Norwegian novelist (1882-1949)

Wrote about Scandinavian countries in the Middle Ages. [more] [wiki]

Became a Catholic in 1924.

Awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. [more]
[autobio]

Her modernist novels vividly depict medieval life

Books

Kristin Lavransdatter

The Axe: The Master of Hestviken, vol 1

Gunnar’s Daughter

The Unknown Sigrid Undset: Jenny and Other Works

Articles and info

“Reading Sigrid Undset” by Cynthia Grenier, CERC (1999).

For further reference

Latin phrases

List of simple Latin phrases (along with some Greek) [more]

Latin-language Videos

Latin videocasts from the Division of Classics, Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures, & Cultures, University of Kentucky.

Latin-language chat boards, discussion groups and forums

Latin Forum

German writer, philosopher, scientist and genius (1601-1680). Jesuit. Wrote 40+ books, invented the megaphone and the magnetic clock. [Catholic Encyclopedia] [wikipedia] [google]

Correspondence [more]

Kircherianum Virtuale: list of sites

Stanford’s Athanasius Kircher Project includes images, Kircher’s China research, his correspondence and more.

Articles and information on Kircher

“The Last Renaissance Man”

For further reference

Originator of the “Great Books” series. Pagan-turned-Catholic, student of angelology, philosopher. [bio] [more] [google] [wikipedia]

Center for the Study of the Great Ideas

The Mortimer J. Adler Archive

For further reference

“Great Books — Texts and Fully Searchable Concordances” [concordance.com, gone but still archived]

British economist and author, futurist and global planner. Chief interests included sustainable environments, ending poverty, global economies and the development of Third World nations. Pioneer of sustainable planning. Was a Catholic and after being cured of cancer in the 1940s she said it was due to the involvements of Padre Pio. Influenced by RBF. [wikipedia] [google]

The Barbara Ward Papers at Georgetown include various correspondences, including more than 700 letters written to her mother. [quotes]

Books and writings

• Spaceship Earth (1966)

  Mix of sustainability and Catholicism.

  In the world at large, the millions will be born. The settlements will grow — in squalor and violence, or in work and hope. The whole world — linked by its communications, its airlines, its hijackers and its terrorists — has really only one choice: to become a place worth living in or face ‘the way to dusty death.’ And where else do people live save in their settlements? So where else is the salvation to begin?

• Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet

  Co-authored with Rene Dubos. Global sustainability and economics.

• Nationalism & Ideology (W. W. Norton 1966)

• The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (W. W. Norton 1984)

• The Angry Seventies: The Second Development Decade: A Call to the Church (Pontifical Commission: Justice and Peace 1970)

• Five Ideas that Change the World (W. W. Norton 1959)

• Are today’s basic problems religious?, Moral order in an uncertain world
  (University Press 1953). The Mott Foundation Lectures.

• It can be done: An approach to the problem of world poverty (G. Chapman 1965)

• Britain’s interest in Atlantic Union (Friends of Atlantic Union 1954)

• Democracy, east & west (Bureau of Current Affairs 1947) (Background handbook)

Articles and references

“The Third World Urban Forum: ‘Spaceship Earth’ spiralling irreversibly into the urban era.“ (2006)

“Following the vision of Barbara Ward” [photo]

For further reading

a french delicacy … the partridge (ortolan bunting) which is cooked by allowing the meat to begin to rot, then fried whole, and is eaten (beak, bones, claws and all) after a white napkin is placed over the diner’s head

usenet search, 29 hits circa 2009

google web search

Culinary history

The ortolan is French country cuisine. Mentioned by 18th century French chef M. Massialot. Considered for centuries as the “abolute pinnacle” of French gastonomic experience.

A towel is used to fully absorb the aroma and flavors — originated by a Catholic priest and friend of epicurean Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. [recipe] [video]

“My grandfather used to enjoy eating ortolans in Biarritz, sometimes in the company of Rudyard Kipling”: that’s the beginning of “Small is beautiful,” an article by Simon Courtauld published in The Spectator on Wednesday, Jan 10 2007. Courtauld explains why the woodcock is choice, and must be cooked with the head on — the brains are among the best eating.

Ortolan-eating in literature

One of Benjamin Disraeli’s most oft-quoted sentences: “All paradise opens! Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music.” (from The Young Duke) [99-cent kindle ed.]

Sentiment echoed by Robert Louis Stevenson: “To live reading such reviews and die eating ortolans — sich is my aspiration” (letter to W.E. Henley, mid-December 1883), from Selected Letters of Robert Loius Stevenson

Louis XVIII’s way of cooking them discussed in Romances by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet (1894) (v. 23) [PDF]

Mentioned in journal of William S. Burroughs (The Cat Inside?)

Prohibition

Now banned in “civilized” France?

(2007 upholding of law passed in 1999)

“France’s songbird delicacy is outlawed,” The Telegraph, Sep 10 2007

“Dainty morsel of songbird off the menu,” The Age, September 10, 2007

“The ortolan stirs up trouble behind a white napkin,” The Independent (London), Jan 11, 1997

“At a Secret Chefs’ Dinner in France, A Tiny Songbird Lands on the Plate,” New York Times, Dec 31, 1997

Francois Mitterand had them prepared for him (illegally) as his last deathbed meal

Wikipedia entry

For further reading

Amigo.

Deceased.

Fantasy Island

Ricardo Montalbán achieved great fame as the suave Mr. Roarke of ABC television’s Fantasy Island. (1977-1984)
(Opening scene waterfalls filmed at Wailua Falls, Kauai, Hawaii [aerial closeup])

Role of secret Catholic mysticism [Wikipedia citation of Mr. Roarke’s forms of prayer and the Catholic Sacrament of Holy Matrimony used in episode “The Wedding” (season 3, the wedding of terminally ill Helena Marsh, played by Samantha Eggar)]

Then narrated and hosted Fatima, 1hr film documentary (1984) (Also appeared in Catholic Insight films of the 1960s)

“Keeping the Faith in Hollywood” (1999) [mp3]

IMDb page

[Obit] [more]
[1987 anecdote]
[son Victor’s comments]
[guestbook]

Their history has warranted an entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

And a Wikipedia entry.

Timetable

Short summary with image of vintage placard

At initial conversion there were 150,000.

The KK remained hidden, operating in secret rooms, until 1865 when a group of Christians announced their faith in public.

Perversions in doctrine

The KK remained faithful but as they became further removed, through generations, there were changes to their faith. It has been written that in time the meaning of the original prayers (in Latin) became forgotten so that they were just sound-recitations, incantations … and the central rite of the KK became a service involving cupping a a small, cuplike dish of rice. The was a question of clergy — there were priests among the first group. Did they have bishops among them to ordain future priests? What was their role in the hidden community?

Reunion in the Nineteenth Century

Catholic priests were admitted to Japan hundreds of years later, in the 1860s.

Some KK recognized it as the Church (after grilling the visiting priest on his doctrine!) and, thus satisfied, willingly joined their separated brethren, shedding all of the doctrinal errors that these years of isolation brought. On March 17, 1865, Father Bernard Petitjean was approached by the KK, who until then were unknown to the world.

Other KK did not recognize it and remained in secret. Some may exist today.

KK Today

Mr. Taniyama is the head of a KK household who has decided not to pass the faith down to his children; Mr. Fukumoto’s parents and family were KK but joined the public Church [story with photos (scroll down)]

News story, “Young Japanese on a pilgrimage to find the roots of the nation’s Catholicism“ (2006)

Subject of a paper, “Kirishitan and Today” [pdf] by Shusaku Endo. [more]

Fr. Peter Milward (b. 1925), Shakespearean expert, Jesuit scholar, has resided in Japan and written on the Kakure [more]

Relics

Some exist at the Ikitsuki museum, Island of Ikitsuki, Japan. [photos and tour]

• Collected water in ceramic jars for baptisms
• Tiny paper crosses placed on tongue for healing
• Elaborate mosaics built from the single wings of butterflies
• clay water pots for baptisms
• hibachi for burning in ceremonies and clandestine nighttime meetings [photo and explanations]
• Outdoor sacred markers
• Outdoor sacred spaces, hidden alcoves

Books

The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: A Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day by Stephen Turnbull (RoutledgeCurzon 1998) is the first major illlustrated work to document and describe the KK

Christal Whelan, The Beginning of Heaven and Earth: The Sacred Book of Japan’s Hidden Christians (University of Hawai’i Press, 1996)
[available on sale for cheap on amazon]

Modern documentaries

Several documentaries exist.

Brendan Eagan’s Web Photo-documentary

Photo-Documentary of Christian history in Japan with Concentration on Hidden Christians by Brendan Eagan (2006) contains an eight-minute preview video, hundreds of photograhps, and long transcriptions. Worth viewing

Otaiya

New documentary film on the KK by Christal Whelan: Otaiya: Japan’s Hidden Christians (34 min)

PATRICK DOWNES article

For further reference