September 15
1622: Father Camillo Constanzo undergoes a heroic martyrdom, at Hirado, Japan, witnessed by thousands.
1648: The British Parliament approves the Larger and the Shorter Catechisms – both prepared by the Westminster Assembly the previous year. They are in regular use among various Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists.
1801: Talleyrand and Monsignor Ercole Consalvi, both emissaries of Napoleon and Pope Pius VII respectively, sign a concordat restoring and reorganizing the Catholic Church in France but limiting its power.
1853: Antoinette L. Brown becomes pastor of the Congregational church in South Butler in her home state of New York, as the first woman to be formally ordained to the pastorate in the United States.
1855: Demise of James Chisholm, the Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Virginia, who had stayed to take care of the victims of yellow fever as most doctors fled. He succumbed to the disease himself after saving many.
1877: The Pacific Garden Mission, a movement which provides rescue services by addressing the physical and spiritual needs of the homeless and others, opens its rescue work in Chicago.
1912: Patriarch Mar Abdedmassiah consecrates Mar Ivanios at St. Mary’s Church, in Niranam, India, who takes the name Mar Baselios Paulose I and becomes the first Catholicose (Head) of the Malankara Church. The Orthodox Church of India thus becomes autocephalous (an independent church), after years of conflict with the Patriarch of Antioch.
1920: Pope Benedict XV publishes the encyclical “Spiritus paraclitus,” which restates the Catholic position on Scripture, “…the Bible, composed by men inspired by the Holy Spirit, has God himself as its principal author, the individual authors constituted as his live instruments. Their activity, however, ought not be described as automatic writing.”
1963: A racist attack with bombing kills four African-American girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
1966: The American Bible Society publishes the New Testament of its “Today’s English Version” (TEV), also known as “Good News for Modern Man,” marking the end of a two-year effort led by chief translator Robert G. Bratcher and his team.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org