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PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, May 23,1974
The House-Church of St. Peter at Capharnaum
BY DESMOND SULLIVAN
CAPHARNAUM, Israel (NC) - The
magnificent Basilica of St. Peter’s in
Rome and the humble house-Church of
St. Peter’s in Capharnaum provide a
remarkable contrast of faith and
devotion.
In Rome, faith and devotion created
a basilica of prayer on the pinpoint of
St. Peter’s tomb. In Capharnaum, until
recently, the fields of wheat and a
mound of earth by the lake of Galilee
covered the venerated and extensive
remains of the house where Peter lived
and where Christ stayed.
The Bedouin nomads knew the little
hill as Tell Nahum. At the turn of the
century, Franciscans bought the spot.
Charles de Foucald had planned his first
hermitage here until intrigue forced him
out into the Sahara.
The Franciscans began excavations in
1921 on the hunch that Tell Nahum was
modern Arabic for the scriptural Kafra
Na Hum (the town of Nahum). When
Pope Piux XII ordered excavations in
Rome for St. Peter’s tomb, the
Franciscans of the Holy Land
discovered the house of St. Peter in
Capharnaum.
The fields of the Bedouins had a
small three-foot outcrop of ancient wall
amidst a tumble of rock on Tell Nahum.
From this meager clue the digging
began.
Within three years a startling
discovery came to light for the first time
in 1900 years: a Roman-style synagogue
of white limestone walls, rows of Doric
columns capped with Corinthian
capitals.
The intricate carvings and coins and
pottery indicated a fourth-century
builder.
structures of religious veneration.
It became apparent that a humble
home of the first century had been
turned into a sacred place, preserving
the house character of the home, yet
superimposing the religious veneration
of a Christian church.
Written traditions about Capharnaum
from early pilgrims to the Holy Land
had preserved a witness that seemed to
coincide with those discoveries.
A pilgrim in 384 A.D. wrote: “In
Capharnaum a church has been made
out of the house of the Prince of
Apostles. Its walls are standing until
today as they were ...” A pilgrim from
Italy wrote in 570: “We likewise came
into Capharnaum into the house of
Blessed Peter, which is now a basilica.”
Further scientific examination of the
archeological finds were conducted.
Little pieces of plaster from the walls
were scrutinized and fitted together.
The fragments contained ancient writing
called graffiti. Almost all were found
within the central room or courtyard.
Some were prayers of invocation with
such words as “have mercy” and
“Amen.” Another fragment was an
invocation addressed to Christ: “Lord
Jesus Christ help . . .” Others had the
name of Peter. Symbols were identified
as those used by the earliest Jewish
converts to Christianity.
Throughout the Holy Land and
indeed anywhere in the Christian world
it is extremely rare to find a Church
building dated earlier than the fourth
century. This puzzling phenomenon has
a significant explanation. Early
Christians used so-called
house-churches. Following the example
BY COLLEGE
of Our Lord, the first Christians used to
meet in their houses for prayers and
readings, and then, around the family
table, they would celebrate the
Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, offering
the bread and wine, reciting the words
of consecration and receiving
Communion.
Jerusalem itself has many
house-churches, some dating back to
apostolic times - the House of St.
James, St. Mark, St. John and others.
After seeing homes in the Old City of
Jerusalem today one can understand
how this happened. For houses are still
built around an enclosed courtyard,
which becomes the center of the four or
five families on each side of the
enclosure. Parties and celebrations take
place there.
One can easily understand how the
courtyard of St. Peter’s house could
have been an early site for the
Eucharist. The home grew into a
house-church and later, in the fourth
century, into a shrine at the center of
the octagonal basilica, built precisely
around the original house of Peter.
Conclusions of the discoveries in the
area of the Christian church built over
the house of St. Peter are given in a
recent report:
- A complex of habitations of the
first century of our era were found in
the whole area;
- One hall in the complex of poor
habitations was venerated in a special
way from the first century onwards.
The early community of Jewish
Christians transformed this area into a
place of cult while continuing to live in
BC Students Cited
Scripture scholars, however,
remembered the centurion of the
Gospel and the words: “He is friendly
towards us, it was he who built the
synagogue.” There were indications that
further below might be traces of that
Gospel synagogue.
A few feet away from the synagogue
ruins toward the lake shore, other finds
were made. An octagonal structure of
fifth-century origin was revealed and
claimed to be a church by some persons
and a “fountain in a public square” by
others.
The Franciscans in 1964 published a
scientific report on the archeology of
the octagon proving it to be a Byzantine
church of the fifth century.
Two problems, however, remained
unsolved. Why a church and a
synagogue built about the same time?
And why such extravagant buildings in
so remote a place?
Further digging in 1968 revealed the
church’s mosaic floor had a soft fill of
earth, below which were found a
network of more ancient structures. A
report said the church had been over a
sacred place venerated in preceding
centuries. “Special care had been taken
to locate the fifth-century church to
coincide exactly with the same area and
with the same dimensions as the sacred
place already venerated earlier.”
Two Benedictine Military School
juniors have been cited by Presbyterian
College as PC junior fellows in
recognition of unusual scholastic
achievement, President Marc C.
Weersing announced today.
They are Ralph Joseph Miranda, son
of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Miranda of
13002 Hermitage Circle, and Phillip N.
Strenski, son of Dr. and Mrs. Theodore
Strenski of 629 Valleybrook Road, both
of Savannah.
The Presbyterian College Junior
Achievement Award is presented to two
young men and two young women who,
after the first semester of their junior
year in high school, have the highest
cumulative averages for the previous
two and a half years of academic work.
PRIEST SAYS:
The award carries a special citation, a
minimum scholarship grant and
automatic consideration in PC’s broader
scholarship program. Junior Fellows
also may participate in PC’s summer
Honors program and earn advanced
college credit.
President Weersing said the PC Junior
Fellows program was inaugurated four
years ago under joint sponsorship of
Presbyterian College and the PC Alumni
Association. It is designed to recognize
superior academic achievement on the
part of young people, to encourage
continued high performance and to
make available to them PC’s scholarship
opportunities. More than 70 former
Junior Fellows are currently enrolled at
PC, and 30 others completing high
school this year already have signed up
to enroll as freshmen next fall.
Blacks Block Afro Music
nation’s foremost authorities on black
music in Catholic worship, Father
Clarence Joseph Rivers, a black priest.
While speaking at a two-day liturgy
workshop here, Father Rivers, who lives
in Cincinnati, said, “The problem is not
with whites, at least out loud, but with
black Catholics who think black music
is Protestant and therefore somehow
bad.”
All cultures have a place in the
Church, Father Rivers said, because
“Jesus gave us a mission to all men and
all cultures. To deny any men and any
culture a place in that Churh is to deny
the mission of Jesus.”
His prescription for helping parishes
adapt Afro-American music or any new
music is simple:
When the music is presented, make
sure it is done well, especially the first
time. And to make sure it is done well,
parishes should put time and money
into training their musicians.
Both black and white congregations,
he pointed out, will sing if they have
strong leadership.
“The problem is that we have not
developed the leadership, and we
haven’t put in the financial resources,”
Father Rivers added. “People have to
make their living at it to be good.”
Developing that leadership can
sometimes mean getting the support of
priests, he said. Reaching the clergy is
not a problem of convincing them
intellectually but reaching them at the
“gut level.”
The Church creates
“mini-theologians,” who are proficient
in theological matters, Father Rivers
concluded. “But she does not train
them to ministry and worship.”
There were the traces of house with
coins and pottery from human
habitation of the time of Our Lord. One
courtyard or room, however, showed
signs of veneration and special care, for
around and above the room was another
level of decorations, symbols and
RICHMOND, Va. (NC) - One of the
biggest stumbling blocks to bringing
Afro-American music into the liturgy is
the resistance of black people - not
white - who think black culture has no
place in Church.
That is the judgment of one of the
PERFECT ATTENDANCE CERTIFICATES were awarded to eight
CCD Students by Father Walter L. DiFrancesco, Pastor, Sacred Heart
Church, Warner Robins, at Mass on Sunday, May 19th, which marked the
last day of religious instruction for public school students. Pictured, 1. to
r. front, Leonard Busby, Richard Joye, Theresa Pollard, Tony Pollard;
back, David Horsefield, Fr. Difrancesco, Richard Pollard, Rose Kosater,
Co-ordinator, Religious Instruction Program. Not pictured, but awarded
Certificates were Mark and Gerlad Brantley.
)
the other rooms next to this one;
- From the fourth century onwards
this community of Jewish Christians
enlarged the house church;
- The belief of this early community,
and the witness of early pilgrims, that
this was the house of St. Peter has been
confirmed by the symbols and graffiti.
- Toward the middle of the fifth
century a church of two concentric
octagons was built over this venerated
house of St. Peter.
Within the area now known to be
Capharnaum, there is only a small
church, closed to visitors. However, the
countryside of hills and valleys still
recapture something of the sights Christ
saw and the sounds He heard. The land
of Galilee, which in His day had towns
and villages, now has open fields and
hidden ruins that are slowly coming to
light. On those hillsides one can still
tread the paths He walked, and pick the
wild flowers of which He spoke and
breathe the atmosphere that formed His
words.
NATIVITY HOME AND SCHOOL ASSOCIATION
- Newly elected officers for 1974-75 are, seated left to
right, Mrs. Michael McCarthy, president and Sister
Mary Jorgues, school principal. Standing left to right,
Mrs. Ronald Barta, treasurer; Mrs. Frank McMahon,
secretary and Mrs. Robert DiBenedetto, vice president.
Communications
Day Ailing—
(Continued from Page 1)
objection to this year’s theme.
“Effective evangelization is
accomplished basically through living
out the Gospel precepts,” he said. “It’s
less a matter of what you say than what
you do.”
The idea of using the mass media for
direct evangelization is “approaching it
from the wrong direction,” MacKaye
said. “If the Church lives in a Gospel
fashion, the media are going to notice it
and tell the story. If the Church tells the
truth and lives it out, it will be heard.”
Russell Shaw, the USCC’s associate
secretary for communication, agreed
partly with MacKaye’s criticism but said
it wasn’t the whole picture. “While it’s
perfectly true that evangelization takes
place through the Christian community,
the media can be a means of
communicating that witnessing,” he
said. “All witness doesn’t have to be
‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ ... I see no intrinsic
reason why the Christian community
can’t in part communicate their life and
message through the media.”
Anderson said he saw no
contradiction in the use of the media by
the Church for evangelization. “It seems
to me that to fulfill its preaching
mission the Church must use all the
means possible, and today that means
mass media,” he said. “My own sense of
the Word is that it exists in its integrity
and truth in some way independently of
our own one-to-one witnessing of it.”
Both Anderson and MacKaye
expressed some unease, however, that
by “communications” the Church often
seems to mean manipulation of the
news by public relations. “My instinct is
to resist PR,” said MacKaye. “I’m
interested in having questions answered
truthfully that I as a professional
journalist feel should be asked.”
Beusse pointed out that it would be a
mistake to view World Communications
Day primarily as an attempt by the
Church to gain more influence in the
media.
World Communications Day offers an
opportunity for the Church to be
interested in the media “not just in a
utilitarian sense, but for the Church to
be concerned with the media’s good,
with the good of the people in the
media,” he said.
He pointed out that what happens on ,
that day is what happens locally. “The
Church in the U.S. is the local church,
not the national church,” he said. “If it
doesn’t happen at the local level, it
doesn’t happen at all.”
Beusse said his own experience at
regional meetings of bishops this spring
- their topic .was the same as the theme
of this year’s communications day -.-
gave him a feeling that the Church in
this country is going through “an
awakening process” vis-a-vis the media.
“I still encountered some of the older
problems of people feeling they are in
an ‘adversary relationship’ with the
media,” he said, “but that is not
exclusively a Church problem.”
One aspect of World Communications
Day that has been ignored in this
country, Beusse said, is the Vatican’s
urging that a national collection be
taken up that day to fund the Church’s
communications efforts.
In England and Ireland, the bishops
have taken up such collections and used
them to fund their national
communications centers.
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