Word: brodrick
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...appreciated your interesting Nov. 10 review of Father James Brodrick's St. Francis Xavier. One sentence, though, might be a bit misleading and a bit uncomplimentary to the Japanese people. After mentioning the permanent successes of Xavier's whirlwind apostolate, your reviewer states: "Other [missionary conquests,] like his great Japanese mission, were later nullified by persecutions and royal decrees...
...Although Brodrick believes that St. Francis worked miracles, he casts a skeptical eye on some of them. One is the famous story that, after Xavier lost a crucifix overboard at sea, a crab miraculously returned it to the shore the next day. The saint never mentioned this himself and, although the story was cited in the Papal Bull announcing Xavier's canonization, Brodrick does not believe it. ("It is entirely a matter of evidence.") Another legend: Xavier's reputedly miraculous "gift of tongues." Father Brodrick notes that the Basque saint was a notoriously poor linguist, not even fluent...
...folk to come and listen to the Word of God." In "golden, heartless Goa," the citadel of Portugal's Asiatic colonies, he got crowds for his instructions by walking up & down the streets ringing a large bell. And when he found an audience, he held it. Writes Biographer Brodrick: "Perhaps they laughed at him to start with . . . but soon a hush would fall upon them because the love that shone in his dark bewitching eyes and burned on his stammering lips spoke to their hearts so eloquently...
Navarre Gone Wrong. Because Xavier's flame burned deep but narrow, Brodrick points out, he had some tragic limitations. His lack of sympathy with native cultures hampered him in getting close to the people he wanted to Christianize. "From all appearances," writes Father Brodrick, "he looked upon India as though it were a huge Navarre gone wrong, not as a land utterly new . . . For him, the old slogan always seemed to suffice, the Christians are right, the pagans are wrong, which, while being perfectly true, by no means precludes the existence . . . of genuine holiness in such a non-Christian...
Just 400 years ago this month, weary and wasted, St. Francis Xavier died on Sancian Island, off the China coast. He was 46. Concludes Father Brodrick: "It was a poor and humble death, not unperplexed, such as befitted a poor and humble man who had no notion whatever that the world would want to remember him . . . He remained to the end a man, a passionate, obstinate man, capable at times of fierce resentments and highly autocratic actions, which, however, did not prevent him from being one of the most generous, large-hearted, lovable human beings this sad world has ever...