Abbots
of Bishops
of Confessors
of Doctors
of Deacons
of Kings
of Martyrs
of Priests
of Virgins
of Widows
of Queens
of First Prime Bishop Francis Hodur
of Bishop Joseph Padewski, PNCC Bishop and Martyr

As to Sundays of the year, there are Sundays of the First Class, Second Class, and Ordinary Sundays

Sundays of the First Class (these Sundays give place to no other feast except as noted):

  • the First Sunday of Advent
  • the four Sundays of Lent (The Institution of the PNCC falls on the second Sunday in March and takes precedence over the first four Sundays of Lent, but not Passion Sunday)
  • Passion Sunday
  • Palm Sunday
  • Easter
  • Second Sunday of Easter (Low Sunday)
  • Pentecost

Sundays of the Second Class (these Sundays give place only to Solemnities)

  • Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays of Advent
  • Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima Sundays

Ordinary Sundays (these Sundays give place to Solemnities and Feasts

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