Pope Francis On…

Posted on April 24, 2018April 27, 2018 by Mark

 

 

…as the Church’s one and only indivisible magisterium, the pope and the bishops in union with him carry the gravest responsibility that no ambiguous sign or unclear teaching comes from them, confusing the faithful or lulling them into a false sense of security. —Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller, former prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; First Things, April 20th, 2018

THE Pope can be confusing, his words ambiguous, his thoughts incomplete. There are many rumours, suspicions, and accusations that the current Pontiff is trying to change Catholic teaching. So, for the record, here is Pope Francis…

On his vision for the future Pope (who turned out to be him):

Thinking of the next Pope, he must be a man that from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church to come out to the existential peripheries, that helps her to be the fruitful mother who lives from the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing. —Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, shortly before being elected the 266th pope; Salt and Light Magazine, p. 8, Issue 4, Special Edition, 2013

On abortion:

[Abortion is the] murder of an innocent person. —Sept. 1st, 2017; Catholic News Service
Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. —Gaudete et Exsultate, n. 101

Here I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being. —Amoris Laetitia, n. 83
How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”. —Laudato si’, n. 120

On Paul VI and Humanae Vitae:

…his genius was prophetic, as he had the courage to go against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to apply a cultural brake, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism. —interview with Corriere della Sera; Inside the Vatican, March 4th, 2014

In accord with the personal and fully human character of conjugal love, family planning fittingly takes place as the result a consensual dialogue between the spouses, respect for times and consideration of the dignity of the partner. In this sense, the teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (cf. 1014) and the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (cf. 14; 2835) ought to be taken up anew, in order to counter a mentality that is often hostile to life… Decisions involving responsible parenthood pre-supposes the formation of conscience, which is ‘the most secret core and sanctuary of a person. There each one is alone with God, whose voice echoes in the depths of the heart’ (Gaudium et Spes, 16)…. Moreover, “the use of methods based on the ‘laws of nature and the incidence of fertility’ (Humanae Vitae, 11) are to be promoted, since ‘these methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them and favour the education of an authentic freedom’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2370). —Amoris Laetitia, n. 222

On euthanasia and end-of-life issues:

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are serious threats to families worldwide…The Church, while firmly opposing these practices, feels the need to assist families who take care of their elderly and infirm members. —Amoris Laetitia, n. 48
True compassion does not marginalize, humiliate or exclude, much less celebrate a patient passing away. You know well that would mean the triumph of selfishness, of that ‘throwaway culture’ that rejects and despises people who do not meet certain standards of health, beauty or usefulness. —address to health professionals from Spain and Latin America, June 9, 2016; Catholic Herald

On genetic experimentation with human life:

We are living in a time of experimentation with life. But a bad experiment. Making children rather than accepting them as a gift, as I said. Playing with life. Be careful, because this is a sin against the Creator: against God the Creator, who created things this way. —address to the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors, Nov. 16th, 2015; Zenit.org
There is a tendency to justify transgressing all boundaries when experimentation is carried out on living human embryos. We forget that the inalienable worth of a human being transcends his or her degree of development… a technology severed from ethics will not easily be able to limit its own power. —Laudato si’, n. 136

On population control:

Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive health”. Yet “while it is true that an unequal distribution of the population and of available resources creates obstacles to development and a sustainable use of the environment, it must nonetheless be recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development.” —Laudato si’, n. 50

On redefinition of marriage and family:

We cannot change it. This is the nature of things, not just in the Church but in human history. —Sept. 1st, 2017; Catholic News Service
The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life. —speech in Manila, Philippines; Crux, Jan. 16th, 2015

On “gender ideology”:

The complementarity of man and woman, summit of divine creation, is being questioned by the so-called gender ideology, in the name of a more free and just society. The differences between man and woman are not for opposition or subordination, but for communion and generation, always in the “image and likeness” of God. Without mutual self-giving, neither one can understand the other in depth. The Sacrament of Marriage is a sign of the love of God for humanity and of Christ’s giving himself for his Bride, the Church. —address to Puerto Rican Bishops, Vatican City, June 08, 2015

On persons struggling with their sexual identity:

During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the Catechism says… A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. —American Magazine, Sept. 30th, 2013, americamagazine.org

On Interreligious Dialogue:

It is a visit of fraternity, of dialogue, and of friendship. And this is good. This is healthy. And in these moments, which are wounded by war and hatred, these small gestures are seeds of peace and fraternity. —Rome Reports, June 26th, 2015;romereports.com
What is not helpful is a diplomatic openness which says “yes” to everything in order to avoid problems, for this would be a way of deceiving others and denying them the good which we have been given to share generously with others. Evangelization and interreligious dialogue, far from being opposed, mutually support and nourish one another. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 251; vatican.va
…the Church “desires that all the peoples of the earth be able to meet Jesus, to experience His merciful love… [the Church] wishes to indicate respectfully, to every man and woman of this world, the Child that was born for the salvation of all. —Angelus, January 6th, 2016; Zenit.org

On the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood:

On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the last word is clear. It was given by St. John Paul II and this remains. —Press Conference, Nov. 1st, 2016; LifeSiteNews
The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion… —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 104

On Hell:

Our Lady foretold, and warned us about, a way of life that is godless and indeed profanes God in his creatures. Such a life—frequently proposed and imposed—risks leading to Hell. Mary came to remind us that God’s light dwells within us and protects us. —Homily, Mass of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Fatima, May 13, 2017; Vatican Insider
Look upon us with mercy, born of the tenderness of your heart, and help us to walk in the ways of complete purification. Let none of your children be lost in the eternal fire, where there can be no repentance. —Angelus, November 2nd, 2014; Ibid. 

On the devil:

I believe that the Devil exists… his greatest achievement in these times has been to make us believe that he doesn’t exist. —then, Cardinal Bergoglio, in the 2010 book On Heaven and Earth

He is evil, he’s not like mist. He’s not a diffuse thing, he is a person. I’m convinced that one must never converse with Satan—if you do that, you’ll be lost. He’s more intelligent than us, and he’ll turn you upside down, he’ll make your head spin. He always pretends to be polite—he does it with priests, with bishops. That’s how he enters your mind. But it ends badly if you don’t realise what is happening in time. (We should tell him) go away! —interview with Catholic television channel TV2000; The Telegraph, December 13th, 2017

We know from experience that the Christian life is always prone to temptation, especially to the temptation to separate from God, from his will, from communion with him, to fall back into the webs of worldly seductions… And baptism prepares and strengthens us for this daily struggle, including the fight against the devil who, as St. Peter says, like a lion, tries to devour and destroy us. —General Audience, April 24th, 2018, Daily Mail

On education:

…we need knowledge, we need truth, because without these we cannot stand firm, we cannot move forward. Faith without truth does not save, it does not provide a sure footing. —Lumen Fidei, Encyclical Letter, n. 24

I would like to express my rejection of any kind of educational experimentation with children. We cannot experiment with children and young people. The horrors of the manipulation of education that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the twentieth century have not disappeared; they have retained a current relevance under various guises and proposals and, with the pretense of modernity, push children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of “only one form of thought” … A week ago a great teacher said to me… ‘with these education projects I don’t know if we’re sending the kids to school or a re-education camp’… —message to members of BICE (International Catholic Child Bureau); Vatican Radio, April 11th, 2014

On the environment:

…a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves. —Laudato si’,  n. 34
Each year hundreds of millions of tons of waste are generated, much of it non-biodegradable, highly toxic and radioactive, from homes and businesses, from construction and demolition sites, from clinical, electronic and industrial sources. The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. — Laudato si’, n. 21
There are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus. Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good. —Laudato si’, n. 188

On (unfettered) capitalism:

Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home… The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea – one of the first theologians of the Church – called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. This is the “dung of the devil”. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home, sister and mother earth. —address to The Second World Meeting of Popular Movements, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, July 10th, 2015; vatican.va
The true strength of our democracies – understood as expressions of the political will of the people – must not be allowed to collapse under the pressure of multinational interests which are not universal, which weaken them and turn them into uniform systems of economic power at the service of unseen empires. —Address to European Parliament, Strasbourg, France, Nov. 25th, 2014, Zenit
A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power… In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 56

On consumerism:

This sister [earth] now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). —Laudato si, n. 2
Hedonism and consumerism can prove our downfall, for when we are obsessed with our own pleasure, we end up being all too concerned about ourselves and our rights, and we feel a desperate need for free time to enjoy ourselves. We will find it hard to feel and show any real concern for those in need, unless we are able to cultivate a certain simplicity of life, resisting the feverish demands of a consumer society, which leave us impoverished and unsatisfied, anxious to have it all now. —Gaudete et Exultate, n. 108; vatican.va

On immigration

Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions…. we must not be taken aback by the numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to this situation; to respond in a way which is always human, just, and fraternal… let us remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. —address to U.S. Congress, September 24th, 2015; usatoday.com
If a country is able to integrate, then they should do what they can. If another country has a greater capacity, they should do more, always keeping an open heart. It is inhumane to shut our doors, it is inhumane to shut our hearts… There is also a political price to pay when imprudent calculations are made and a country takes in more than it can integrate.  What is the risk when a migrant or a refugee are not integrated? They become ghettoised! They form ghettoes. A culture that fails to develop with respect to other cultures, that is dangerous. I think fear is the worst counsellor for countries who tend to close their borders. And the best counsellor is prudence. —in-flight interview, Malmö to Rome on November 1, 2016; cf. Vatican Insider and La Croix International

On migrants vs. refugees:

We also need to distinguish between migrants and refugees. Migrants must follow certain rules because migrating is a right but a well-regulated right. Refugees, on the other hand, come from a situation of war, hunger or some other terrible situation. The status of a refugee requires more care, more work. We cannot close our hearts to refugees… However, while being open to receive them, governments need to be prudent and to work out how to settle them. It is not just a matter of accepting refugees but of considering how to integrate them. —in-flight interview, Malmö to Rome on November 1, 2016; La Croix International
The truth is that just [250 miles] from Sicily there is an incredibly cruel terrorist group. So there is a danger of infiltration, this is true… Yes, nobody said Rome would be immune to this threat. But you can take precautions. —interview with Radio Renascenca, Sept. 14th, 2015; New York Post

On war:

War is madness… even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a Third War, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction… Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep. —September 13th, 2015; BBC.com
…no war is just. The only just thing is peace. —from Politique et Société, an interview with Dominique Wolton; cf. catholicherald.com

On fidelity to the Catholic Faith:

Fidelity to the Church, fidelity to its teaching; fidelity to the Creed; fidelity to the doctrine, safeguarding this doctrine. Humility and fidelity. Even Paul VI reminded us that we receive the message of the Gospel as a gift and we need to transmit it as a gift, but not as a something of ours: it is a gift that we received. And be faithful in this transmission. Because we have received and we have to gift a Gospel that is not ours, that is Jesus’, and we must not—he would say—become masters of the Gospel, masters of the doctrine we have received, to use it as we please. —Homily, Jan. 30th, 2014; Catholic Herald
[There is a] temptation to a destructive tendency to goodness, that in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots. It is the temptation of the “do-gooders,” of the fearful, and also of the so-called “progressives and liberals…” The temptation to neglect the “depositum fidei ” [the deposit of faith], not thinking of themselves as guardians but as owners or masters [of it]; or, on the other hand, the temptation to neglect reality, making use of meticulous language and a language of smoothing to say so many things and to say nothing! —Closing address at Synod, Catholic News Agency, October 18th, 2014
Certainly, to understand properly the meaning of the central message of a [biblical] text we need to relate it to the teaching of the entire Bible as handed on by the Church. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 148
The Pope, in this context, is not the supreme lord but rather the supreme servant – the “servant of the servants of God”; the guarantor of the obedience and the conformity of the Church to the will of God, to the Gospel of Christ, and to the Tradition of the Church, putting aside every personal whim, despite being – by the will of Christ Himself – the “supreme Pastor and Teacher of all the faithful” and despite enjoying “supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church”. —closing remarks on the Synod; Catholic News Agency, October 18th, 2014

On evangelization:

We should not simply remain in our own secure world, that of the ninety-nine sheep who never strayed from the fold, but we should go out with Christ in search of the one lost sheep, however far it may have wandered. —General Audience, March 27th, 2013; news.va
On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” …It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 164
We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time… The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the Church must be ministers of mercy above all.  —americamagazine.org, September 2013
We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow. —americamagazine.org, September 2013

On God’s Word:

All evangelization is based on that Word, listened to, meditated upon, lived, celebrated and witnessed to. The Sacred Scriptures are the very source of evangelization. Consequently, we need to be constantly trained in hearing the Word. The Church does not evangelize unless she constantly lets herself be evangelized. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 174
The Bible is not meant to be placed on a shelf, but to be in your hands, to read often – every day, both on your own and together with others… —Oct. 26th, 2015; Catholic Herald
I love my old Bible, which has accompanied me half my life. It has been with me in my times of joy and times of tears. It is my most precious treasure…Often I read a little and then put it away and contemplate the Lord. Not that I see the Lord, but he looks at me. He’s there. I let myself look at him. And I feel—this is not sentimentality — I feel deeply the things that the Lord tells me. —Ibid.
It is indispensable that the Word of God “be ever more fully at the heart of every ecclesial activity.” God’s Word, listened to and celebrated, above all in the Eucharist, nourishes and inwardly strengthens Christians, enabling them to offer an authentic witness to the Gospel in daily life…  —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 174

On the Sacrament of the Eucharist:

The Eucharist is Jesus who gives himself entirely to us. To nourish ourselves with him and abide in him through Holy Communion, if we do it with faith, transforms our life into a gift to God and to our brothers… eating him, we become like him. —Angelus August 16th, 2015; Catholic News Agency
…the Eucharist “is not a private prayer or a beautiful spiritual experience”… it is a “memorial, namely, a gesture that actualizes and makes present the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus: the bread is truly his Body given, the wine is truly is Blood poured out.” —Ibid.
It’s not just a memory, no, it’s more: It’s making present what happened twenty centuries ago. —General Audience, Crux, Nov. 22nd, 2017
The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 47
…preaching should guide the assembly, and the preacher, to a life-changing communion with Christ in the Eucharist. This means that the words of the preacher must be measured, so that the Lord, more than his minister, will be the centre of attention. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 138

On the Mass:

This is Mass: entering in this passion, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus and when we go to Mass, it is as if we go to Calvary. Now imagine if we went to Calvary—using our imagination—in that moment, knowing that that man there is Jesus. Would we dare to chit-chat, take pictures, make a little scene? No! Because it’s Jesus! We would surely be in silence, in tears, and in the joy of being saved… Mass is experiencing Calvary, it’s not a show. —General Audience, Crux, Nov. 22nd, 2017
The Eucharist configures us in a unique and profound way with Jesus… the celebration of the Eucharist always keeps the Church alive and makes our communities distinguished by love and communion. —General Audience, Feb. 5th, 2014, National Catholic Register

On the Sacrament of Reconciliation:

Everyone say to himself: ‘When was the last time I went to confession?’ And if it has been a long time, don’t lose another day! Go, the priest will be good. And Jesus, (will be) there, and Jesus is better than the priests—Jesus receives you. He will receive you with so much love! Be courageous, and go to confession. —Audience, Feb 19, 2014; Catholic News Agency
God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 3
Someone can say, ‘I confess my sins only to God.’ Yes, you can say to God, ‘forgive me,’ and say your sins. But our sins are also against our brothers, against the Church. This is is why it is necessary to ask forgiveness of the Church and of our brothers, in the person of the priest. —Audience, Feb 19, 2014; Catholic News Agency
It is a sacrament that leads to “forgiveness, and a change of heart.” —Homily, Feb 27, 2018; Catholic News Agency

On prayer and fasting:

In the face of so many wounds that hurt us and could lead to a hardness of heart, we are called to dive into the sea of prayer, which is the sea of the boundless love of God, in order to experience his tenderness. —Ash Wednesday Homily, March 10th, 2014; Catholic Online
Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at our security and, as a consequence, benefits someone else, if it helps us cultivate the style of the good Samaritan, who bent down to his brother in need and took care of him. —Ibid.
Another good way to grow in friendship with Christ is by listening to his Word. The Lord speaks to us in the depths of our conscience, he speaks to us through Sacred Scripture, he speaks to us in prayer. Learn to stay before him in silence, to read and meditate on the Bible, especially the Gospels, to converse with him every day in order to feel his presence of friendship and love. —Message to Young Lithuanians, June 21st, 2013; vatican.va

On the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary:
During the course of the second vote during the conclave that elected him, Pope Francis (then Cardinal Bergoglio) was praying the Rosary, which gave him…

…great peace, almost to the point of insentience. I have not lost it. It is something inside; it is like a gift. —National Catholic Register, Dec. 21, 2015

Twelve hours after his election, the new Pope paid a quiet visit to the papal basilica St. Mary Major to venerate the famous icon of Our Lady, Salus Populi Romani (Protectress of the Roman People).  The Holy Father placed a small bouquet of flowers before the icon and sang the Salve Regina. Cardinal Abril y Castelló, the archpriest of St. Mary Major, explained the significance of the Holy Father’s veneration:

He decided to visit the Basilica, not only to thank the Blessed Virgin, but — as Pope Francis said to me himself — to entrust Her with his pontificate, to lay it at Her feet. Being deeply devoted to Mary, Pope Francis came here to ask Her for help and protection. —Inside the Vatican, July 13th, 2013
Devotion to Mary is not spiritual etiquette; it is a requirement of the Christian life. The gift of the Mother, the gift of every mother and every woman, is most precious for the Church, for she too is mother and woman. —Catholic News Agency, January 1st, 2018
Mary is exactly what God wants us to be, what he wants his Church to be: A Mother who is tender and lowly, poor in material goods and rich in love, free of sin and united to Jesus, keeping God in our hearts and our neighbor in our lives. —Ibid. 
In the Rosary we turn to the Virgin Mary so that she may guide us to an ever closer union with her Son Jesus to bring us into conformity with him, to have his sentiments and to behave like him. Indeed, in the Rosary while we repeat the Hail Mary we meditate on the Mysteries, on the events of Christ’s life, so as to know and love him ever better. The Rosary is an effective means for opening ourselves to God, for it helps us to overcome egotism and to bring peace to hearts, in the family, in society and in the world. —Message to Young Lithuanians, June 21st, 2013; vatican.va

On the “end times”:

…hear the voice of the Spirit speaking to the whole Church of our time, which is the time of mercy. I am sure of this. It is not only Lent; we are living in a time of mercy, and have been for 30 years or more, up to today. —Vatican City, March 6th, 2014, www.vatican.va
Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. —speech in Santa Cruz, Bolivia; newsmax.com, July 10th, 2015
…worldliness is the root of evil and it can lead us to abandon our traditions and negotiate our loyalty to God who is always faithful. This… is called apostasy, which… is a form of “adultery” which takes place when we negotiate the essence of our being: loyalty to the Lord. —Homily, Vatican Radio, November 18th, 2013

Still today, the spirit of worldliness leads us to progressivism, to this uniformity of thought … Negotiating one’s fidelity to God is like negotiating one’s identity… He then made reference to the 20th-century novel Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson, son of the Archbishop of Canterbury Edward White Benson, in which the author speaks of the spirit of the world that leads to apostasy “almost as though it were a prophecy, as though he envisioned what would happen.” —Homily, November 18, 2013; catholicculture.org

It is not the beautiful globalization of unity of all Nations, each one with their own customs, instead it is the globalization of hegemonic uniformity, it is the single thought. And this sole thought is the fruit of worldliness. —Homily, November 18th, 2013; Zenit

Speaking to reporters on the flight from Manila to Rome, the Pope said that those who read the novel on the Antichrist, Lord of the World, “will understand what I mean by ideological colonization.” —Jan. 20th, 2015; catholicculture.org

In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule. —Evangelii Gaudium, n. 56 

On himself:

I do not like ideological interpretations, a certain mythology of Pope Francis. The Pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps peacefully, and has friends like everyone else. A normal person. —interview with Corriere della Sera; Catholic Culture, March 4th, 2014

Bless you and thank you!

And remember Detters...

And remember Detters...

St Peter's, Rome

ONLY CATHOLICS SHALL EVER ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

GENE   (born 16th July 1957)

Oscar Wilde’s long journey to Catholicism

by Aaron Taylor

posted Thursday, 26 Apr 2018

Colin Firth, Rupert Everett (as Wilde) and Edwin Thomas in The Happy Prince 

 

A new film examines the playwright's famous deathbed conversion

Think of the “Second Spring” of English Catholicism and you will probably picture converts such as Cardinal Newman, Ronald Knox and GK Chesterton. Oscar Wilde – who converted on his deathbed in 1900 – is not usually associated with them. But The Happy Prince, a new film about the final years of Wilde’s life directed by Rupert Everett, may help to change that.
The sincerity of Wilde’s conversion is often questioned. Some point out that Wilde was semi-comatose on his deathbed. Others, like Wilde’s biographer Richard Ellmann, question whether his conversion was about faith or fashion, comparing the “application of sacred oils to [Wilde’s] hands and feet” to the playwright’s habit of “putting a green carnation in his buttonhole”.
Fr Cuthbert Dunne, the young priest who attended Wilde on his deathbed, kept silent about the controversy for most of his life. But before he died in 1950, mindful of the historical importance of the event, he set down his recollection of it:

[Wilde] made brave efforts to speak, and would even continue for a time trying to talk, though he could not utter articulate words. Indeed, I was fully satisfied that he understood me when told that I was about to receive him into the Catholic Church and give him the Last Sacraments. From the signs he gave, as well as from his attempted words, I was satisfied as to his full consent. And when I repeated close to his ear the Holy Names, the Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope and Charity, with acts of humble resignation to the Will of God, he tried all through to say the words after me.

Fr Dunne visited Wilde several times to comfort him. “At these subsequent visits,” Fr Dunne states, “he repeated the prayers with me again and each time received Absolution.”
The deathbed scene is movingly depicted in Everett’s biopic. If the emotional climax of Brian Gilbert’s 1997 film Wilde is the defiant speech the author gave at his trial on the “love that dare not speak its name”, the dramatic high point of The Happy Prince is Wilde’s conversion. It was one long in the making. An entry in the diary of Liberal MP Ronald Gower in 1876 notes that he met an Oxford undergraduate named “Oscar Wilde … a pleasant cheery fellow, but with his long-haired head full of nonsense regarding the Church of Rome. His room filled with photographs of the Pope and of Cardinal Manning.”
On the day he was due to be received into the Church in 1878, Wilde changed his mind and sent a box of lilies in his place. After his death, his undergraduate friend William Ward wrote that “his final decision to find refuge in the Roman Church was not the sudden clutch of the drowning man at the plank in the shipwreck, but a return to a first love … one that had haunted him from early days with a persistent spell.” The tension between the young Wilde’s attraction to the Catholic Church, and his reluctance to enter it, must also be understood in light of his father’s threat to disinherit him if he converted.
As Wilde’s stock rose in the 1880s, he appeared to forget about religion, although Joseph Pearce’s seminal study The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde (2000) convincingly argued that veiled religious themes continually resurface in the writer’s work.
After he was sentenced to hard labour for “gross indecency” in 1895, Wilde asked for Augustine’s Confessions and works by Cardinal Newman. Later he was allowed the New Testament in Greek, which he read every morning. Reading Christ’s words in Greek, Wilde said, was “like going into a garden of lilies out of some narrow and dark house”.
Upon his release in 1897 he wrote to the Jesuits at Farm Street asking to make a six-month retreat. He wept when they turned him away. In early 1900, in Rome, Wilde asked his lifelong friend (and former lover) Robbie Ross to find a priest to receive him into the Church. Ross, a Catholic, delayed, fearing that Wilde would lapse after converting and cause a scandal, and despairing of finding a priest intelligent enough to answer Wilde’s questions about the faith. Wilde did manage to extract from Ross a promise that he would call a priest if Wilde fell ill – a promise Ross fulfilled when he arrived in Paris later that year to find Wilde dying.
Wilde’s Romeward turn was part of a wave of conversions among fin-de-siècle artists that included literary figures such as Paul Verlaine (who had been baptised a Catholic), Arthur Rimbaud (who received the last rites on his deathbed), Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.
Many did not lead edifying lives, and it is understandable that fin-de-siècle converts are often overlooked in favour of wholesome, clean-living types like Knox and Chesterton. Understandable but mistaken, if the Catholic Church is, as Wilde once said, a Church “for saints and sinners” (“for respectable people,” he famously added, “the Anglican Church will do”).
Catholic themes are not restricted to The Happy Prince’s few explicitly religious scenes. “There is no mystery so great as suffering,” Wilde tells his children in the opening scene, and the rest of the film is in part a meditation on the meaning of pain. Everett – a lapsed Catholic – has said that for gay people Wilde is a “Christ figure in some sense”, and there is a Passion-like quality to the film’s depiction of Wilde’s anguish in his final years. In another early scene, a British expatriate in Paris recognises Wilde and threatens to kill him. The viewer then sees a flashback of the same man applauding one of Wilde’s plays. As Christ was cheered into Jerusalem by those who demanded his death days later, Wilde was pilloried by high society Victorians who had hailed him as a literary master.
The difference between Wilde’s suffering and Christ’s, of course, is that much of Wilde’s distress was self-inflicted. The Happy Prince (not inaccurately) depicts Wilde’s lover Bosie as strikingly attractive but cruel and selfish. Yet, like a moth to a flame, Wilde returned to Bosie even when doing so involved alienating the few remaining people in the world who genuinely loved him, such as his wife, Constance, and Robbie Ross.
Wilde’s sexual behaviour, although not graphically portrayed, is dealt with in a less sanitised manner than Gilbert’s 1997 biopic. The orgies at the villa he shared with Bosie in Naples, his cocaine-fuelled romps with Parisian prostitutes: such conduct seems to have had less to do with Wilde’s sexuality per se than with his fascination with hedonistic, taboo-breaking experiences. Although probably not medically accurate, the movie suggests that Wilde’s final illness was caused by syphilis (a view put forward by one of his biographers). This perhaps indicates, symbolically, that his suffering was due as much to his own poor choices as to the hypocrisy of Victorian society.
Wilde’s deathbed scene is ultimately a reminder that grace can transform and redeem even apparently pointless, self-inflicted suffering. In his testimony, Fr Dunne defended Wilde against the moralising critics who carped at his 11th-hour conversion, noting that, “whatever his sins may have been, [he] expiated them by suffering severe penalties: imprisonment, ostracism from the great world in which he had been an idol, loss of all that the cultivation of his brilliant talents had brought him.”
After suffering all this, Fr Dunne concluded, “he turned to God for pardon and for the healing grace of the Sacraments in the end, and died a child of the Catholic Church.”
Aaron Taylor is a doctoral student in theology at Oxford University
This article first appeared in the April 27th 2018 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

Mother takes Ealing Council to court over abortion clinic ‘buffer zone’ ...  GOOD FOR HER!

by Theo Howard

posted Monday, 23 Apr 2018

Alina Dulgheriu (Be Here for Me) 

 

 

Alina Dugheriu, who was helped by a pro-life vigil, said she did not want women to have 'vital support' removed

A mother plans to file a High Court challenge against Ealing Council’s order to implement a ‘buffer zone’ outside a Marie Stopes abortion clinic. Alina Dugheriu, who was herself helped by pro-life vigil members, will file her case after Ealing Council confirmed that the Public Space Protection Order will come into effect from 9 am on the morning of Monday, April 23. The order makes acts of approval or disapproval of abortion, prayer, or any kind of ‘interference’ towards clinic users within 100m (330ft) of the clinic a criminal offence.

The challenge comes after Ealing Council cabinet members decided to enforce a PSPO on Tuesday, April 10. The buffer zone has been introduced for a three year period which will be reviewed after six months.

Alina said: “My little girl is here today because of the real practical and emotional support that I was given by a group outside a Marie Stopes clinic. I am launching my legal challenge at the high court to ensure that all women at Ealing and across the country do not have a vital support option removed. In doing this I represent the thousands of women who have been helped by these vigils.”

She added: “It seems clear to me that Ealing Council has had a predetermined outcome in mind since last summer and despite the facts, has insisted on making this draconian order. Ealing Council could have taken action in a way that would have protected women and safeguarded the essential, life-saving help offered at the gate. Instead, they have criminalised charity and attempted to remove us from public space without justification.”

Elizabeth Howard, who supports mothers outside the Ealing abortion centre, said: “I support these mothers 100 per cent. It is shocking that Ealing politicians and the activists who are pressuring them have totally ignored their viewpoints. I look forward to an independent judicial review of the situation.”

Most of us remember exactly where we were when we heard that Detterling had thrown in the towel in his thirteen-year war with Gene

Most of us remember exactly where we were when we heard that Detterling had thrown in the towel in his thirteen-year war with Gene

 I suppose it's just like the assassination of President Kennedy. Most of us remember exactly where we were when we heard the news that Detterling had thrown in the towel in his thirteen-year war with Gene. It happened at 15:47 Pacific Time on Friday, 29 December 2017.




Perhaps readers could share their experiences of hearing of the shocking news? 

(Continued)

Thank you everyone. Had some interesting responses. Herewith a sample:

We heard about it at lunchtime the next day. Our friend Jean Carruthers  was in the tearoom at the Grand Hotel and saw us as we walked by. She ran out and down the steps gesticulating wildly and shouting, "Have you heard? The war is over!"

We replied in unison, "Good gracious Jean! What are you talking about? What war?"

"The war between Gene and Detterling. It's all over. Detterling threw in the towel yesterday!"

Oh well, it had to happen. 'Victory' is Gene's middle name. Just think of all those times that we heard on the TES Opinion Forum: 'Another victory to Gene'.

Mr & Mrs Anonymous

Torquay

I was awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call giving me the news. I wasn't surprised.  Uncle Detters has always been a total bottlejob.

Detterling's gay nephew

I found out on New Year's Day. My cleaner came in early in the morning to get the house ready for New Year's Day lunch. "Cor luv a duck Mr James," she cooed "that Detterling is a one! He's gone and thrown in the towel. Well, I'll be blowed."  

I think that's the end of Detterling. You won't hear from him again. Not after this humiliation. I always thought he was a yellowbelly. Never struck me as having that 'Ned Kelly' spirit that Gene just exudes.

Tie me kangaroo down Sport. Keep me cockatoo cool.

Clive James

I couldn't possibly comment. 

(Gene, I hope you, I and Fellini can meet up in London one day soon. What larks Gene!)

Delia Detterling



And myself? I was in the Da Remo Italian restaurant in Denham village. 

(to be continued)

Chelsea Hotel: Bob Dylan's door sells for $100,000

Image copyright AFP/Getty

Image caption The door to a room once used by actor Humphrey Bogart sold for $5,500

The door to US singer Bob Dylan's room at the iconic Chelsea Hotel in New York has sold at auction for $100,000 (£70,000).

It was one of 50 doors from the hotel, where a host of stars stayed over the years, to be sold.
The door to a room used by singers Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen during an affair, as well as the singer Joni Mitchell, fetched $85,000.
A former tenant acquired the doors after renovation work began in 2011.
The hotel, built in the 1880s, became a long-term residence for generations of singers, bohemians and writers.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Chelsea Hotel residents actress Edie Sedgwick and artist Andy Warhol in 1965. A door to a room they used sold for $52,500

Jack Kerouac wrote his classic book On the Road while staying there in the 1950s. The door to his room sold at auction for $30,000.

• Bob Dylan: Singer, songwriter, literary great
• Leonard Cohen, 'Godfather of gloom'

The hotel also served as a residence for writers Mark Twain and Tom Wolfe, and science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey there.

Image caption Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen stayed at the Chelsea Hotel during an affair. Their door fetched $85,000

The most infamous incident to take place in the building came in 1978, when Sid Vicious from the UK punk band the Sex Pistols was charged with murder after Nancy Spungen was found stabbed to death in the room they shared. Vicious died of a heroin overdose before the case came to trial.
Other doors to go under the hammer at Guernsey's auction house included that of actress Edie Sedgwick's room, where artist Andy Warhol filmed Chelsea Girls. It sold for $52,500. The door to guitarist Jimi Hendrix's room went for $13,000. The door to a room used by singer Madonna, actress Isabella Rosselini and filmmaker Shirley Clarke sold for $13,000.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image copyright AFP/Getty

Image caption Guitarist Jimi Hendrix's door fetched $13,000

The doors were rescued by a former tenant, Jim Georgiou, who saw them being thrown away and arranged to take possession of them.
"For me they were history and beauty and connected to my heart. They're precious because there are so many people who've been through them," he told the New York Times.
The building was designated a city landmark in 1966 and was sold in 2016 to a group of investors. It stopped taking new bookings in 2011 but a small group of long-term residents are still living on the upper floors while the renovation work continues.

How living in solitude led one man to God

 

 How living in solitude led one man to God

 

 

 

An aerial view of the desert area on November 6, 2008 in Henderson, Nevada. (Getty Images)

It was his long hikes in the Nevada desert that first gave Kenneth Garcia a sense of the 'mysterious and holy'

One way to come to know God and to understand the way he communicates with us is to read the testimonies of those who have personally encountered him. St Augustine’s Confessions is perhaps the classic text in this genre. I have just been reading Kenneth Garcia’s Pilgrim River: a Spiritual Memoir (Angelico Press), a modern account of a man driven, in his own words to “come to terms with the overpowering experience of God.”
Growing up in a dysfunctional family in Elko, Nevada, a place he grimly describes as “Cattle, casinos and cathouses”, Garcia was given no moral or spiritual compass in his early life. Such were his unhappy memories of his father’s violence and emotional detachment that he later refused to attend his funeral. The outer loneliness he experienced in realising that he was different from his peers was matched by an inner loneliness that in his youth he only dimly discerned.
It was his long solitary hikes in the Nevada desert that first gave Garcia solace, as he absorbed the grandeur, beauty and stillness of his natural surroundings. This in turn led him to sense a “mysterious and holy” spiritual force, although one that was not linked to any moral or religious tradition. In his wanderings he was drawn to Mexico with its Catholic culture and began to acknowledge “a strong sense that God was, though I didn’t know exactly what God might be.”
Reading omnivorously, hiking and writing a journal characterised much of Garcia’s 20s. He noted in his journal, “We need only be attentive to discern God’s presence everywhere.” Returning to Mexico in the winter of 1972, he looked in a mirror and thought for the first time “as if a mask had been torn away.” Aged 25 he had several sessions with a psychiatrist in Utah. The psychiatrist wisely counselled him to spend less time on his own. Garcia came to realise that although he had “encountered God in the natural world and in solitude …that alone only led to shipwreck.”
Drawn back to Mexico, to escape from a brief broken marriage, Garcia was again struck by the way Catholicism “pervaded all aspects of Mexican life: their liturgies and rituals, baptisms and confirmations, births, marriages and deaths…” He started going to Mass and aged 29 in 1980 he became a Catholic at the Easter vigil. He writes that although he thought he was escaping a conventional life, he found his way instead “into a new home [the Church] with all its rich history and traditions, its deep sacramental life.” Garcia was also wryly aware that the Church “was a home full of flawed people, with whom you nevertheless have an unbreakable bond…even when you dislike one another.”
The author describes returning to formal academic study, his happy second marriage and how family life with five children brought healing, though it never takes away his passionate love of solitary places – where on long lonely early journeys he had first encountered God. There are also moving passages in which he shares his struggles over many years to parent his troubled son Diego, who as a child was diagnosed with all the symptoms of psychopathy.
Garcia is frank about his failings, his shame over past transgressions, his regrets and his self-recriminations; yet underpinning this unsparing self-knowledge is his certainty of the presence of God: “A voice inside says ‘Persist. Have faith.’ I continue on.”

GENE WITHDRAWS SUPPORT FOR BORIS JOHNSON

GENE WITHDRAWS HIS SUPPORT FOR BORIS JOHNSON

Boris Johnson

 After much soul searching Gene has announced that he is withdrawing his support for his local MP Boris Johnson. This follows the publication on 27th February of a letter from Mr Johnson to the Prime Minister suggesting a hard border in Northern Ireland may happen with Brexit.


In a statement sent to the Huffington Post Gene has said that Boris Johnson is putting the Good Friday agreement into jeopardy. He is quoted as saying "I think  former Conservative Cabinet minister Lord Heseltine is correct when he says that what the letter was referring was to how all hard borders operate:

This is completely incompatible with what [Boris Johnson] said in the referendum campaign. It is complete nonsense of his statement today that it's like Islington and Camden.What he is saying to the Prime Minister in private is that their may well have to be checks of perhaps 5% - and that means a hard border.

This is the most remarkable revelation of duplicity.

Boris Johnson is a prat."

What Is the Door to Jackson Pollock’s Room at the Chelsea Hotel Worth?

What Is the Door to Jackson Pollock’s Room at the Chelsea Hotel Worth?

 

By Alina Cohen

Apr 4, 2018 4:24 pm

Close up of the hotel's facade, 1977. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Bob Dylan’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.

This month in New York, one man’s trash becomes another man’s auction lot. In a city known for both its garbage-lined avenues and its glimmering, eternal sense of possibility, it should come as no surprise that a shrewd homeless man, Jim Georgiou, has partnered with Guernsey’s auction house to sell off 52 distressed wooden doors previously tossed to the curb. These, however, have a more interesting pedigree than your typical household fixtures—cultural figures from Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol to Bob Dylan and Patti Smith have all lived behind them.
Georgiou and his dog, Teddy, lived at the iconic residential Hotel Chelsea for about 10 years following the September 11 attacks. Georgiou consistently struggled to pay rent; he had to move out due to financial hardship around late 2011. Around this time, hoteliers Richard Born and Ira Drukier (best known for their trendy, upscale properties such as The Jane, The Greenwich, and The Maritime) were beginning renovations on the famed space, which they acquired in 2016. According to Guernsey’s, Georgiou was selling records and living along 23rd Street, not far from his former home. He spotted the discarded doors, and, recognizing their sentimental worth, decided to preserve them. Georgiou enlisted a few friends and transported 52 doors to a storage facility in the Bronx.
A bit of history is in order. Hotel Chelsea opened in 1884 as a cooperative and quickly attracted the city’s creative set. From the beginning, the top floor was devoted to 15 artist studios. In the early 20th century, the building served as a luxury establishment. World War II brought a dive in quality and rates—and an increase in bohemian tenants. Mark Twain and O. Henry lived at the Chelsea, which also housed Thomas Wolfe as he wrote his 1940 masterpiece, You Can’t Go Home Again. Leonard Cohen immortalized his one-time home (and his romance with fellow resident Janis Joplin) in his song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2.” Smith recounted in her memoir Just Kids how her former Hotel Chelsea roommate, Robert Mapplethorpe, took his first photographs here.

Janis Joplin’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.

 

If the hotel served as a major site of creation, it also inspired reckless, storied destruction. Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick once accidentally set her room on fire, and the poet Dylan Thomas nearly drank himself to death (he downed 18 whiskies in a nearby bar and fell into a coma). In 1978, Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, was found stabbed to death on a bathroom floor. He was charged with her murder, but died of a drug overdose before the case went to trial.
Georgiou was well aware of these legends. He began a multi-year research project to determine which of his doors belonged to which resident. Combing through archival materials and speaking with library desk clerks, he began piecing together the details. Reading about Warhol, for example, Georgiou discovered the room number in which the artist had filmed the avant-garde, era-defining Chelsea Girls in 1966.
All the doors are battered, with white paint chipping from many of them. Some even feature spray-painted Xs, ostensibly to signal them for removal by the construction crew. The number 211 still marks the door behind which Bob Marley once stayed. An especially decrepit, plain door tagged 126 once opened onto quarters belonging to boldface tenants like Bette Davis and Iggy Pop. A spray-painted O and a series of scratches distinguish the door once opened by Cohen, Joplin, and Joni Mitchell. Madonna, Isabella Rossellini, and Shirley Clarke all stayed in 822. As Georgiou worked, what had initially looked like damage became meaningful evidence of celebrity wear and tear.

Installation view of the doors, on view at Ricco/Maresca. Courtesy of the gallery.

Finally, Georgiou called Arlan Ettinger, the founder of Guernsey’s, to discuss how to sell these relics. Ettinger was quickly onboard. “Perhaps more than any other building in recent American history, the Chelsea has been home to some of the most interesting, trendsetting people who worked there, played there, had orgies there, and—not to be proud of—but in one or two cases got murdered there,” he told Artsy.
“In doors, there’s both the forbidding and the inviting,” Daniel Kershaw, who designs exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has previously noted. “I’ve always felt that the most wonderful transitions that doors provide are those which give you an element of surprise, that what’s on one side of the door is so vastly different than what’s on the other side of the door.”
Gallerist Frank Maresca, who is exhibiting the doors beginning April 5th at his Chelsea location and co-hosting the April 12th auction, developed a display strategy to enhance this sense of revelation. He’s suspended 22 of them from his concrete ceiling at Ricco/Maresca with cables and stainless steel. The setup will resemble what he describes as “a labyrinth, a maze, a funhouse.”

Jackson Pollock’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.

Tennessee Williams’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.

The hotel holds personal significance for the gallerist, as well. Maresca himself calls El Quijote (the ground floor eatery at Hotel Chelsea, which shuttered last week) “the very first restaurant that I ever ate in in my life.” In 1967, at age 17, Maresca began working for advertising photographer Irving Schild. With his boss, he sometimes socialized with the Hotel Chelsea set. “The doors radiate the essence of the Chelsea Hotel,” Maresca said. “I would call them plain and gritty.”
So—who wants them? “You can never predict who buyers might be,” said Ettinger. He says that gallery owners, noted photographers, and even the head of a bank have already expressed interest. Estimates are very broad, from a door affiliated with Pollock  ($5,000 to $100,000) to one bearing associations with both Brian Jones and Liam Neeson ($2,000 to $20,000). Proceeds will benefit the charity City Harvest and Georgiou himself. In the future purchasers’ homes, the doors may serve as reminders of a bygone era, inspiration for creative practitioners, or anthropological curiosities.
New Yorkers, after all, are uniquely primed to revere these battered totems and yearn for such a grungy, authentic past. Dylan, who started to write his 1966 record Blonde on Blonde while staying in the Chelsea, perfectly captured the tension between presence and absence, desire and detachment, and dirt and romance that characterize the city. In one of his best-loved songs from the album, “Visions of Johanna,” he sings, “And the all-night girls, they whisper of escapades out on the D train…The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain / And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.”

Alina Cohen