Freedom From Coercion of the Non-Christian State

Dignitatus Humanae, the council's declaration on Religious Liberty has been the most controversial text of all the conciliar documents.  The Pink-Rhonheimer debate, of the last few years, has brought the issue to a new light.  Last week, the two met at Notre Dame and discussed the Church's notion of religious liberty.  At the heart of the question is the roles of the Church and the modern secular state and the natural authority of each.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Lh6tdw1z0&feature=youtu.be

Mary is Expecting

Mary is expecting.  We are all expecting, waiting for Christ.  This piece is "Maria gravida, or Mary at the Spinning Wheel from Németújvár". 

Mary is pregnant (infrared photos of the painting even show the baby in utero, beneath the blue gown).  Sitting at the spinning wheel (a symbol of womanhood), Mary is working, preparing for her baby.  The Holy Spirit sets above her.  She has knitted a rabbinic scarf, a tallit, for Jesus which sits under the scriptures.  The wool she is spinning now does not sit on a table or on the floor but comes from angels assisting her - from heaven, wool from the Lamb of God.  The yarn on the wheel is the same as material as her dress, an enormous, flowing gown, a gown which will cover her and her son.  The gown is already oversized for her, but she continues to spin yarn, as if to add on to the gown.  The gown, Mary's care, is not only for Jesus but for all of us.

“Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.”

Flannery O'Connor