From Maureen: Some Brief Thoughts about Women and the Fathers.

My eldest daughter and I are recovering from the St. Paul Center‘s 2008 Letter & Spirit Conference, which closed last night. The speakers were outstanding. You should buy all their books (hyperlinked here). Keynote was Dr. John Cavadini, head of theology at Notre Dame, who gave the Center’s annual lecture in honor of the great Father Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap. Dr. Cavadini spoke brilliantly about St. Augustine and marriage. The heart of his lecture is posted here as a PDF. It may be the best thing you read this year. We had a record number of seminarians attending. One of them posted a photo.

Cappuccino’s Mom has reviewed my two books on family: Love in the Little Things: Tales of Family Life and Catholic for a Reason IV: Scripture and the Mystery of Marriage and Family Life. The latter includes the essay, “Milk and Mystery: Breastfeeding and the Theology of the Body,” a mostly patristic and biblical study co-authored by my brilliant and beautiful wife.

PhDiva is displaying a series of posts full of gorgeous photos of Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, inside and out. (The link is to the first post. Make sure to look at the others, especially the doors, the doors.)

Yancy Smith posted the following on Roger Pearse’s blog:

I will be defending my dissertation “Hippolytus’ Commentary on the Song of Songs in Social and Critical Context” on Nov. 19. Drs. Carolyn Osiek, David L. Balch, and Jeffrey Childers (Syriac, Georgian expert) are my committee. Thanks of the input and for your prayers.

Please keep him in mind. He’s doing important work.

Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio recently gave the keynote address at the Missouri Catholic Conference Annual Assembly. He spoke on the Catholic contribution to immigration reform. And he told his listeners the story of Julian the Apostate.

I want to go back in history a little bit. To the short reign of the Emperor Julian, who ruled the Roman Empire from 361 to 363 A.D.

You remember your history, I’m sure. After centuries of persecution, Christianity became first a “tolerated” religion, and then the official state religion under the Roman Emperor Constantine, beginning in the early fourth century. Well, Julian was the son of Constantine’s half-brother, Julius Constantius, and he came to power after a series of bloody struggles.

Julian came to be known for all time as “Julian the Apostate.” He got that notorious label because, although he had been baptized and raised a Christian, he abandoned his faith immediately upon becoming emperor. Julian then used his “bully pulpit” as emperor to scorn the Church and Christianity and to promote devotion to the pagan gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome—Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the rest.

Julian called the Christians “Galileans.” It was a kind of ethnic and class slur. And he wrote a big book against the Church. He said his aim was to strip that “new-fangled Galilean god” of “the divinity falsely ascribed to him” (Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 177).

But there was something that Julian couldn’t shake about the Christians. Something he couldn’t get out of his mind. And that was the Christians’ virtue. Their charity. And especially their hospitality to those they didn’t even know. In fact, Julian once issued an order to try to get pagan believers to start imitating the Christians in what he called their “benevolence toward strangers.”

Here’s a quote from a letter he wrote, and you can tell he’s not very happy. He complains that Christians’ care for strangers and their holiness is contributing to the spread of “atheism.” (He called Christians “atheists” because they didn’t believe in the pagan gods.)

Here’s what Julian wrote: “Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers … and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done the most to increase atheism. … It is disgraceful that when … the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men should see how our people lack aid from us.” (Macmullen and Lane, Paganism and Christianity, 100–425 C.E.: A Sourcebook, 271–272).

You see he’s embarrassed. Ashamed. The Christians are so generous that they’re helping the poor Romans and that exposes how the Romans themselves don’t take care of their poor.

My friends, my point in this little history lesson is this: From the beginning there was something very different about Christians. Something even their enemies, like Julian, couldn’t help but notice—and admire, no matter how reluctantly.

It’s true there was a tradition of welcoming the stranger in other cultures and religions. Philosophers like Plato wrote about the importance of hospitality. But for the first Christians it became an original and central element of their religious identity. To be a Christian was to practice hospitality to the stranger.

Julian the Apostate is worth getting to know. See here. Or cut to the chase and buy Adrian Murdoch’s The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World.

Archbishop Gomez is always worth reading. See his collected works here.

Now that the United States has elected its first African-American president, Archbishop Wilton Gregory and others have wondered aloud whether we might some day see an African pope. I find future-pope speculation distasteful — like wondering aloud whom Mom might marry should Dad ever get around to kicking off. But I’m grateful to the London Times‘ Richard Owen for noting that

three early Popes came from North Africa, at a time when it formed part of the Roman Empire: Pope Victor, who reigned from 189-198; Pope Melchiades, or Militiades (311-314); and Pope Gelasius (492-496). All three are saints.

Pope Victor was born in Africa and served as pontiff during the reign of the Emperors Commodus and Septimus Severus (who was also an African), persuading them to release persecuted Christians, including a future pope, Calistus I.

Pope Militiades was the first Pope to benefit from greater tolerance of Christianity under the Emperor Maxentius, regaining confiscated holy properties. He was given the first official papal residence, later to become the Lateran Palace. Pope Gelasius, born in Rome to African parents, revised the rules for the clergy, permitting the use of wine at the Holy Communion.

He covered the issue in greater detail three years ago, in Africans Led Church During Roman Empire.

Here’s an update on a major underwater recovery, the first Byzantine port of Constantinople, on the Sea of Marmaris.

So far, 32 wooden ships, Stone Age skeletons, coins, amphorae and even a basket full of ancient cherries have been uncovered … Dating from the time of the Roman emperor Theodosius I, in the fourth century AD, the finds are an unprecedented glimpse into the ancient trade and maritime life of one of the world’s longest-inhabited cities…

They include a woman’s shoe with an ancient Greek inscription: “Use it in health, lady, be in beauty and happiness and wear it.”

I can’t help but think of the Empress Eudoxia. Perhaps it was a gift from St. John Chrysostom? If so, we can be sure it’s a sensible shoe.

The site also bears relics of continued Byzantine presence after the harbour had been filled in. A Byzantine tannery and charnel house were discovered at the western end of the excavation, as well as human skulls – perhaps those of executed criminals – thrown into a well.

Lots of candidates for those. Too many to list.

Roger Pearse is having trouble translating a curious passage in Eusebius. If you’ve got the Greek, stop by and help.