The Second annual Lepanto conference took place Saturday amid the Gothic splendor of St Vincent Ferrer church in New York. There were 700 people in the congregation for the Pontifical Mass; some 315 attended the conference itself. Thanks are due to Fr Walter C. Wagner OP, the pastor of St Vincent’s and to the Dominican order for hosting the conference.
The Most Reverend James Massa, auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn, celebrated Solemn Pontifical mass for St Pius V – the codifier of the Traditional Roman liturgy. Our dear contributor, Fr Richard Cipolla, of the Bridgeport diocese, was assistant priest. Rev. Mr Roger Kwan (Archdiocese of New York) served as deacon; Fr. Sean Connelly (Archdiocese of New York) was the subdeacon. William Riccio and Steve Quatela were the masters of ceremonies.
The following is the magnificent talk given by Father Cipolla during the Conference:
“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son
Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurtling
down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but
made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds.”So begins, in the
English translation by Robert Fagles, one of the seminal epic poems of Western
civilization, The Iliad.
The first book is called The Rage
of Achilles, Achilles, the son of a goddess, fierce, the ultimate war hero
and yet, in Fagles’ words in his
introduction to the Iliad, “imprisoned in a godlike, lonely, heroic fury from
which all the rest of the world is excluded.”
Achilles sits out most of the Iliad in rage against Agamemnon for taking
his concubine, Briseis. He returns to action, so to speak, only when his friend,
Patroclus, whom he loves so deeply, is killed and despoiled by the Trojan
Hector. And it is then that Achilles becomes the killing machine not so much
for the cause of the Greeks against the Trojans but rather because of his rage
against Hector, a hero in in his own right, for killing and despoiling
Patroclus. And in that terrible scene we
know so well, he kills Hector and drags his body around the walls of Troy three
times in uncontrollable fury. He rises
as a hero to avenge the death of his beloved Patroclus, and he is godlike in
his single mindedness to punish at all costs the one and those who have taken
away someone that he loved deeply.
Heroism as singlemindedness, as physical prowess in war, as exhibiting
passionate emotion, and heroism as knowing as well that one is doomed to death
by the botched attempt of a god to make him immortal.