Catholicism WOW! ……………..because our Catholic faith is so amazing.

Welcome back to Catholicism WOW.    Please join us for our meeting on Wednesday September 4, 2024
To access our ZOOM meeting on Sept. 4, please use the “Virtual Coffee and Doughnuts” link: go to www.calnewman.org

1. click on "Virtual Coffee & Doughnuts"

2. click on "Open ZOOM Meetings"

3. click “Join”

Our discussion topic will be “Grandparents - an Indigenous Elder's Meditations”.    (See information about the meeting below)

WHAT IS CATHOLICISM WOW! ?

Given that many are unaware or distracted by misinformation or lack of information about Catholicism, we need to be explorers and companions. Come join other explorers as we seek to discover how our faith continues to survive and thrive 2,000+ years and counting, despite of human frailty and mistakes.  But then, Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail over his church.

What kind of things do we discuss? In the past, we have watched and discussed Bishop Robert Barron’s video series on Catholicism, the Saints, and the Mass. We’ve also read and discussed the lives of the saints, our Pope’s writings, and have explored topics in the news, as well as protecting the environment, racial justice, participants’ experiences in and of Catholicism, and myriad other topics.

You are warmly invited to join our remote Catholicism WOW meetings via Zoom. 

We will start at 7 pm every Wednesday via ZOOM.     We stop at 8 pm.  

Want to attend?   Please tell us to add you to the guest list.

Signing up to get the link does not oblige you to attend the meeting, it just tells us you might attend some of the remote meetings.  You can eat dinner during the meeting.   You can arrive late.  You can leave early.   We are all supporting each other as we explore our amazing Catholic faith. 

Please join us.    We look forward to seeing you!
Yvette and Ned

Questions?   Contact us
Yvette  (925) 640-0024   yvetteniccolls@gmail.com
Ned    (925) 209-1271    niccolls@comcast.net 
Note: if you are receiving email notices about the meetings and no longer wish to do so, please contact us and we’ll remove you from the mailing list.

THIS WEEK, September 11th

Please join us this Wednesday evening when Catholicism WOW will discuss the amazing life and spirituality of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.   We will meet remotely on Wednesday September 11 starting at 7 pm and ending at 8 pm (by ZOOM).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit paleontologist who worked to understand evolution and faith. He was born May 1, 1881, and died on April 10, 1955.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s writings give us a window into God’s plan for the evolutionary purpose of the world and the cosmos.

To access our ZOOM meeting on September 11, please use the “Virtual Coffee and Doughnuts” link:

1. go to www.calnewman.org

2. click on "Virtual Coffee & Doughnuts"

3. click on "Open ZOOM Meetings"

4. click “Join”

Homework, if you have time and inclination

1. Please read the Gospel for Mass next Sunday September 15, 2024  Mark 8:27-35  (see below)

2. Please read this fascinating blog by Kathy Coffey 

3. PBS Documentary—”TEILHARD: Visionary Scientist”  (see below) Watch this video which promotes the PBS Documentary 16 min 37 sec

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErUvp3YXdgI

Discussion Questions:

1. What teachings from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are most inspiring for you?

2. What obstacles/disappointments did Teilhard encounter in his life?   How did God strengthen Teilhard in the face of these trials?

3. Do you have an anecdote from your own life that resonates with the trials experienced by Teilhard?

There is so much in Teilhard’s life experiences that resonate and inspire us.    He reveals God’s beautiful and optimistic plan for our world.  Please join the discussion on Wednesday Sept 11. We look forward to seeing you!

Yvette and Ned

 Questions?   Contact us

Yvette  (925) 640-0024   yvetteniccolls@gmail.com

Ned    (925) 209-1271    niccolls@comcast.net

 If you don't need to receive the Catholicism WOW announcements, please let us know and we'll remove you from mailings.

 Sunday September 15, 2024  Gospel Mk 8:27-35

Jesus and his disciples set out
for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
Along the way he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that I am?"
They said in reply,
"John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others one of the prophets."
And he asked them,
"But who do you say that I am?"
Peter said to him in reply,
"You are the Christ."
Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.

He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and rise after three days.
He spoke this openly.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it."

 PBS Documentary—”TEILHARD: Visionary Scientist”

Kathy Coffey. Catholic Speaker, Writer, Poet, Mother of Four, Grandmother of Six
Blog posted on June 15, 2024 |     PART 1

https://kathyjcoffey.com/2024/06/15/pbs-documentary-teilhard-visionary-scientist-part-1/

No wonder Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made the Vatican nervous. They must’ve had their knickers in a knot over a Jesuit priest who wrote shortly after World War I, “I have experienced no form of self-development without some feminine eye turned on me, some feminine influence at work.”                    

And that wasn’t even what flummoxed the hierarchs who condemned his new ideas. They simply couldn’t handle Teilhard’s three alternative ways to think about original sin, or joy in the dynamic process of evolution, when their theology was medieval, static, entrenched.

But to start with the controversy jumps too far ahead. Let’s focus for now on a stunning new documentary, ten years in the making, filmed in a total of 25 locations where Teilhard lived, including more than 35 interviews and archival footage. Reading Teilhard is rewarding and can also be difficult, but the film clarifies his key insights with marvelous directness. After watching it, I went outside in twilight to look in wonder at the luminous full moon, the distant hills and sculpted cypresses. My prayer was simply, “Thank you God for Teilhard.”

I’d been reintroduced to his writing earlier this year by the splendid work of Sister Ilia Delio, Franciscan theologian. Interviewed in this documentary, she points out that Teilhard was way ahead of his time. Now, the PBS film by co-producers Frank and Mary Frost makes him accessible to an audience far beyond his era (1881-1955) and the realm of churchgoers. This broader audience is appropriate, since The Divine Milieu was originally written for “waverers.”

Teilhard’s mother gave him traditional Catholicism, and his father, walks in the woods to explore the geology of the Auvergne, France. When his mother was cutting his hair by the fire, Pierre at six noticed how quickly the locks that fell in burned, and began his life-long search for something more permanent. He turned first to iron, but found it would rust. Then he found rock which lasted—and a distinguished career as a geologist and paleontologist.

His scientific studies created tension with a religion whose dominant teaching then was contempt for the world and flight from it. He loved the earth and found God’s fingerprints in all his explorations. He saw Christ at work in unfinished creation, drawing all matter to himself; as humans make the evolutionary journey into God, God “humbly becomes increasingly incarnate.” The work of human hands, nothing scorned, contributes to this gradual unfolding. Teilhard would often use the word “zest” to refer to “the spur or intoxication of advancing God’s kingdom in every domain of humankind.”

Field research–riding mules for weeks into the Chinese desert and sleeping in tents–didn’t bother Teilhard , because he was captivated by his quest for fossils and rocks that would tell the human story. What devastated him were the criticisms, silencings and exiles enforced by Vatican officials and Jesuit superiors. Previously, friends had described Teilhard as exuberant, charming, vivacious, kind.  But his close friend Pierre Leroy, S.J. (the only one to accompany his body to the burial site) described him as “bereft and broken” when he realized around age 70 that his major works like The Divine Milieu and The Phenomenon of Man couldn’t be published in his lifetime.

As a writer, I can’t imagine the pain and frustration of being forbidden to publish. For someone whose ideas were ground-breaking, prophetic, an infusion of life the stale church desperately needed—devastating. He wanted the church to embrace the gift he offered, but that came only after his death. Fortunately, he’d willed his work to his secretary who got it published immediately. Many have speculated that if it’d gone to the Jesuits, it might’ve vanished into the archives or been destroyed. Sales of his books skyrocketed; he was recognized by four popes; his influence and phrases are found in Vatican II documents and “Laudato Si,” Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment.

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PBS Documentary—”TEILHARD: Visionary Scientist”–Part 2

https://kathyjcoffey.com/2024/06/22/pbs-documentary-teilhard-visionary-scientist-part-2/

Blog posted on June 22, 2024 |    PART 2

Back to the feminine influence on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, unusual for a priest in his era to acknowledge. The first woman to play a major role was Marguerite, Teilhard’s cousin and childhood playmate. She was a rarity for women then—a brilliant student at the Sorbonne University in Paris, who studied under the noted philosopher Henri Bergson. She was Teilhard’s confidante when he served as a stretcher-bearer during World War I, the first listener to his ideas, his first audience and critic. Since 1 million died at Verdun, his time at the battlefield gave him a compulsion to write, fearing he might not return. Teilhard’s biographer Ursula King says of Marguerite, “without her, he might not have survived the war as well as he did.”

After the war, Teilhard enjoyed the intellectual circles of Paris, his teaching and doctoral studies, but his struggles with authorities stripped him of the life he loved. Deeply disappointed, Teilhard was exiled to China—which would ironically become a time of stimulation and flowering. International circles of scientists there transcended national and religious backgrounds; his field research led to the discovery of Peking man, a “perfect proof of evolution.” And he met Lucile Swan, a recently divorced North American sculptor.

They loved each other deeply; their relationship enriched what he called “our” work. Her influence broadened and deepened him. Lucile didn’t share Teilhard’s beliefs, so he stretched and expanded as he tried to articulate for her. She described him as alive and joyful, writing, “his ‘credo’… seems to me the best expression of a faith that I have yet found.” She found church censorship baffling: “his beliefs are so sane, intelligent and appealing to the world of today—which needs and longs for the very thing that he has to give.” She couldn’t understand his fidelity to the Jesuits, and hoped they’d kick him out so the couple could have a more “normal” relationship. He wrote her that his “internal evolution [has been] deeply impressed by you,” and felt lost after leaving Peking when they could no longer have their daily tea together. Teilhard promised Lucile that their love was forever, and perhaps its effects live on in his books.

Their relationship would change over time, but Lucile was one of the ten people at his funeral in New York City. After the communist takeover in China, he was exiled to the US, forbidden to return to his beloved France. He who wrote eloquently of the divine milieu was robbed of his own milieu. Sadly, this creative scholar and mystic was curtly informed, “No lectures. No publishing. Stick to Science.” Such a boycott led Teilhard to question himself, “has the vision been a mirage?”

Miraculously he maintained his astonishment at the juice of life. His biographer Kathleen Duffy writes in Teilhard’s Mysticism that “something as simple as a song or sunbeam would…heighten his awareness of an unexplainable presence.”(23) In a letter to the Father General trying to explain where he stood, Teilhard wrote, “what might’ve been taken as obstinacy or disrespect is simply the result of my absolute inability to contain my own feeling of wonderment.” Even at the end he was dazzled by beauty; one of his favorite words was “sap,” for the divine energy welling up through appearances. And to their credit, the Jesuits have done a complete turn-around; they are among the sponsors of the documentary streaming for two years on PBS and website, 

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video PBS Documentary: Teilhard: Visionary Scientist (5-Star review)

PBS Documeilhard: Visionary Scientist (5-Star review)