Ite ad Ioseph

The Tuesday Pillar Post

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Tomorrow is St. Joseph’s Day, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.

Cuzco School Artist, “Saint Joseph and the Christ Child,” late 17th–18th century. public domain

In the Church’s calendar, St. Joseph has two feasts, and three if you count the Feast of the Holy Family, the Sunday after Christmas. Devotion to St. Joseph is prominent in the Church today — note the pope’s apostolic letter on the man, the popularity of a 33-day consecration to the Lord’s foster father, and the profusion of kids named Joseph you’ll find at the parish Sunday donuts.

But it hasn’t always been thus.

In fact, for the first thousand years of Christianity, Joseph had almost no cult of devotion at all, except among the Copts.

According to the scholars I’ve read, especially Sandra Miesel, the early Church — keen to defend the perpetual virginity of Mary — downplayed St. Joseph.

In the realm of popular piety, traditions emerged in which Joseph was very old, often with children from a first marriage, and thus no real challenge to the Blessed Mother’s virginity. In some of those traditions, Joseph was even a bit of a comic figure in some legends and plays, a goofy old coot, really.

During the Middle Ages, though, interest in St. Joseph began to grow among some religious communities, who even started to celebrate a March 19 feast for the Lord’s custodial father.

But according to Miesel, it was the tragedy of the 14th century that boosted St. Joseph into the stratosphere. In the century, Europe saw a deadly plague, famine, civil wars, revolts, and widespread ecclesial corruption.

All of that left families despondent, and Europe in need of a heavenly protector.

St. Joseph was championed by the era’s ecclesiastical reformers, and rose into the role. Carmelites and Franciscans especially promoted him. He was often depicted younger, stronger, and more paternal than he had been previously.

By 1479, the feast of St. Joseph was celebrated in Rome, and by 1570, it was fixed to the Church’s universal calendar.

“The Holy Family with a Little Bird.” Bartolome Estaban Murillo, 1650. public domain.

While devotion to Joseph wavered on-and-off after that, it saw a resurgence in the industrial revolution and the turmoil of 19th century Europe, and especially rose in opposition to the rising tide of 20th century communism.

He has since become more popular as a model of paternal kindness, gentleness, and virtue.

And in truth, that’s what we need today.

We’re in a crisis of models for masculinity. An apparent backlash against secularized feminism — at least as its champions tell it — has brought with it popular cultural models of “masculinity” who are coarse cads for clicks, or much worse, and whose influence on young men is to stoke them in vice, or to frame self-centeredness as a path to respect, or happiness, or to finding their true identity.

St. Joseph is no such thing.

He is a patriarch, in the model of his fathers before him. But his strength is in his patience, his meekness, his confident trust in the plan of God.

St. Joseph has nothing to prove. He has no need for clicks or likes. He has no need to self-promote. He is content to live as God has called him — to be the man he was made to be.

And St. Joseph is himself proof that we find real meaning and real purpose in Jesus Christ.

We need him. May he intercede for us.

The news

An interview with Cardinal Arthur Roche sparked discussion this month about the future of papally-mandated restrictions on the use of older liturgical rubrics in the Latin Church.

In fact, conciliatory remarks from Roche have led some to speculate that the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes might not have much of a future in the Church. But is that wishful thinking on the part of Catholic traditionalists? Or are there clear signs of a coming change?

The Pillar asked folks on all sides of the Church’s liturgical debate a very basic question: Does Traditionis custodes have a future?

Here’s what they told us.

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Ten years ago, a suicide bomber in Lahore, Pakistan decided it was time to bomb a Catholic church.

The bomber probably planned his explosives carefully; he probably planned what time to be there for maximal impact.

He didn’t plan on Akash Bashir.

But Bashir stepped in, stopped the suicide bomber, saved hundreds of people inside the church, and died in the process.

He’s now on the path to becoming Pakistan’s first “blessed.”

This week, the postulator for Bashir’s canonization cause told The Pillar why Pakistani Catholics call the man a hero.

This is a story worth reading.

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President Trump signed into law on Saturday a temporary spending bill aimed at avoiding a government shutdown — which brought with it a vital extension to a visa program used by thousands of non-ordained Catholic religious workers.

The extension allows thousands of ecclesiastical employees — teachers, catechists, and caregivers, many of them religious sisters — to enter and remain in the United States.

But while the program lives to die another day, its future remains contingent on periodic Congressional decisions, rather than a permanent place in U.S. immigration policy — which is why the U.S. bishops’ conference has urged that Congress make the EB-4 visa designation a permanent component of immigration law.

Meanwhile, the Church remains vexed by a bigger visa problem — one that could be fixed by an executive order or some other administrative action from the Trump White House.

The big issue is that Catholics who are here on R-1 religious worker visas — mostly foreign-born priests and many religious sisters — are facing backlogs to permanent residency applications, which means that after five years in the country, many of them have to leave their parishes, dioceses, or seminary classrooms for a year, creating a growing hole in the Church’s sacramental and pastoral ministry.

Again, the Trump White House could fix this at any time, even if proposed legislation on the subject doesn’t get off the ground.

The White House says it’s not against well-ordered legal immigration of would-be migrants with skills vital to the good of the United States. Does that include priests? Religious sisters?

That’s the question the White House will have to eventually answer — and for Catholics, it’s a question that matters.

Synodality Synod 2.0?

From his hospital room, Pope Francis on Saturday announced a new three-year process to promote synodality in the global Church — culminating in a Vatican ecclesial assembly in 2028.

A three year process on synodality, you say? Culminating in a big global gathering at the Vatican?

But … didn’t we just do that? Wasn’t that called the synod on synodality?

Well, the Vatican says this is different — because while the synod process was supposed to talk about the principles of synodality, this new “synod pathway” is supposed to talk about the implementation of the principles of synodality.

And that’s different, see?

It’s not even a new synod, the Vatican says, because while a synod is meant for bishops — even if the synod on synodality actually involved both bishops and non-bishops — an ecclesial assembly is meant to involve both bishops and non-bishops.

That’s different. Right? Of course right.

Readers could be forgiven if they get a bit confused, given that the final purpose of the synod on synodality was to advise the pope on synodality in the Church’s life as he discerned the issue, and the final purpose of the ecclesial assembly is to “offer the Holy Father valuable insights — fruits of a real ecclesial experience — to aid his discernment as the Successor of Peter, with perspectives to propose to the entire Church,” according to Cardinal Grech.

But no, this is not Synod on Synodality 2.0. It’s an assembly, meant to help the pope understand how some places are implementing synodality well, and how other places can learn from them how to do it better.

This is a new and very different ecclesial reality.

Diocesan and parish staffs, meanwhile, should be prepared to kick off synodal listening sessions in the months to come. But not synod listening sessions, you see. That’s important. These will be listening sessions about synodal implementations, conducted in the style of synodality.

Any questions?

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If your Lent is in need of a pick-me-up, don’t forget about Sunday School, our weekly Sunday readings podcast with Dr. Scott Powell. You’ll love it.

And please pray more for Fr. Sylvest Okechukwu, killed in Nigeria, and buried just days ago:

Please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us.

And go to St. Joseph. He’s a powerful intercessor.

Yours in Christ,

JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar