Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is a state of Germany. Rhineland-Palatinate is located in western Germany covering an area of 19,846 km2 and a population of 4.05 million inhabitants, the seventh-most populous German state. Mainz is the state capital and largest city, while other major cities include Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Trier and Worms. Rhineland-Palatinate is surrounded by the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, it borders three foreign countries: France and Belgium. Rhineland-Palatinate was established in 1946 after World War II from territory of the separate regions of the Free State of Prussia, People's State of Hesse, Bavaria, by the French military administration in Allied-occupied Germany. Rhineland-Palatinate became part of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, shared the country's only border with the Saar Protectorate until it was returned to German control in 1957. Rhineland-Palatinate has since developed its own identity built on its natural and cultural heritage, including the extensive Palatinate winegrowing region, its picturesque landscapes, many castles and palaces.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded shortly after the Second World War on 30 August 1946. It was formed from the southern part of the Prussian Rhine Province, from Rhenish Hesse, from the western part of Nassau and the Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate minus the county of Saarpfalz; the Joint German-Luxembourg Sovereign Region is the only unincorporated area of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. This condominium is formed by the rivers Moselle and Our, where they run along the border between Luxembourg and Rhineland-Palatinate or the Saarland; the present state of Rhineland-Palatinate formed part of the French Zone of Occupation after the Second World War. It comprised the former Bavarian Palatinate, the Regierungsbezirke of Koblenz and Trier of the old Prussian Rhine Province, those parts of the Province of Rhenish Hesse west of the River Rhine and belonging to the People's State of Hesse, parts of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, the former Oldenburg region around Birkenfeld. On 10 July 1945, the occupation authority on the soil of the present-day Rhineland-Palatinate transferred from the Americans to the French.
To begin with, the French divided the region provisionally into two "upper presidiums", Rhineland-Hesse-Nassau and Hesse-Palatinate. The formation of the state was ordained on 30 August 1946, the last state in the Western Zone of Occupation to be established, by Regulation No. 57 of the French military government under General Marie-Pierre Kœnig. It was called Rhenish-Palatinate; the provisional French government at that time wanted to leave the option open of annexing further areas west of the Rhine after the Saarland was turned into a protectorate. When the Americans and British, had led the way with the establishment of German federal states, the French came under increasing pressure and followed their example by setting up the states of Baden, Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Rhineland-Palatinate. However, the French military government forbade the Saarland joining Rhineland-Palatinate. Mainz was named as the state capital in the regulation. However, war damage and destruction meant that Mainz did not have enough administrative buildings, so the headquarters of the state government and parliament was provisionally established in Koblenz.
On 22 November 1946, the constituent meeting of the Advisory State Assembly took place there, a draft constitution was drawn up. Local elections had been held. Wilhelm Boden was nominated on 2 December as the minister president of the new state by the French military government. Adolf Süsterhenn submitted a draft constitution to the Advisory State Assembly, passed after several rounds of negotiation on 25 April 1947 in a final vote with the absolute majority of the CDU voting for and the SPD and KPD voting against it. One of the reasons for this was that the draft constitution made provision for separate schools based on Christian denomination. On 18 May 1947, the Constitution for Rhineland-Palatinate was adopted by 53% of the electorate in a referendum. While the Catholic north and west of the new state adopted the constitution by a majority, it was rejected by the majority in Rhenish Hesse and the Palatinate. On the same date, the first elections took place for the state parliament, the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The inaugural assembly of parliament took place on 4 June 1947 in the large city hall at Koblenz. Wilhelm Boden was elected the first minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate. Just one month Peter Altmeier succeeded him; the constitutional bodies, the Government, the Parliament and the Constitutional Court, established their provisional sea
Saint Stephen
Stephen, traditionally venerated as the protomartyr or first martyr of Christianity, was according to the Acts of the Apostles a deacon in the early church at Jerusalem who aroused the enmity of members of various synagogues by his teachings. Accused of blasphemy at his trial, he made a long speech denouncing the Jewish authorities who were sitting in judgment on him and was stoned to death, his martyrdom was witnessed by Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee who would become a follower of Jesus and known as Paul the Apostle. The only primary source for information about Stephen is the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles. Stephen is mentioned in Acts 6 as one of the Greek-speaking Hellenistic Jews selected to participate in a fairer distribution of welfare to the Greek-speaking widows; the Catholic, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Church of the East venerate Stephen as a saint. Traditionally, Stephen is invested with a crown of martyrdom. Eastern Christian iconography shows him as a young, beardless man with a tonsure, wearing a deacon's vestments, holding a miniature church building or a censer.
Stephen is first mentioned in Acts of the Apostles as one of seven deacons appointed by the Apostles to distribute food and charitable aid to poorer members of the community in the early church. According to Orthodox belief, he was the eldest and is therefore called "archdeacon"; as another deacon, Nicholas of Antioch, is stated to have been a convert to Judaism, it may be assumed that Stephen was born Jewish, but nothing more is known about his previous life. The reason for the appointment of the deacons is stated to have been dissatisfaction among Hellenistic Jews that their widows were being slighted in preference to Hebraic ones in the daily distribution of food. Since the name "Stephanos" is Greek, it has been assumed. Stephen is stated to have been full of faith and the Holy Spirit and to have performed miracles among the people, it seems to have been among synagogues of Hellenistic Jews that he performed his teachings and "signs and wonders" since it is said that he aroused the opposition of the "Synagogue of the Freedmen", "of the Cyrenians, of the Alexandrians, of them that were of Cilicia and Asia".
Members of these synagogues had challenged Stephen's teachings, but Stephen had bested them in debate. Furious at this humiliation, they suborned false testimony that Stephen had preached blasphemy against Moses and God, they dragged him to appear before the Sanhedrin, the supreme legal court of Jewish elders, accusing him of preaching against the Temple and the Mosaic Law. Stephen is said to have been unperturbed, his face looking like "that of an angel". In a long speech to the Sanhedrin comprising the whole of Acts Chapter 7, Stephen presents his view of the history of Israel; the God of glory, he says, appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia, thus establishing at the beginning of the speech one of its major themes, that God does not dwell only in one particular building. Stephen recounts the stories of the patriarchs in some depth, goes into more detail in the case of Moses. God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, inspired Moses to lead his people out of Egypt; the Israelites turned to other gods.
This establishes the second main theme of Israel's disobedience to God. Stephen faced two accusations: that he had declared that Jesus would destroy the Temple in Jerusalem and that he had changed the customs of Moses. Benedict XVI stated that St. Stephen appealed to the Jewish scriptures to prove how the laws of Moses were not subverted by Jesus but, were being fulfilled. Stephen denounces his listeners as "stiff-necked" people who, just as their ancestors had done, resist the Holy Spirit. "Was there a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have betrayed and murdered him." Thus castigated, the account is. However, Stephen looked up and cried, "Look! I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God!" He said that the executed Jesus was standing by the side of God. The people from the crowd, who threw the first stones, laid their coats down so as to be able to do this, at the feet of a "young man named Saul".
Stephen prayed that the Lord would receive his spirit and his killers be forgiven, sank to his knees, "fell asleep". Saul "approved of their killing him". In the aftermath of Stephen's death, the remaining disciples fled to distant lands, many to Antioch; the exact site of Stephen's stoning is not mentioned in Acts. One, claimed by noted French archaeologists Louis-Hugues Vincent and Félix-Marie Abel to be ancient, places the event at Jerusalem's northern gate, while another one, dated by Vincent and Abel to the Middle Ages and no earlier than the 12th century, locates it at the eastern gate. Of the numerous speeches in Acts of the Apostles, Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin is the longest. To the objection that it seems unlikely that such a long speech could be reproduced in the text of Acts as it was delivered, some Biblical scholars have replied that Stephen's speech
Stephan Burger
Stephan Burger is a German Roman Catholic clergyman. Since 2014 he has been Archbishop of Freiburg and Metropolitan Bishop of the Ecclesiastical Province of Freiburg, succeeding Robert Zollitsch, his younger brother Tutilo Burger has been archabbot of Beuron Archabbey since 2011. Stephan Burger grew up in Germany with two brothers and a sister, his brother Tutilo Burger has been archabbot of the benedictines of Beuron Archabbey since 2011. After going to primary school and middle school, he went to boarding school at Immenstaad am Bodensee, he entered the Collegium Borromaeum at Freiburg, a hall of residence for those students of theology who intended to become priests, studied philosophy and theology at the University of Freiburg and the University of Munich. On 20 May 1990 he was ordained a priest at Freiburg Minster and celebrated his first mass at St Michael's church in Löffingen. Burger spent his first years as a priest at Pforzheim. In 1995, he was first parish administrator and parish priest of St Mauritius in Sankt Leon-Rot.
Between 2004 and 2006, while continuing to work as a parish priest, he studied for a licentiate of Canon Law at the University of Münster. Starting 2002, Burger worked as defender of the bond at the officialate of the Archdiocese of Freiburg. In 2006, he became promotor iustitiae and in 2007, was appointed judicial vicar and leader of the diocesan court. In this function he supervised the process of beatification for Max Josef Metzger, he was a canon of the Archdiocese of Freiburg between 2013 and 2014. On 30 May 2014, Pope Francis appointed Burger to succeed Robert Zollitsch as Archbishop of Freiburg, his episcopal consecration and solemn inauguration through his predecessor Robert Zollitsch took place in Freiburg Minster on 29 June 2014. Other consecrating bishops were Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz, Gebhard Fürst, Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Stephan Burger chose Christus in cordibus from the Letter of St Paul to the Ephesians as his episcopal motto, his predecessor Robert Zollitsch called Burger "conservative in a good sense" during his introduction of the new Archbishop.
During the autumn assembly 2014 of the German Bishops' Conference, he was made a member of the committee Weltkirche, president of the sub-committee for questions of development and the German episcopal charity Misereor, member of the episcopal working committee for employment law. Since 2016, Burger is president of the committee for Caritas, the German Catholic Relief Services. Stephan Burger is a honorary member of the Catholic student's association K. D. St. V. Wildenstein at Freiburg. In 2016, he has been appointed Knight Commander with Star of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre by Cardinal Edwin Frederick O'Brien, Grand Master of the Order, was invested in Münster Cathedral on 21 May 2016 by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Grand Prior of the German Lieutenancy of the Order. Burger is member of the Delegation Albertus Magnus Freiburg. On 18 June 2016, Burger was appointed Conventual Chaplain ad honorem of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta during the general assembly of the German national association.
Http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bburger.html
Roman Catholic Diocese of Hildesheim
The Diocese of Hildesheim is a diocese or ecclesiastical territory of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in Germany. Founded in 815 as a missionary diocese by King Louis the Pious, his son Louis the German appointed the famous former archbishop of Rheims, Ebbo, as bishop; the Diocese of Hildesheim continues to exist. The current bishop is Norbert Trelle, appointed in 2006; the diocese is a suffragan to the Archdiocese of Hamburg since 1994. Hildesheim was suffragan to Mainz until 1805, it was an exempt diocese until 1930, before it was part of the Middle German Ecclesiastical Province with Paderborn Archdiocese as metropolitan between 1930 and 1994. Between 1235 and 1802, the bishop of Hildesheim was Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, his Hochstift was the Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim. In the 16th century, most of the diocese as well as most of the state of Hildesheim switched to protestantism, but the Bishopric managed to retain its independence from the surrounding protestant states of Brunswick-Lüneburg because its bishops were members of the powerful House of Wittelsbach from 1573 until 1761.
Until 1824 the diocesan ambit remained unchanged, despite various changes of the political borders in history up to this date. After the Napoleonic wars the newly established Kingdom of Hanover stipulated with the Holy See to extend the Hildesheim diocesan ambit to all of the Hanoverian territory east of the Weser river; the newly included areas were Lutheran with a little Catholic diaspora and had formed part of the defunct dioceses of Bremen, of Mainz and of Verden before the Reformation. Hannover's cession of land for Bremerhaven in 1827 to the prevailingly Reformed Bremen State did not alter the diocesan ambit. In 1834 the prevailingly Lutheran Duchy of Brunswick left the Apostolic Vicariate of Anhalt and agreed to extend Hildesheim's ambit to the ducal territory, thus the diocese covered areas in three sovereign states, with all of which and thus all the diocesan area becoming part of united Germany in 1871. The incorporation of Hanoverian suburbs into Bremen city in 1939 did not alter the ambit.
In 1965 Hildesheim ceded that part of the Hoya County District east of the Weser to the diocese of Osnabrück, whereas Osnabrück in return ceded Cuxhaven, Scharhörn, Schaumburg-Lippe, as well as parts of the districts of Verden, Hameln-Pyrmont located west of the Weser, the quarters of Nienburg upon Weser west of the river to Hildesheim. In 1995 Hildesheim ceded its Harburg deanery in Hamburg south of the Elbe to the Archdiocese of Hamburg following the erection of this new see. Dietmar † Magnus Herzog von Sachsen-Lauenburg † Bernhard Herzog von Braunschweig-Lüneburg † Ernst Graf von Schaumberg † Henning von Haus † Berthold II of Landsberg † Erich Herzog von Sachsen-Lauenburg † John IV of Saxe-Lauenburg † Balthasar Merklin † Otto Graf von Schaumberg † Valentin von Tetleben † Friedrich Herzog von Schleswig-Holstein † Burchard Oberg † Ernst Herzog von Bayern † Ferdinand Herzog von Bayern † Max Heinrich Herzog von Bayern † Jobst Edmund Freiherr von Brabeck † Joseph Clemens Kajetan Herzog von Bayern † Clemens August Maria Herzog von Bayern † Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Westphalen † Franz Egon Freiherr von Fürstenberg † Karl Klemens Reichsfreiherr von Gruben † Godehard Joseph Osthaus † Franz Ferdinand Fritz, Benedictines † Jakob Joseph Wandt † Eduard Jakob Wedekin † Daniel Wilhelm Sommerwerk † Adolf Bertram † Joseph Ernst † Nikolaus Bares † Joseph Godehard Machens † Heinrich Maria Janssen † Josef Homeyer Norbert Trelle Heiner Wilmer Official site "Hildesheim".
Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2007-02-18
Paul Leopold Haffner
Paul Leopold Haffner was a German Roman Catholic clergyman. From 1866 until his death he served as Bishop of Mainz. Http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bhaffner.html
Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler
Freiherr Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler was a German theologian and politician who served as Bishop of Mainz. His social teachings became influential during the papacy of Leo XIII and his encyclical Rerum novarum. Ketteler was born in Münster in Westphalia. In 1828 he finished the Matura in Switzerland far away from his home, he studied theology at Göttingen, Berlin and Munich, was ordained priest in 1844. He resolved to consecrate his life to maintaining the cause of the freedom of the Church from the control of the State; this brought him into collision with the civil power, an attitude which he maintained throughout a stormy and eventful life. Ketteler was rather a man of action than a scholar, he first distinguished himself as the deputy for District of Tecklenburg and Warendorf at the Frankfurt National Assembly, a position to which he was elected in 1848, in which he soon became noted for his decision, foresight and eloquence. In 1850 he was made bishop of Mainz, by order of the Vatican, in preference to the celebrated Professor Leopold Schmidt, of Gießen, whose Liberal sentiments were not agreeable to the Papal party.
When elected, Ketteler refused to allow the students of theology in his diocese to attend lectures at Giessen, founded an opposition seminary in the diocese of Mainz itself. He founded religious institutes of School Brothers and School Sisters, to work in the various educational agencies he had called into existence, he labored to institute orphanages and rescue homes. In 1851, he founded the congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence, with Stephanie Amelia Starkenfels de la Roche, he died at Burghausen, Upper Bavaria in 1877. In Mainz, "Workers' Day" is celebrated in honor of the Bishop; the Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Mainz was built in the honour of Ketteler. The fuchsia cultivar "Baron de Ketteler" is named after him. Ketteler's nephew, Klemens von Ketteler, was Germany's envoy in China and was murdered during the Boxer Rebellion, he is cited in Pope Benedict's encyclical Deus caritas est for his role in the Catholic social tradition. In 1861, Ketteler published a book on reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Germany, Autorität, und Kirche.
Ketteler was friends with Julie von Massow, a Lutheran woman from Prussian nobility, who indeed founded such a prayer society. In 1858, Ketteler threw down the gauntlet against the State in his pamphlet on the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. In 1863 he adopted Lassalle's views, published his Die Arbeitfrage und das Christenthum; when the question of papal infallibility arose, he opposed the promulgation of the dogma on the ground that such promulgation was inopportune. But after the dogma was defined, he submitted to the decrees, he was the warmest opponent of the State in the Kulturkampf provoked by Prince Otto von Bismarck after the publication of the Vatican decrees, was instrumental in compelling that statesman to retract the pledge he had rashly given, never to "go to Canossa." To such an extent did Bishop von Ketteler carry his opposition, that in 1874 he forbade his clergy to take part in celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Sedan, declared the Rhine to be a "Catholic river."
Goyau, Georges. "Wilhelm Emmanuel, Baron von Ketteler". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. A Catholic View of the Economy: Excerpt from Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler’s “The Labor Question and Christianity”
Latin liturgical rites
Latin liturgical rites, or Western liturgical rites, are Latin tradition Catholic liturgical rites employed by the Latin Church, the largest particular church sui iuris of the Catholic Church, that originated in Europe where the Latin language once dominated. Its language is now known as Ecclesiastical Latin; the most used rite is the Roman Rite. The Latin rites were for many centuries no less numerous than the liturgical rites of the Eastern autonomous particular Churches, their number is now much reduced. In the aftermath of the Council of Trent, in 1568 and 1570 Pope Pius V suppressed the Breviaries and Missals that could not be shown to have an antiquity of at least two centuries. Many local rites that remained legitimate after this decree were abandoned voluntarily in the 19th century. In the second half of the 20th century, most of the religious orders that had a distinct liturgical rite chose to adopt in its place the Roman Rite as revised in accordance with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council.
A few such liturgical rites persist today for the celebration of Mass, since 1965-1970 in revised forms, but the distinct liturgical rites for celebrating the other sacraments have been completely abandoned. The Roman Rite is by far the most used. Like other liturgical rites, it developed with newer forms replacing the older, it underwent many changes in a half of its existence. The forms that Pope Pius V, as requested by the Council of Trent, established in the 1560s and 1570s underwent repeated minor variations in the centuries following; each new typical edition of the Roman Missal and of the other liturgical books superseded the previous one. The 20th century saw more profound changes. Pope Pius X radically altered the rubrics of the Mass.. Popes continued to make such changes, beginning with Pope Pius XII, who revised the Holy Week ceremonies and certain other aspects of the Roman Missal in 1955; the Second Vatican Council was followed by a general revision of the rites of all the Roman Rite sacraments, including the Eucharist.
As before, each new typical edition of an official liturgical book supersedes the previous one. Thus, the 1970 Roman Missal, which superseded the 1962 edition, was superseded by the edition of 1975; the 2002 edition in turn supersedes the 1975 edition both in Latin and, as official translations into each language appear in the vernacular languages. Under the terms of Summorum Pontificum by Pope Benedict XVI, the Mass of Paul VI is known as the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite; the Tridentine Mass, as in the 1962 Roman Missal, is still authorized for use as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite under the conditions indicated in the document Summorum Pontificum. The Ordinariate Use is a variation of the Roman Rite, rather than a unique rite itself. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist the Eucharistic Prayer, it is closest to other forms of the Roman Rite, while it differs more during the Liturgy of the Word and the Penitential Rite; the language used, which differs from that of the ICEL translation of the Roman Rite of Mass, is based upon the Book of Common Prayer written in the 16th century.
Prior to the establishment of the personal ordinariates, parishes in the United States were called "Anglican Use" and used the Book of Divine Worship, an adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Divine Worship has been replaced with the similar Divine Worship: The Missal for use in the ordinariates worldwide. Anglican liturgical rituals, whether those used in the ordinariates of the Catholic Church or in the various prayer books and missals of the Anglican Communion and other denominations trace their origin back to the Sarum Use, a variation of the Roman Rite used in England before introduction during the reign of Edward VI of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, following the break from the Roman church under the previous monarch Henry VIII. In the United States, under a Pastoral Provision in 1980, personal parishes were established that introduced adapted Anglican traditions to the Catholic Church from members' former Episcopal parishes; that provision permitted, as an exception and on a case by case basis, the ordination of married former Episcopal ministers as Catholic priests.
As personal parishes, these parishes were part of the local Roman Catholic diocese, but accepted as members any former Anglican who wished to make use of the provision. On 9 November 2009, Pope Benedict XVI established a worldwide provision for Anglicans who joined the church; this process set up personal ordinariates for former Anglicans and other persons entering the full communion of the Catholic Church. These ordinariates would be similar to dioceses. Parishes belonging to an ordinariate would not be part of the local diocese; these ordinariates are charged with maintaining the Anglican liturgical and pastoral traditions, they have full faculties to celebrate the Eucharist and the other sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical functions in accordance with the liturgical books proper to Anglican tradition, in revisions approved by the Holy See. This faculty does not exclude liturgical celebrations according to the Roman Rite; the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was set up for England and Wales on 15 January 2011, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter for the United States and Canada on 1 January 2012, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross for Australia on 15 June 2012.
As of 2017
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). 
