Conference examines inspiring poetry of Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins
Denver, Colo., Mar 30, 2011 / 02:43 am (CNA).- The deeply religious poetry of the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins was the focus of a conference where participants praised the nineteenth-century poet’s craftsmanship and environmentalism, saying he and Bl. John Henry Newman were “revolutionaries in their time.”
“His poetry is beautiful, and inspiring. It’s full of deep thought and observation of nature, and the presence of God in every living thing and even in inanimate objects,” said Richard Austin, an English-born actor presently living in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.
Austin, one of the presenters at the international Gerard Manley Hopkins Conference, held at Regis University in Denver March 25-27, said the poet’s work is particularly important at a time when mankind appears to be becoming more devoted to a “cult of the self” and is distancing itself from an “ideal of connection” to God and spirituality.
Hopkins saw poetry as “speech purged of dross, like gold in the furnace,” he told CNA on March 26.
The poet’s 1877 work “God’s Grandeur” focuses on the beauty of creation. It begins:
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.”
Regis University professor Victoria McCabe told CNA that the Hopkins Conference has had 16 meetings, including events at the Gregorian University in Rome, Oriel College in Oxford, the Milltown Park Jesuit Institute in Dublin and at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.
The conference launched after three Catholics, “passionate readers” of Hopkins, envisioned a gathering of scholars, poets, students and parishioners to help widen interest in the poet and to serve the people of God.
Hopkins, who lived from 1844 to 1889, was born in England to Anglican parents. In 1866 he was received into the Catholic Church by another prominent convert, Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman. Hopkins joined the Society of Jesus the next year and was ordained to the priesthood in 1877.
He spent the last five years of his life teaching in Dublin at Newman’s Catholic University of Ireland, which served Irish Catholics who had been denied an education.
Conference speaker Fr. Peter Milward, S.J., a professor emeritus of English at Sophia University in Tokyo, said Newman and Hopkins both represent the “second spring” of Catholicism in England.
“Newman was great in the medium of prose, and then he’s followed by Hopkins in the medium of poetry. The two complement each other.”
Both men were “revolutionaries in terms of their time,” he said. While Newman proposed an “essentially Catholic spirit” in the Anglican Church, Hopkins created innovative poems filled with “deep spiritual inspiration.”
Fr. Milward cited the 1875 poem “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” which commemorated a naval disaster that killed dozens of people, including five Franciscan nuns. This poem “looks through the outer appearance of disaster to the reality of some divine providence at work.”
Hopkins’ poetry is comparable to “the greatest language of William Shakespeare,” the priest said.
Regis student Alex Dohn, a junior studying marketing, told CNA he likes Hopkins because “he incorporates God in his poems through nature.”
Dohn echoed a common theme at the conference.
Fr. Joseph Feeney, S.J., a professor of English at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said Hopkins was “an environmentalist poet.”
“He celebrated nature, he grieved for the destruction of nature, and he urged the preservation of nature.”
One of the poet’s “quite distinctive” perspectives includes the “interplay between the environment and himself.”
He was “fascinated with the very shapes of nature” and had “a sense of the ‘selfhood’ of a thing in nature.”
“People normally don’t transfer selfhood over to individual stones, or individual dragonflies,” Fr. Feeney explained.
Austin, who performed Hopkins’ poetry for the conference, emphasized the importance of listening to the poet’s works.
“You shouldn’t so much read him, as hear him,” he remarked.
When a performer of Hopkins has the right pacing, the poet’s imagery will carry along the listener “even though it’s a heightened form of language and it’s not the one that he or she would normally be used to listen to.”
Austin’s album “Back to Beauty’s Giver,” made in 2003, contains 27 of Hopkins’ poems. The work is “reckoned to be the most complete audiobook of Hopkins poetry,” he added, and “most people seem to feel that it’s the best.”
www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/conference-exam…

Christians pray for defeat of Colorado civil unions bill
Denver, Colo., Mar 30, 2011 / 06:15 pm (CNA).- Colorado Catholics and others in a coalition opposed to a civil unions bill will gather on the state capitol’s eastern steps on March 31 for a noontime prayer vigil.
Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley of Denver has invited others to join him at the event.
“The domestic Church (founded on marriage between one man and one woman) is the very basis of society and an image of the Triune God,” he said.
He asked those who cannot make the vigil to “please join in prayer where ever you are for this most important issue.”
Catholic laity, seminarians and a contingent from the Colorado Springs-based evangelical Christian ministry Focus on the Family will be among the attendees.
A rally for supporters of the bill, including homosexual activist groups, will take place at the same time on the western steps.
The proposed legislation would grant “the legal benefits, protections, and responsibilities that are granted under the law to spouses” to both same-sex and heterosexual civil unions for unrelated individuals. These benefits include property inheritance, dependent coverage under life insurance and health insurance policies, and hospital visitation rights.
However, according to the website of the gay activist group Human Rights Campaign, as of July 2009 any two unmarried Colorado adults can "enter into a Designated Beneficiary Agreement providing certain rights and responsibilities, including hospital visitation, medical decisionmaking, and inheritance."
The civil unions legislation has already passed the Senate by a vote of 23-12. The House begins debate on the bill on March 31.
E. Christian Brugger, a professor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, said in an e-mail circulated to Catholics that there is a chance of defeating the legislation in the House.
If it passes, he warned, “You can be sure that we will not get the genie back in the bottle in
our lifetime, perhaps never.”
“It’s important for as many defenders of traditional marriage as possible to get out there and show their face,” he commented.
Jessica Haverkate, director of the Colorado Springs-based Colorado Family Action, said on March 30 that the vigil was “just bringing people together to pray and support the legislators.”
If the legislation passes out of committee, she predicted “a huge floor battle.”
“The voters out here in Colorado already voted on this issue. We chose to define marriage as one-man, one-woman, we chose to defeat Referendum I,” she said, referring to the state’s marriage amendment and a 2006 ballot initiative to recognize domestic partnerships.
Haverkate thought the effects of the bill could be “extremely concerning,” especially for children.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver, in his March 2 column for the Denver Catholic Register, said that civil unions are “essentially marriage under another name” and the long-term impact of the legislation has not been fully discussed.
“How this legislation will impact Catholic ministries and the benefits the Church affords to her employees are very real concerns,” he wrote.
The archbishop noted that state legislation benefiting “a variety of non-marital domestic arrangements” had already passed in 2010.
“Attempts to redefine marriage, whether direct or indirect, only serve to weaken the already difficult family structure of our society,” he said.
www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/christians-pray…

Christians pray for defeat of Colorado civil unions bill
Denver, Colo., Mar 30, 2011 / 06:15 pm (CNA).- Colorado Catholics and others in a coalition opposed to a civil unions bill will gather on the state capitol’s eastern steps on March 31 for a noontime prayer vigil.
Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley of Denver has invited others to join him at the event.
“The domestic Church (founded on marriage between one man and one woman) is the very basis of society and an image of the Triune God,” he said.
He asked those who cannot make the vigil to “please join in prayer where ever you are for this most important issue.”
Catholic laity, seminarians and a contingent from the Colorado Springs-based evangelical Christian ministry Focus on the Family will be among the attendees.
A rally for supporters of the bill, including homosexual activist groups, will take place at the same time on the western steps.
The proposed legislation would grant “the legal benefits, protections, and responsibilities that are granted under the law to spouses” to both same-sex and heterosexual civil unions for unrelated individuals. These benefits include property inheritance, dependent coverage under life insurance and health insurance policies, and hospital visitation rights.
However, according to the website of the gay activist group Human Rights Campaign, as of July 2009 any two unmarried Colorado adults can "enter into a Designated Beneficiary Agreement providing certain rights and responsibilities, including hospital visitation, medical decisionmaking, and inheritance."
The civil unions legislation has already passed the Senate by a vote of 23-12. The House begins debate on the bill on March 31.
E. Christian Brugger, a professor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, said in an e-mail circulated to Catholics that there is a chance of defeating the legislation in the House.
If it passes, he warned, “You can be sure that we will not get the genie back in the bottle in
our lifetime, perhaps never.”
“It’s important for as many defenders of traditional marriage as possible to get out there and show their face,” he commented.
Jessica Haverkate, director of the Colorado Springs-based Colorado Family Action, said on March 30 that the vigil was “just bringing people together to pray and support the legislators.”
If the legislation passes out of committee, she predicted “a huge floor battle.”
“The voters out here in Colorado already voted on this issue. We chose to define marriage as one-man, one-woman, we chose to defeat Referendum I,” she said, referring to the state’s marriage amendment and a 2006 ballot initiative to recognize domestic partnerships.
Haverkate thought the effects of the bill could be “extremely concerning,” especially for children.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver, in his March 2 column for the Denver Catholic Register, said that civil unions are “essentially marriage under another name” and the long-term impact of the legislation has not been fully discussed.
“How this legislation will impact Catholic ministries and the benefits the Church affords to her employees are very real concerns,” he wrote.
The archbishop noted that state legislation benefiting “a variety of non-marital domestic arrangements” had already passed in 2010.
“Attempts to redefine marriage, whether direct or indirect, only serve to weaken the already difficult family structure of our society,” he said.
www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/christians-pray…

U.S. Census Data: Hispanic Population keeps growing: Many of the counties that saw the largest increases in their Hispanic populations were in traditional Hispanic strongholds, including southern California, Arizona, and south Florida. But others were more surprising: Counties in eastern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma all saw an influx of Hispanics, reflecting a trend over the last decade in which many recent Latino immigrants have spread beyond urban centers like Los Angeles and Phoenix into more rural parts of the country. news.yahoo.com/…/new-census-data…

Obama to Deliver Speech at Georgetown Tomorrow
The Wall Street Journal reported that President Barack Obama will deliver a speech on energy security at Georgetown University on Wednesday.
Many Catholics were outraged in 2009 afterObama delivered a speech in Georgetown’s Gaston Hallbecause the University complied with a White House request and covered over the monogram “IHS” which is an ancient symbols for the name of Jesus Christ.
It will be worth noting whether or not Georgetown opts to cover over any sacred symbols tomorrow.
Also, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stipulated in 2004, that “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
blog.cardinalnewmansociety.org/…/obama-to-delive…