Episode Details

Fr. Peter George Flynn weaves together the story of St Francis’s first meeting with Pope Innocent III — the vagabond friar who walked to Rome with a handful of followers and spoke to the pope of “Lady Poverty” and the sons of the King of Heaven — with the great ecclesiastical landmark of Innocent III’s reign: the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, where both Francis and Dominic were present.

The council’s most enduring legacy in daily Catholic life was the Easter duty: its origins in combating the Cathar heresy that denied the goodness of material things, and the equal and opposite problem of scrupulous souls who refused Communion for years out of excessive humility. Fr. Peter walks through all six precepts of the Church — Mass on Sundays, annual confession, Easter Communion, fasting and abstinence, supporting the Church’s needs, and the marriage laws — with characteristic colour, including G.K. Chesterton receiving Communion once a year but crossing himself every time he lit a cigar, and John Bradburn hearing from his confessor that a sacristan sipping from the wine cruets was simply the ox not being muzzled.

L'articolo The Franciscan Hour – Francis, Innocent III, and Chesterton – Fr Peter George Flynn proviene da Radio Maria.