Musings of a Pertinacious Papist

No crisis in the Church?

2012-01-27T21:19:00.004-05:00

Of course, it's only a Vanity Fair poll (conducted with a little help from CNN), but the results are all-too-predictably telling -- particularly the portion devoted to the following question:

So ... do we laugh or lament? See Voris' commentary HERE.

It's nice to see an endorsement of the Leonine Prayers after Mass

2012-01-25T21:18:00.007-05:00

"QUAERITUR: The Leonine Prayers after Mass in the Ordinary Form. Wherein Fr. Z rants" (WTPRS, January 25, 2012). I've always had a great love of certain of these prayers in particular.

Gov. Mitch Daniels' response to State of the Presidency address

2012-01-24T22:07:00.004-05:00

"Excerpts from Governor Mitch Daniels’ Republican Address to the Nation" (Speaker of the House John Boehner, January 24, 2012).

Related:

"State of the Union Address. Wherein Fr Z has dubitations" (WDTPRS, January 24, 2012).
"Worthy of public office, or not?" (WDTPRS, January 24, 2012)
"The future of Catholic hospitals" (WDTPRS, January 24, 2012).
"Robert George on Pres. Obama’s attacks on religious freedom and Catholics" (WDTPRS, January 24, 2012)

Tridentine Community News

2012-01-23T21:04:00.002-05:00

Tridentine Community News (January 22, 2012):

Next Tridentine Mass at Ss. Peter & Paul West Side

One week after the news that St. Hyacinth Church has decided to hold an additional Mass in the Extraordinary Form, Ss. Peter & Paul (west side), Detroit has announced that it will hold another Tridentine High Mass at 12:15 PM on Sunday, March 25, the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Lætáre Sunday). As with St. Hyacinth, your support of the first Mass there in December demonstrated that there is sufficient interest to continue scheduling Tridentine Masses. Additional Masses may be scheduled in the future if demand continues.

We ask your prayers for, and words of thanks to, the priests and people of Ss. Peter & Paul, St. Hyacinth, St. Albertus, and our own St. Joseph and Sweetest Heart of Mary, for hosting these periodic Masses. They are in the vanguard of the growing presence of the Extraordinary Form in ordinary parish life.

“Commemoration” of the Baptism of the Lord

A reader asked why the Feast on January 13 is entitled the “Commemoration” of the Baptism of the Lord, rather than just “The Baptism of the Lord”. Two observations might offer some insight:

First, the Proper Antiphons and Epistle of the Mass are the same as those of the Feast of the Epiphany. The Liber Usuális, the book of chants used by the cantor at the Tridentine Mass, does not even have an entry for the Mass of the Commemoration of the Baptism of the Lord; it is presumed that the user knows to turn to the Mass of the Epiphany. The Orations and Gospel of the Mass are those of the Mass of the Octave of the Epiphany, which was removed from the Calendar by Pope Pius XII as part of the 1955 revisions to the Missal; clearly the Epiphany remains the dominant theme. It would therefore not seem “proper”, as it were, to represent the Propers of this Mass as being something unique unto themselves. In effect, this is a commemoration of the historical event of the Baptism of the Lord during a partially repeated Mass of the Epiphany of the Lord.

Second, the Baptism of the Lord, along with the Wedding Feast at Cana, are actually incorporated into the Propers of the Second Vespers of Epiphany. These plus the visitation of the Magi provide the three main themes of the Feast of the Epiphany. This is reflected in the English Epiphany hymn, Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, whose lyrics address all three events. There does not seem to be a reason to separate entirely a concept that is already a part of the main Feast.

This scenario is also a reminder that there is more to the Propers of a given Feast than just those Propers used at Holy Mass. We must remember that the Divine Office contains its own Propers which ought to be considered when reflecting upon the theme of a particular Feast.

Titles Assigned to Saints

Every Saint in the calendar is assigned one or more titles. These titles are most frequently found in missals and listings of weekday Masses. For example, “St. John Chrysostom, Bishop, Confessor, & Doctor”. Let’s explore what these titles mean:

Bishop: Self-explanatory

Confessor [of the Faith]: A male champion of the Faith who has not been martyred. Effectively the catch-all term for male Saints not classified by another title.

Doctor [of the Church]: One who has made an important contribution to theology or doctrine

Holy Abbot: Superior of a monastery

Holy Woman: A female champion of the Faith. Can be used as a catch-all in the absence of another title.

Martyr: One who died for the Faith

Pope: Self-explanatory

Virgin: Only used for female Saints

The Propers (Readings, Orations [prayers], and Antiphons) for a given Saint’s Mass can range from being entirely unique, to being entirely generic, to being a mixture of unique and generic components.

The generic parts are taken from the Commons Masses. There are Commons Mass Propers for, for example, the “Common of a Martyr Bishop” the “Common of a Martyr Not a Bishop”, and the “Commons of Many Martyrs Not Bishops”. There are also Commons for the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin and for the Dedication of a Church. Some of the Commons are subdivided into ones to be used during certain liturgical seasons, such as “Common of a Martyr Not a Bishop – Outside Paschal Time”. Many Saints’ Feast Masses contain unique Collects or Readings but use the remainder of the Commons’ Propers. (Confused yet? We are.) Fortunately, no one needs to understand all of this fully, because hand missals and altar missals contain clear directions as to which parts of which Commons need to be used for a particular Feast.

Some Saints are given additional titles such as Widow, Priest, or Hermit, but those titles do not refer to specific Common Masses.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 01/23 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat ([Mandated] Votive Mass for Peace)

Tue. 01/24 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Timothy, Bishop & Martyr)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for January 22, 2012. Hat tip to A.B.]

For the record: Annual March for Life today in DC

2012-01-23T20:00:00.006-05:00

"Today – compare and contrast: National Catholic Register and National Catholic Reporter" (WDTPRS, Jan. 23, 2012):

The front page of the National Catholic Register is very focused on the Church’s prolife message.

Fishwrap? Zip.

At least not yet. They are probably preparing massive coverage for later in the day.

Right?

Still, it is after noon where I am and they have nothing.

Well, nothing, perhaps, until THIS.

Holy See does NOT approve NeoCat liturgy

2012-01-22T21:47:00.007-05:00

At first it seemed TO ME that the Vatican had approved the new liturgical forms of the Neocatechumenal movement. (See "Rite approved? Let us call it the New Liturgical Way," Rorate Caeli, January 20, 2010). However, I must have misread the closely-nuanced text.

One commentator declared, in fact: "The one good to be derived from this will be the wry amusement one can enjoy reading the conservatives defend this action." Which seemed to confirm MY initial impression that approval was granted to the NeoCat liturgical way, or at least whatever is not already under the governance of existing Vatican liturgical norms.

Fr. Z. immediately suggested, however, a cautionary note: "This didn’t sound to me like the thought of a Pope about to approve the NeoCat liturgy." He suggests that these are the "celebrations" to which the Pope in his address refers to as "not strictly liturgical," and which "are NOT, by their nature, already regulated by the liturgical books of the Church" (emphasis added).

Then, sure enough, reports out yesterday and today confirmed that my first impressions were mistaken:

"Vatican approval for Neo-Catechumenal Way only applies to non-liturgical catechesis" (CNA, January 21, 2012)
"The Holy See did NOT approve NeoCat liturgical variants for Mass" (WDTPRS, January 22, 2012).

In fact, this should have been clear all along from a more careful reading of Rorate Caeli's excellent-(as-always) post. I obviously missed the chief point amidst the nuance. My bad.

Update 1/23/12

"From his own mouth: how the founder of the Neocatechumenal Way interpreted the January 20 'approval'" (Rorate Caeli, January 23, 2012):
Exactly as our blog predicted a few days ago: the NCW will interpret the January 20 decree of the Pontifical Council of the Laity regarding their catechetical celebrations as a blanket approval of their doctrinal teachings and liturgical practices.
Read more >>

The smooth compelling urbanity of blue culture

2012-01-21T21:24:00.005-05:00

I spend more time than I like driving every day, which means I listen to a lot of radio. It's interesting to compare the discussions going on in different venues -- Catholic radio, National Public Radio (NPR), conservative talk radio of various stripe.

One thing I've noticed is that the sound of NPR is always smooth, polished, unhurried, articulate, and professional. If you didn't stop to listen to what was being said and analyze the underlying assumptions and commitments of those speaking, you might even get the impression that you were getting the unvarnished TRUTH.

Among the possible reasons for this, one may be that the station isn't littered with advertisements like other talk radio is. But that's not the only reason. There's an impressive professional tone to what's said that inspires not mere confidence, but a certain comfort.

I wouldn't be surprised if the NPR hosts had to be vetted on voice quality to make sure it's sufficiently hypnotic. It can lull the listener into a stupor of bland acceptance. "You will believe what we tell you ... These are THE FACTS ... This is the CORRECT way to think about things. Anybody with half a brain holds the opinions that we do ..." Etc.

In the faculty lounge of my institution this afternoon, I caught a bit of a University of Chicago panel discussion, which included a very polished lineup of mostly very BLUE panelists: Rahm Emanuel, David Brooks, Rachel Maddow, and Alex Castellanos (the lone Republican and media consultant). George Stephanopoulos served as moderator.

What struck me again was how seemingly reasonable these people can sound on the level of image and style. They were all quite charming, measured in tone, professional, pleasant overall. This contrasts to what you sometimes encounter on the other side, where the style can seem parochial, a bit pinched, if not judgmental and harsh.

In an age of connotative spin and image, it's not hard to see what is attractive about the blue message, because the medium (the style and spin) IS the message. It takes much more effort to probe beneath the surface of this superficial image and analyze the logic and premises of what is being said. In short, the media has largely gone blue, and the country is doomed. Or, we're doomed, at least to sound bites, edited video clips, and spin -- rather than propositions and arguments.

I haven't owned a television in decades and find the experience liberation. Liberate your mind and joint the Society for the Defenstration of Television Sets.

US Bishops call Pres. Obama’s attack “literally unconscionable”

2012-01-21T08:25:00.002-05:00

USCCB:

Unconscionable to force citizens to buy contraceptives against their will....

WASHINGTON—The Catholic bishops of the United States called “literally unconscionable” a decision by the Obama Administration to continue to demand that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans. Today’s announcement means that this mandate and its very narrow exemption will not change at all; instead there will only be a delay in enforcement against some employers.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Of such is the kingdom of heaven . . .

2012-01-18T18:44:00.002-05:00

Mark Wahlberg's Catholic faith, inspiring

2012-01-18T18:32:00.003-05:00

Billy Hallowell, "I 'Go to Church Every Day': Actor Mark Wahlberg Credits Faith for Turning His Life Around" (The Blaze, January 17, 2012):

Actor Mark Wahlberg likely surprised viewers when he appeared on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” last Friday to discuss a variety of issues — his faith, the importance of family, his work in the community and more.

For the record: preamble update

2012-01-18T06:45:00.001-05:00

Vaticanist Andrea Tornielli's source in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provides him the following information (published in today's La Stampa - translation by Vatican Insider, corrected according to the Italian original), from Rorate Caeli, January 17, 2012.

Trotskyite Republicans? Where are we headed?

2012-01-17T21:28:00.006-05:00

The apparent balkanization of the Republican party got me thinking about just how diverse are the views held under the political umbrella of that party. Using the familiar jargon of the popular media, there are the social conservatives, the fiscal conservatives, the evangelicals, the moderate conservatives, big government conservatives, libertarian conservatives, and about a dozen or two more variations and combinations among the rest of prospective voting blocks, ranging from Tea Party conservatives to moderate swing voters. There seem to be very few individuals any more capable of capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of the entire GOP voting block and really uniting it the way Ronald Reagan did, just as there seems to be nearly nobody anymore who can unite this deeply divided country of these "United" States.

Just how deeply this balkanization runs was driven home for me by a video clip by Sen. Ron Paul I recently discovered from May of last year in which he endeavors to expose the neocon agenda in American government by showing us what nocons really believe. The term "neocon," of course, is about as hard to pin down as "liberal" or "fundamentalist" these days; but what Sen. Paul means by it is the political movement whose descendants stem historically from left-wing Ashkenazi Jewish Trotskyites who now identify themselves explicitly as "neo-conservatives" and include the spiritual stepchildren of Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol, like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kegan, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey,Frank Gaffney, and others like Dick Cheney, William Bennett, Ronald Rumsfeld, and Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox New, The Wall Street Journal, and, I believe, the New York Post and Weekly Standard).

He mentions as key beliefs and assumptions of such neoconservatives: (1) Trotsky's historical tenet of permanent revolution, (2) redrawing the map of the Middle East, (3) pre-emptive war to achieve desired ends, (4) that the ends justify the means, (5) support for the welfare state, (6) American Empire-building, (7) the necessity of deceiving the public in the interest of the state's survival, (8) the necessity of a strong, centralized federal government, (9) the government by an 'elite', (10) opposition to American neutrality in foreign affairs, (11) reject libertarianism and constitutionalism, (12) the necessity of compromising civil liberties for security, as in the Patriot Act, (13) unconditional support for Israel and the Likud Party.

He mentions also the promotion of these ideas via the agenda of the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for a New American Century, as well as its parent organization, the Bradley Foundation. He mentions the (unwitting?) support for this neoconservative agenda, as well as for Israeli Zionism (usually for fundamentalist biblical-theological reasons) by various Christian Evangelicals and Fundamentalists.

You get the picture. None of this is really new, though it may be news to some. It has all been said by others before in various places, including Dale Vree, the former editor of New Oxford Review, in a December, 2005, editorial, "What is a Neoconservative? -- & Does It Matter?," who talked at some length about the ultra-Left Communist (Trotskyite) origins of modern American political neoconservatism. It has been said before by the likes of Jack Bernstein in "The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel" (1985), who, among other things, pointed out the radical racial discrimination between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Israel, the former of European descent, usually Zionists and often of Marxist orientation; the latter of Middle Eastern descent, religiously conservative, poor and persecuted. The agenda of American neoconservativism would be perceived as "friendly" by the Jewish Zionist movement, while there are other Jewish groups decidedly opposed to such an agenda, such as the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

None of this is surprising as such. What surprised me, however, is that it came from Sen. Ron Paul. But then, what did I know about Ron Paul? Next-to-nothing, except for what I've read and seen in the mainstream media and the public debates, where he hasn't been very impressive.

Like most everyone else, I see things I like and dislike in all of the Republican candidates. I like the fact that Sen. Santorum has a clear Catholic vision and can articulare an intelligent rationale for some of the Church's positions on social issues. I like some of the zingers launched by Speaker Newt Gingrich in his debates. I like the flat tax idea floated by Gov. Perry. I like the usual poise under pressure of Mr. Romney. I even like the occasional statement by Sen. Paul. But I'm not confident that any of these can unite the party, let alone the country, although I would just love to be pleasantly surprised. I am more-and-more confident, however, that the real winner in this election, like the last, will be the mainstream media; and while I hope it makes some difference which party occupies the presidential office, I'm no longer convinced that any candidate, once elected, can likely turn this country around, now that it's hit the greased skids to what looks like spiritual as well as socio-economic suicide.

Pray for detained, imprisoned clergy in China

2012-01-16T21:09:00.003-05:00

"Appeal to authorities for Chinese New Year: release of three bishops and of six priests who have disappeared" (WDTPRS, January 16, 2012).

Fr. Z. suggests praying a Memorare on their behalf.

400 men, standing ovation for Voris at "Testosterone Central" in MN

2012-01-16T20:04:00.011-05:00

Every month, several hundred Catholic men gather for an evening of "Muscular Catholicism" at the Argument of the Month Club, the Men's Forum for Catholic Apologetics, in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. The convocation may evoke congeries of ancient Scandinavian tribal Folkmoot gatherings of meaty Conan-the-Barbarian-type blond beasts emerging from saunas and sweat lodges amidst a cacophony of Shreckish grunts, but the facts are a bit more heart-warming. Have a look:

According to the above-linked website, whose feature article carries the banner: "Standing Ovation for Michael Voris on Tuesday, January 10th!":

Once again Michael Voris packed the AOTM hall with men ready to hear how to fight for the soul of Catholicism! He came out swinging and pulled no punches. His message was clear and spoken with passion for the Truth. That message of truth was received with a standing ovation! Four Hundred men standing and cheering for the Truth!

Related

"Masculinity and Catholicism" (January 17, 2012)
"Catholic Men and the Church" (January 18, 2012)

Weekday High Masses for 2012

2012-01-15T13:49:00.005-05:00

Tridentine Community News (January 15, 2012):

By popular request, we are publishing a list of all of the weekday High Masses that are intended to be offered at St. Josaphat Church in 2012. The list includes Masses already offered for completeness. This will be the fifth year in which St. Josaphat will offer High Masses on major Feast Days, including First and Second Class Feasts on which a Gloria and Credo are specified. A few Feasts that meet these criteria will be skipped, notably the Wednesday-Saturday Masses of the Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas Octaves. There will no Masses on the Ember Days, as was done on occasion in the past.

High Masses listed in bold will also be offered simultaneously at Windsor’s Assumption Church. Apart from Good Friday, All Souls Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day, weekday Tridentine Masses at Assumption are only held on Tuesdays. In addition to the listed days, Low Masses are held every Monday at St. Josaphat and every Tuesday at Assumption at 7:00 PM.

Monday-Friday High Masses will be held at 7:00 PM. Masses on Saturday will be held at either 9:30 AM or Noon, depending on the celebrant’s preference. Please check www.stjosaphatchurch.org or the preceding Sunday’s Tridentine Community News, usually posted first at www.windsorlatinmass.org, for confirmation of a particular week’s High Masses and a particular Saturday Mass time.
Mon. 01/02: Most Holy Name of Jesus
Fri. 01/06: Epiphany
Fri. 01/13: Commemoration of the Baptism of the Lord
Thu. 02/02: Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (including blessing of and procession with candles)
Wed. 02/22: Ash Wednesday
Sat. 02/25: St. Matthias, Apostle
Mon. 03/19: St. Joseph (likely to be held at St. Joseph Church instead of St. Josaphat)
Mon. 03/26: Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary [transferred from the usual 03/25]
Thu. 04/05: Holy Thursday at 7:00 PM
Fri. 04/06: Good Friday Liturgy at 1:30 PM at St. Josaphat and 5:30 PM at Assumption-Windsor
Sat. 04/07: Easter Vigil at 8:00 PM
Mon. 04/09: Easter Monday
Tue. 04/10: Easter Tuesday at Assumption-Windsor only
Wed. 04/25: St. Mark, Evangelist
Tue. 05/01: St. Joseph the Worker
Fri. 05/11: Ss. Philip & James, Apostles
Thu. 05/17: Ascension of the Lord
Mon. 05/28: Pentecost Monday
Tue. 05/29: Pentecost Tuesday at Assumption-Windsor only
Mon. 06/11: St. Barnabas, Apostle
Fri. 06/15: Sacred Heart of Jesus
Fri. 06/29: Ss. Peter & Paul, Apostles
Mon. 07/02: Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Wed. 07/25: St. James the Greater, Apostle
Thu. 07/26 or Sun. 07/29 [TBD]: Ste. Anne, Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Patroness of the Archdiocese of Detroit
Mon. 08/06: Transfiguration of the Lord
Wed. 08/15: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Wed. 08/22: Immaculate Heart of Mary
Fri. 08/24: St. Bartholomew, Apostle
Sat. 09/08: Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Fri. 09/14: Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Sat. 09/15: Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Fri. 09/21: St. Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist
Sat. 09/29: Dedication of St. Michael the Archangel
Thu. 10/11: Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Thu. 10/18: St. Luke, Evangelist
Thu. 11/01: All Saints
Fri. 11/02: All Souls [Low Masses at Side Altars at 6:00 PM; Solemn High Mass at High Altar at 7:00 PM]
Fri. 11/09: Dedication of the Archbasilica of Our Holy Savior
Fri. 11/30: St. Andrew, Apostle
Sat. 12/08: Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Fri. 12/21: St. Thomas, Apostle
Tue. 12/25: Christmas Midnight Mass at St. Joseph Church
Tue. 12/25: Christmas Day Mass at 9:30 AM at St. Josaphat, and at 2:00 PM at Assumption-Windsor
Wed. 12/26: St. Stephen, Protomartyr
Thu. 12/27: St. John, Apostle & Evangelist
Fri. 12/28: Holy Innocents
The availability of weekday Masses depends first and foremost upon the availability of a celebrant. For this reason we ask that you pray for our priests, and bring to our attention any priest who is interested in learning the Extraordinary Form by e-mailing the address at the bottom of this page. Weekday High Masses also depend upon the availability of an organist/cantor, sufficient altar servers to set up the church before Mass and clean up afterwards, and a parking lot guard at St. Josaphat. Should any of these elements fail to come through, a given weekday Mass might have to be cancelled.

Celebrants, organists, and guards are all paid for their services, plus heating up the church for Mass has a cost. We ask those of you who regularly attend weekday Masses kindly to take this into consideration when making your Sunday donations, as collections are not taken up at most weekday Masses.

Next Tridentine Mass at St. Hyacinth

The next Tridentine High Mass at St. Hyacinth Church will be held on Sunday, February 5 at 1:00 PM. Your support of the first Mass held there a few months ago was instrumental in the decision to hold this Mass. Additional Masses may be scheduled in the future if interest continues.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week
Mon. 01/16 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Marcellus I, Pope & Martyr)

Tue. 01/17 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Anthony, Abbott)

Sun. 01/22 Noon: High Mass at St. Albertus (Third Sunday After Epiphany)

Mershon reviews Cekada

2012-01-14T22:36:00.005-05:00

Last year Dom Alcuin Reid, OSB, reviewed Anthony Cekada's Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI (Philothea Press, 2010), 445 pp pb, as we noted last August in our post, "The elephant in the liturgical living room" (August 28, 2011).

Brian Mershon has just reviewed it, after reading it "multiple times," in RenewAmerica. Mershon says he highly recommends the book to those "who desire to understand in excruciating detail the theological reasons behind the rupture with liturgical and theological tradition caused by the use of this new rite of Mass for the past 40 years."

The book should provoke some healthy controversy where it's needed.

"Secular Theocracy"?

2012-01-14T22:33:00.002-05:00

David J. Theroux, "Secular Theocracy: The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny" (January 11, 2012), offers an interesting review of basic issues.

When priests have wives, or husbands . . .

2012-01-14T22:25:00.004-05:00

Fr. Longenecker, "The Vicarage Bedroom" (January 13, 2012), writes:

Some time ago a friend of mine (we'll call him James) who was once an Anglican vicar opined that the introduction of women priests had an unexpected consequence in the bedrooms of vicarages across the land. What made him think was the ad in a church paper for a new vicar for what had always been a conservative Evangelical parish. After stating what sort of person they were looking for the advertisers added, "Marital status not an issue."

In former times, my friend observed, this would have meant "We are willing to accept an unmarried man for the post." What it now means is "We're not going to ask any questions about the vicarage bedroom." Indeed, he knew of parishes in the Church of England with just about every permutation of modern "marriage" possible. Two men living together, two women, divorced and remarried people, single women with children, single men with children after divorce, men and women co inhabiting....you name it.

James said, "I think what happened when women were ordained is that a certain understanding about Christian marriage was also shattered.... Read more >>

[Hat tip to J.M.]

On Bethke: Does Jesus hate religion?

2012-01-14T08:57:00.004-05:00

Kevin DeYoung, "Does Jesus Hate Religion? Kinda, Sorta, Not Really" (The Gospel Coalition, January 12, 2012):

There’s a new You Tube video going viral and it’s about Jesus and religion.

Specifically how Jesus hates religion.

The video—which in a few days has gone from hundreds of views to thousands to millions—shows Jefferson Bethke, who lives in the Seattle area, delivering a well-crafted, sharply produced, spoken word poem. The point, according to Bethke, is “to highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion.”

Read more >>. Bethke's presentation is superficially powerful, and DeYoung's post offers some helpful insights into how a Catholic might want to respond -- points that a Catholic might be willing to learn from even a Reformed Protestant.

Related:

[Hat tips to JM & Fr. Z]

Ocáriz v. Gleize on V-II: What is "doctrinal continuity"?

2012-01-13T21:03:00.013-05:00

For any of you who haven't noticed, there is a very interesting and often quite serious and substantial debate that has been going on for some time over at Rorate Caeli over the question doctrinal continuity and Vatican II, occasioned by two articles by participants in the doctrinal discussions about Vatican II that took place in Rome between the CDF and SSPX from October 2009 to April 2011.

The first article, by Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz Braña, Vicar General of Holy Cross and Opus Dei (one of the Vatican representatives in the doctrinal talks with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X), was published in the December 2, 2011 issue of the official daily of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano, and is entitled "On adhesion to the Second Vatican Council."

The second article, by Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, professor of theology in the International Seminary of Saint Pius X in Écône, Switzerland (also a participant in the doctrinal discussions between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X), is a response to the former article published in Le Courrier de Rome (no. 350, décembre 2011), made available by DICI in English shortly before Christmas, 2011 (the full text, in Italian: "Una questione cruciale: il valore magisteriale del Concilio Vaticano II").

Those interested in the wider debate can garner a taste of the controversy by consulting the lively comments to the following two posts:

Msgr. Ocáriz, "On adhesion to the Second Vatican Council" (Rorate Caeli, December 1, 2011)
Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, "A Crucial Question" (Rorate Caeli, December 30, 2011)

Can academic conferences commemorating the Second Vatican Council in this 50th anniversary year expect to be taken seriously by turning a blind eye to the family of issues raised in the exchange between Ocáriz v. Gleize?

Related:

Another exchange, this one between Dominican Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli and Sì Sì No No, published HERE.

Bugnini's dream: Will pope approve Neocatechumenal liturgy?

2012-01-13T13:21:00.009-05:00

Sandro Magister's latest column, "'Placet' or 'Non placet?' The wager of Carmen and Kiko" (www.Chiesa, January 13, 2012), reports:

The founders of the Neocatechumenal Way aim to obtain definitive Vatican approval for their "convivial" way of celebrating the Mass. The document is ready. But it could be modified or blocked in extremis. The verdict on January 20.

As New Catholic points out in "Bugnini and the Neocatechumenal Way" (Rorate Caeli, January 13, 2012), Magister's report states that Annibale Bugnini, the architect of the Novus Ordo Missae in the 1960s, "congratulated himself over the way in which the first communities founded by Kiko and Carmen celebrated the Mass," pointing out that it was he, "together with the co-founders, who decided to call the newborn movement 'Neocatechumenal Way.'"

The question, of course, is whether the "NeoCat liturgy" will obtain papal approval. Does anything surprise one these days?

Update 1/22/2012

"Vatican approval for Neo-Catechumenal Way only applies to non-liturgical catechesis" (CNA, January 21, 2012)
"The Holy See did NOT approve NeoCat liturgical variants for Mass" (WDTPRS, January 22, 2012).

Will the EU repress Hungary as did the Warsaw Pact?

2012-01-13T13:04:00.005-05:00

An interesting comparison between the Warsaw Pact's intervention in Hungary in the 1950s and the EU's power-play to "ensure Hungary complies with European principles" -- doubtless animated by fear of Hungary's "terrifying" new constitution.

What, one cannot be too cautious these days, with the possibility that any of these EU member nations might see a recrudescence of incorrect medieval sentiments expressed in such "terrifying" utterances as: "God bless the Hungarians," or "We recognize the role of Christianity in preserving our nationhood." The very prospect conjures up nefarious memories of THE INQUISITION, if not THE CRUSADES!! Eeeeek!

Seminal history of Vatican II now in German

2012-01-12T19:36:00.005-05:00

Roberto de Mattei's groundbreaking book on the history of Vatican II, Il Concilio Vaticano II: una storia mai scritta (The Second Vatican Council – a never before written history), Turin, Lindau, 2010, is available in German - its first published translation, a wonderful gift for all your German-speaking friends, according to New Catholic, "Trickling Down" (Rorate Caeli, January 12, 2012).

He adds: "We hope it will soon become available in all major languages, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the last ecumenical Council."

The German title is: Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil: Eine bislang ungeschriebene Geschichte (Canisius-Werk, 2011).

Barak and Michelle's top 5 "let them eat cake" moments

2012-01-11T17:24:00.001-05:00

Patrick Hruby, in The Washington Times (Jan. 11, 2012).

SCOTUS unanimous decision upholding religious liberty, “ministerial exception”

2012-01-11T17:14:00.003-05:00

In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in decades, the Supreme Court of the United States today, by a unanimous decision, recognized a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination law, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference. (See NYT, and WDTPRS)

Cardinal George recants comparing Gay Pride to KKK

2012-01-09T21:47:00.002-05:00

As seen in these reports by The Washington Post (Jan. 9, 2012), Fox News (Jan. 6, 2012), and Catholic News Roundup (January 9, 2012).

For the record: Voris update (+updates)

2012-01-09T21:34:00.006-05:00

Prayers for Detroit (Vortex, January 9, 2012) -- official response from St. Michael's Media to the latest press releases from the Archdiocese of Detroit
"Archdiocesan canon lawyers differ on asking RealCatholicTV.com to drop ‘Catholic’ name" (LifeSiteNews.com, January 9, 2012)
Dr. Ed Peters, "Some thoughts on the ‘jurisdiction’ question in the AOD – Voris/RCTV matter" (In the Light of the Law, January 9, 2012)

As I've suggested in an earlier post on the subject, I have neither any reason nor competency for questioning the juridical reasoning of the Archdiocese of Detroit or its eminently capable canonist, Ed Peters. Yet I would also argue that non-canonical questions may be at issue here that are no less interesting and every bit as important, as I am sure Peters and others would concur.

This whole incident over Real Catholic TV could have an eminently salutary effect, it seems to me, if it became a vehicle for smoking out the really serious culprits, the dissembling dissenters and saboteurs of the Faith among the etiolated remnant of the church-going Catholics, whose thin, watered-down catechetical consommé has become the shallow puddle of our experience in too many regions of AmChurch today.

In this light, the call to prayer (and, I would add, penance), not only for Detroit but for the whole Roman Catholic Church, is certainly one that any faithful Catholic should welcome.

The Counts of Jesu Christo, Part II

2012-01-09T21:01:00.004-05:00

The Massacre of the Holy Innocents by Fra Angelico
By Michael P. Foley

This article is a companion to an article of the same name in the christmas 2008 issue of the Latin Mass.

It might seem odd to think of anyone else besides the Infant Jesus or the Holy Family during the octave of Our Lord’s Nativity, but the Church in her wisdom does precisely that. Immediately following Christmas Day are the feasts of several holy men and boys known as the comites Christi, “the comrades of Christ.” Comes not only means “companion” but it is also the Latin word for the noble title of count. As this would suggest, the comites Christi are somehow close to their Lord in the way that a royal entourage is close to its king. The Church acknowledges a spiritual intimacy by placing the feasts of certain saints close to that of the birthday of their Sovereign: the Byzantine rite, for example, pays special honor to the Princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, by celebrating their feast on December 28.

* * * * * * *
It might seem odd to think of anyone else besides the Infant Jesus or the Holy Family during the octave of Our Lord’s Nativity, but the Church in her wisdom does precisely that.

* * * * * * *
During the same week, the Western Church honors St. Stephen (December 26), the first martyr in both act and desire and hence the first to be honored after Christmas; St. John the Evangelist (December 27), the disciple closest to Christ during the Last Supper; the Holy Innocents (December 28), close to the Infant Jesus by their martyrdom; St. Thomas Becket (December 29), whose death at the hands of a Christian king on this day in 1170 so shocked Christendom that his feast day was given the privilege of remaining within the Christmas octave; and St. Sylvester (December 31), the Pope who lived to see the civic peace that followed the Roman persecutions and whose feast thus aptly gives voice to our prayers for the new civic year.

Three years ago, we looked at the feasts of two such counts, Saints Stephen the Proto-Martyr and John the Apostle.¹ This year we turn our attention to the rest of the Roman rite’s Christmas Camelot: the Holy Infants, St. Thomas Becket, and Pope St. Sylvester.

The Holy Innocents (December 28)

Herod, perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: “A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not” (Mt. 2:16-18).

St. Matthew’s chilling description of the massacre of Bethlehem’s baby boys does not indicate how many were killed in Herod’s effort to murder the Infant Jesus. The Byzantine liturgy mentions 14,000, the Syrian churches speak of 64,000, and some medieval authors, inspired by Revelation 14:3, speak of a staggering 144,000. Based on fertility rates and the size of the population of Bethlehem and its environs at the time, however, a more realistic estimate places the number of the slain somewhere between ten and twenty.

Matthew’s account is also silent about the date of the massacre, except for hinting that it happened within two years of the apparition of the Magis’ star. The Armenian feast day honoring the Holy Innocents falls on Monday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost in accordance with a belief that they were killed fifteen weeks after the nativity of our Lord. The Byzantine calendar has the feast on December 29, while the Syrian and Chaldean calendars have it on December 27.

The Church of Rome, from what we can tell, has always kept the feast of “Childermas” (Children’s Mass) on December 28, ever since it first began being celebrated there in the fifth century. In so doing, the Western Church presents an interesting array of Christly counts on December 26, 27, and 28: first St. Stephen, the Proto-Martyr who is martyr by will, love, and blood; then St. John the Evangelist, who is martyr by will and love (John is considered a martyr because of the attempts made on his life even though he died a natural death); and lastly, the Holy Innocents, who are martyrs by blood alone.

But if they are not martyrs by blood alone, how can they be martyrs at all? Isn’t a martyr someone who dies because he consciously professes faith in Christ? The very fact that the Church acknowledges the murder of these little ones as holy martyrdom is itself significant, as it tells us something about the nature of salvation and childhood. A child normally does not attain the use of reason until the age of seven, and even then he is under the care of his parents, who act as a kind of “surrogate reason,” helping him develop his rational faculties. Yet an infant, under the supervision of another surrogate (his godparents), may be baptized long before he has the ability to believe in the creed for the simple reason that just as he did not personally choose the curse of original sin with which he was born, so too need he not choose the cure of baptismal grace in order to be saved.

Similarly, the Holy Innocents did not choose martyrdom or even Christ, but this is not due to any failure on their part but to the undeveloped state of their minds. What matters here, as with baptism, is the action done to them. The fact that they died not only for Christ but instead of Him makes them flores martyrum, the “flowers of the martyrs.” As St. Augustine eloquently puts it: “They are the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution.”² The Breviary Hymn for the feast, Salvete Flores Martyrum, alludes to this botanical epithet, along with a touching portrayal of the Innocents playing with their symbols of martyrdom before the altar of God:

You, tender flock of lambs, we sing,
First victims slain for Christ your King:
Beside the very altar, gay
With palms and crowns, ye seem to play.

The Mass of Childermas

As this bittersweet image attests, even though martyrdom is a glorious event in which the Church rejoices, it is difficult not to be moved by the thought of helpless toddlers being cut down in the streets. The Church, therefore, taking heed of Matthew’s citation of “Rachel weeping for her children” from the prophet Jeremiah, assumed the role of a second Rachel and mourned for these little ones. Except for when the feast fell on a Sunday, violet was the liturgical color, and the Gloria and Alleluia were suppressed. In the early centuries, Roman Christians also abstained from meat on Holy Innocents’ Day. It was on the octave day of the feast (January 4) that the Church turned her thoughts to the young martyrs’ glory, the Mass being celebrated in red with the Gloria and Alleluia. In the 1950s, however, the octave was eliminated, and so currently in the 1962 calendar red is the color of Childermas, and the Gloria and Alleluia are used. The station church of the day, St. Paul Outside the Walls, was chosen because it is believed that it contains the bodies of several of the Holy Innocents.³

Massacred of the Holy Innocents (detail) by Reni Guido
* * * * * * *
But if they are not martyrs by blood alone, how can they be martyrs at all? Isn’t a martyr someone who dies because he consciously professes faith in Christ? The very fact that the Church acknowledges the murder of these little ones as holy martyrdom is itself significant.

* * * * * * *
Childermas Customs

The twelve days of Christmas are a time of “topsy-turvy” customs, where social ranks and pecking orders are inverted in giddy imitation of the grandest inversion of all, the fact that Almighty God humbled Himself to be born a man in a chilly and foul-smelling stable. Childermas is no exception. In many religious communities, the novices had the privilege of sitting at the head of the table at meals and meetings, while the last person who had taken vows in the monastery or convent got to be superior for a day. Young monks and nuns would received congratulations and have “baby food,” such as hot cereal, served to them for dinner.⁴

A similar flip-flop occurred in the family. Customs like decorating the crib or blessing the baby were standard ways of observing the feast, and the youngest child was allowed special privileges and honors, even becoming master of the household. Not all customs, however, bode well for the young ’uns. In some places, children awoke to a spanking from their parents “to remind them of the sufferings of the Innocents!”⁵ Lover of tradition though I be, I do not recommend resuscitating this particular observance. It does, however, serve as a useful reminder to spoiled children when they complain about not being treated as royally on this day as they would wish.

In the Philippines and Spanish-speaking countries, Childermas is the equivalent of April’s Fools Day, a time of pranks and practical jokes called inocentadas. And, of course, all of Christendom once abstained from servile work on this day—along with the other twelve days of Christmas.

St. Thomas Becket (December 29)

Thomas Becket was born on December 21, the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, in either 1118 or 1120. He became a trusted subordinate of Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who appointed him Archdeacon of Canterbury and eventually recommended to King Henry II that he be appointed Chancellor of England. Thomas and Henry became fast friends, sharing a commitment to hard work but also behaving in occasion “like two schoolboys at play.”⁶ Thomas acted vigorously in the interests of his monarch to the full extent of his conscience, but he disdained the licentious ways of his peers, hating “foul conduct or foul speech, lying or unchastity.”⁷ He also mentored the King’s son. The future Henry III later said that Becket showed him more love on the first day at his home than his father had in his entire life.

Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162 on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Some believe that his consecration is what eventually led to the placement of Trinity Sunday on the universal Roman calendar, since Becket procured permission for England to observe this feast as the anniversary of his archbishopric.⁸ The new Archbishop soon began defending the rights of the Church against the encroachment of the royal government. The most galvanizing issue was whether English clergymen were subject to ecclesiastical courts or the King’s. (In those days, as with our current practice of military courts, different segments of society were subject to different laws and magistracies.) Becket refused to budge, and the King eventually had him convicted of charges of malfeasance during his chancellorship. Thomas stormed out of the trial and fled to France, where he was protected by King Louis VII.

Death of Saint Thomas Becket by Meister Frnacke

* * * * * * *
Some believe that his consecration is what eventually led to the placement of Trinity Sunday on the universal Roman calendar, since Becket procured permission for England to observe this feast as the anniversary of his archbishopric.

* * * * * * *
Through the mediation of papal diplomacy, Becket returned to England in 1170. But the truce was not to last. Becket excommunicated three bishops when at the will of the King they crowned young Henry III at York, usurping a privilege reserved to Canterbury. Henry II, at the end of his wits, is then said to have retorted, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” There are several versions of what exactly he said, but whatever it was, it was interpreted by four of his knights as a command to kill the archbishop. The men left their weapons outside the cathedral, confronted Becket within and, after he refused to absolve the bishops, returned with their weapons.

They met up with Becket as he was approaching the sanctuary for Solemn Vespers and this time drew their swords. Unlike the stylized movie version, the assassination was gruesome. The eyewitness account from his faithful cross-bearer reports that the knights’ blows opened his skull, spilling his brains onto the pavement. The killers then exulted, saying, “Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more.” Thus, as a hymn in his honor puts it, St. Thomas became “both priest and sacrifice in the church of Canterbury for the sake of the laws of justice.”⁹

It did not take long for all of Europe to venerate Becket as a martyr, and within three years he was canonized a saint by the Pope. A year later, the King himself did penance and was scourged at Becket’s tomb. The shrine was the most popular pilgrimage site in the British Isles until Henry VIII’s thugs destroyed it and the saint’s bones in 1538. St. Thomas’ four murderers fled England and eventually sought forgiveness from Pope Alexander in Rome, who had excommunicated them. The Pope made their penance a term of fourteen years of service as crusaders in the Holy Land.

Legends and Customs

There are several colorful legends about St. Thomas Becket, most of which pay homage to his lovable gruffness. Becket purportedly gave tails to the inhabitants of Strood, Kent, after they sided with the King and cut off the tail of the archbishop’s horse as he rode through town.¹⁰ In Otford, Kent, the saint did not like the taste of the drinking water and struck his crosier on the ground to form what is now called “Becket’s Well.” Otford is also said to lack nightingales because one of them made a racket while Becket was trying to pray, prompting him to banish them from the town. But this does not mean that the saint hated the fowls of the air. On one occasion, a little bird that had been taught to speak escaped from its cage and flew into a field. A hawk swooped in for the kill, and as it was about to strike, the panicked bird cried out what it had heard others say in times of distress, “Saint Thomas, help!” The hawk was struck dead, and the bird escaped unharmed.¹¹

There are no universal customs on St. Thomas’ feast day, but it is not difficult to find ways of paying tribute to “England’s most vibrant flower,” as he has been called.¹² English food and ale are a good start, along with the 1964 film Becket starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. Based on a play by Jean Anouilh, the movie takes considerable liberties with the biographical details, starting with the fact that it portrays Becket, who was a descendant of the Normans, as a Saxon underdog. Nor was Becket a carousing and opportunistic nihilist prior to his elevation to the See of Canterbury, although he did become much more ascetical at that point, changing, as he once said, from being “a patron of actors and a follower of hounds to a shepherd of souls.” One sign of his transformation was a hair shirt that he wore under his archbishop’s garments (as was discovered by the monks who prepared his body for burial.) Still, the movie is a dramatic and psychological masterpiece, and it accurately portrays some of the challenges St. Thomas faced in his life.

Pope Saint Sylvester (December 31)

Saint Sylvester was Supreme Pontiff during the reign of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who ended the persecution of the Church and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. There are several legends connecting the Pope and the Emperor, though their historical value is dubious. According to one, Constantine was baptized on his death bed by Sylvester; according to another, the baptism took place earlier in his life, when he allegedly contracted leprosy. One memorable version of the legend states that Constantine was told that the only cure for leprosy was to bathe in the blood of 3,000 newborn infants. As the infants were being gathered, Constantine recoiled at this barbarity as incompatible with Roman dignity. That night, Sts. Peter and Paul appeared to him in a dream and told him to go to Pope Sylvester, who baptized and thus cured him in the basilica of St. John Lateran.¹³ Today, an inscription at the base of the obelisk outside the basilica records this legend.

Pope Saint Sylvester I photo by Nick Exsillo

* * * * * * *
Saint Sylvester was Supreme Pontiff during the reign of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who ended the persecution of the Church and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

* * * * * * *
What we do know is that during Sylvester’s pontificate Constantine built several of the great churches of Rome, not only the Lateran but Santa Croce, the original St. Peter’s, and a number of cemeterial churches over the graves of martyrs. The Pope no doubt collaborated with this effort, and he also sent legates to the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council in Church history. The first Roman martyrology was compiled during Sylvester’s papacy, and his name is associated with the “Roman school” of chant.

As mentioned above, there is something appropriate about issuing in the new civic year with the first Bishop of Rome to enjoy civic peace, when our hearts are filled with hope for “peace on earth.” But the reason for the feast day is more literal: after twenty one years of service to God as Pope, Sylvester was buried on December 31, 335.

Silvesterabend

Sylvester’s feast is so closely tied to December 31 that in many countries New Year’s Eve is simply known as “Silvester” or “Silvester Night” (silvesterabend or silvesternacht in German). In France and French Canada it was traditional for the father to bless the members of his family and for the children to thank their parents for all of their love and care.¹⁴ In central Europe, a pre-Christian ritual of scaring away demons with loud noises was retained; from this is derived our custom of fireworks and artillery salutes in welcome of the new year. In Austria, December 31 was sometimes called Rauchnacht or “Incense night,” when the paterfamilias of the family went through the house and barn purifying them with incense and holy water.¹⁵

And speaking of luck, Sylvester Night was a favorite occasion for attempts to peer into the upcoming year. The reading of tea leaves was once popular, as was pouring spoonfuls of molten lead into water and interpreting the future from the shapes it took. Young maidens prayed to St. Sylvester in traditional rhymes, asking him for a good husband and hoping through his intercession to catch a glimpse of Mr. Right in their dreams or in the reflection of a mirror.¹⁶

On the more pious side of things were vigil services of various kinds thanking God for the gifts of the year and seeking blessings for the new. To this day, Holy Mother Church grants a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, to a public recitation of the great Latin hymn of thanksgiving, the Te Deum, on the last day of the year. A partial indulgence, on the other hand, “is granted to those who recite the Te Deum in thanksgiving.”¹⁷

* * * * * * *
All of these ancient feasts speak in different ways to the Church today and the contemporary world. On Childermas, for example, some have begun to remember in their prayers the victims of abortion.

* * * * * * *
The Feast of St. Sylvester was also considered a good time to feed the body as well as the soul. In Spain and other Spanish-speaking areas it was considered good luck to eat twelve grapes at the twelve strokes of midnight. In Austria, krapfen, apricot-jam doughnuts, are traditionally eaten when the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve. In Poland, Poncz Sylwestrowy (“Sylvester’s Punch”), a strong rum mixture, was similarly imbibed.¹⁸

Conclusion

December 28, 29, and 31 celebrate a range of saints, from those who died thirty three years before the Crucifixion to those who died over 1,100 years after. Yet all of these ancient feasts speak in different ways to the Church today and the contemporary world. On Childermas, for example, some have begun to remember in their prayers the victims of abortion. Like their Bethlehem counterparts, the unborn now are innocents being slain by cruel Herods, but unlike the Holy Innocents they are bereft of the privilege of dying explicitly for Christ. Interestingly, there were once folk beliefs in German-speaking countries about some unbaptized babies going to Heaven on Childermas Day.¹⁹

Similarly, it would not be inappropriate to pray on St. Thomas’ Day for the return of the Church of England, and indeed of the entire English nation, to the Catholic Faith. Thomas gave his life to protect the Church from subordination to the Crown, as would another Thomas, St. Thomas More, four centuries later. In fact, More drew great consolation from knowing that he was to be executed on July 6, the day before another feast day honoring the brave Archbishop, the Feast of the Translation of the Relics of St. Thomas Becket. Let us pray that “Our Lady’s Dowry” re-embrace its ancient Faith and that Pope Benedict XVI’s generous provisions in his 2009 Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus be accepted.

Lastly, when St. Sylvester died he looked out on a world that no longer butchered Christians and was beginning to appropriate Christian morality in its laws and mores. Today we look at the photographic negative of that picture, as persecutions of Christians increase worldwide and Western society increasingly abandons its sacred heritage. As we celebrate in the octave of Christmas the Light that came into the world, let us pray that It dispel the shadows of our age and its global godlessness. St. Sylvester, help!

[Michael P. Foley, an associate professor of Patristics at Baylor University, is the author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday? The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites (Eerdmans, 2008).]

Notes

“The Counts of Jesu Christo,” TLM 17:5 (Advent/Christmas 2008), pp. 44-47. [back]

Augustine, Sermon 10 on the Saints. [back]

For more on station days, see my article, “Making the Stations: Stational Churches and the Spiritual Geography of the Roman Patrimony,” TLM 18:1 (Winter 2009), pp. 38-41. [back]

Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1958), 133. [back]

Joanna Bogle, A Book of Feasts and Seasons (Gracewing, 1992), 59. [back]

Herbert Thurston, “St. Thomas Becket,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912), , retrieved October 3, 2011. [back]

Thurston, ibid. [back]

Thurston, ibid. [back]

In templo Cantuariae/ Pro legibus justitiae/ Fit sacerdos et hostia, from the hymn, Pia Mater Plangat Ecclesia. [back]

“Thomas Becket,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket, retrieved October 3, 2011. [back]

From “The Translation of Saint Thomas of Canterbury,” in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend. [back]

Thomas totius Angliae/ Flos vernans, from the hymn, Pia Mater Plangat Ecclesia. [back]

From “The Life of Saint Silvester,” in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend. [back]

Weiser, Religious Customs in the Family (Liturgical Press, 1956), 62. [back]

Katherine Burton and Helmut Ripperger, Feast Day Cookbook (Catholic Authors Press, 1951/2005), 170. [back]

Weiser, Handbook, 139. [back]

Enchiridion of Indulgences, 60. [back]

For the recipes, see Evelyn Vitz, A Continual Feast (Ignatius Press, 1985), 158-59. [back]

See Weiser, Handbook, 133-34. [back]

[Michael P. Foley is associate professor of patristics at Baylor University. He is author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Foley's article, "The Counts of Jesu Christo -- Part 2,” Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 2011), pp. 44-48, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060. This article has been permanently archived at Scripture and Catholic Tradition.]

CDF pastoral recommendations for V-II anniversary

2012-01-07T13:17:00.005-05:00

Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, William Cardinal Levada, has issued a Note with pastoral recommendations for the Year of Faith:

"With the Apostolic Letter of 11 October 2011, Porta fidei, Pope Benedict XVI declared a Year of Faith. This year will begin on 11 October 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, and will conclude on 24 November 2013, the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King...." Read more >>

So ... we have a national Presidential election to contend with; and then this. I wonder, which will hold more surprises?

Criminal serving time with monks begs to be sent back to prison

2012-01-05T15:19:00.003-05:00

And they used to call them "hardened criminals" ...

"Criminal serving his sentence with monks pleads to be sent back to prison... because monastery life is too hard" (Mail Online, January 5, 2012):

Thief David Catalano, 31, was sent to a Santa Maria degli Angeli community run by Capuchin monks in Sicily last November.

But he found their austere lifetstyle too tough to handle and soon escaped. After a short while on the run he was caught by police and sent back.

On Monday he fled for the second time in six weeks, only to swiftly turn himself in at a police station and beg officers to send him back to jail in the nearby town of Nicosia.

He told the stunned policemen: 'Prison is better than being at that hostel run by monks.'

A police spokesman said: 'Catalano arrived out of the blue and said there was no way he could stay on with the monks.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Pray for the people of Los Angeles and for Archbp. Gomez.

2012-01-04T22:28:00.008-05:00

As Blogsville is already achatter over the resignation of LA's Aux. Bp. Most Rev. Gabino Zavala after two of his teenage children were discovered, I need say little about it. How very sad.

Pictured below is the Bishop with altar serves of the Campus Ministry Mount Saint Mary's College following the "Closing Liturgy" in a past edition of the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. [Source]

Fr. John Zuhlsdorff notes that Bp. Zavala also presided over the closing liturgy of the "Three Days of Darkness" Education Conference in LA a couple years back. Who could forget?

And, yes, Fr. Z also called this, back when it happened, "reason #65648 for Summorum Pontificum," be that as it may.

An apologia for the new Missal translation

2012-01-03T22:08:00.004-05:00

This from a commentator named "Spero" over at Rorate Caeli, a counter-point to the main post by Adfero:

Yes, the new translation will not fix the way the new Mass is said in most places. Yes, there are problems even in the Latin. However, as a recently ordained diocesan priest, I have to say that the new translation is not nothing. It may be nothing in terms of forcing an real end to the liturgical debacle. However, at our parish's small daily Masses, where we never have extraordinary ministers, where I rarely look up toward the people outside of the homily, where nothing is sung except the hymn I pick for the recessional, and at which I use the Roman Canon daily, omit the general intercessions, and always use the Confiteor and the entrance and communion antiphons, it has made a difference to me.

You are right, it has not changed the way I say Mass. I used the same "options" with the old translation. You are right, it is still the Novus Ordo with all the issues that that entails. However, I have found that sacrificial language of the new translation of the Roman Canon very edifying. I am able to say each day and my parishioners hear at each of my Masses, "and bless these gifts, these offerings the holy and unblemished sacrifices," "bless, acknowledge and approve this offering in every respect," "accept this oblation of our service," "we...offer to your glorious majesty...this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim, the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation; Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance and accept them...and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim." In addition, the orations are translated far more accurately. I have many times found orations which are identical to those found in the TLM. With the new translation it is much easier to preach on these texts. The old translation mangled them so badly that even where the Novus Ordo made us of traditional orations, the translation made them unrecognizable and often altered their theology.

So no, the new translation will not fix our liturgical crisis. Yes, most people will find the mess at their parishes to be more or less the same. However, the new translation is still not nothing. I became a diocesan priest, rather than joining the FSSP or another community (which I seriously considered), because I believe that this is where God is asking me to be. Being where I am, I have found the new translation to be a real help in making that best of a bizarre historical situation.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Voris update

2012-01-03T20:09:00.009-05:00

I've been given to understand that formally and canonically, the Archdiocese of Detroit is on firm ground in referencing Canon 216 of the Roman Catholic Church's current Code of Canon Law, which holds that “no undertaking is to claim the name 'Catholic'” without authorization. If Real Catholic TV dropped the word "Catholic" from its name, there would be no canonical ground for objecting to Voris' media presentations, no matter how people felt about their content.

Their content (as well as the opposition to it) is, of course, another matter with too many unknown quantities to hazard anything like a confident judgment at this point. Nevertheless, there are some obvious candidates for what might offend: Voris' bluntness -- for example, his willingness to directly call President Obama "evil" (because of Obama's support for abortion, courting of the homosexualist lobby, opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, and disregard for ethical positions of Catholic hospitals), or his ecumenically insensitive references to Protestantism as "heresy" (not even Belloc was willing to go that far in his book on The Great Heresies) or his willingness to call modern Judaism a "man-made religion" in the Catholic tradition of supersessionism (viewing the Church as the true spiritual Israel) -- views largely discarded in practice after Vatican II.

Some of you may remember my piece, "What's right and wrong with Michael Voris" (Musings, August 6, 2011), objecting to some all-too-superficial treatments of "Protestantism" without a nuanced appreciation of the significant differences between those traditions that may have at one time had valid (if illicit) orders, such as the Anglicans, and those that are so far removed from the sacramental tradition of the Church that they no longer even baptize or celebrate 'memorials' of the Lord's Supper, like the Quakers and membership of the Salvation Army. Further, Voris sometimes seems to lack an appreciation for the clear evidence of the life of the Holy Spirit and redemptively changed lives in some extra-ecclesial communions, such as those that produced the missionary movement of the former China Inland Mission and its yield of thousands of conversions to Christ, if not to the fullness of the Catholic Faith.

Still, I think it goes without saying that Voris' apostolate has an important place in the life of many faithful Catholics. His opposition to the "Catholicism-and-water" that prevails throughout the AmChurch world, with it's knee-jerk "we're-all-the-same-anyway" faux ecumenism, its all-too-easy accommodationism toward the culturally ascendant relativism in morals and all its "lies and falsehoods," is a breath of fresh realism for many Catholics. So, too, is Voris' appreciation of the invaluable treasures and resources that Catholic tradition has to offer.

While appreciating all of these positive features of Voris' apostolate, I see little problem with the technical canonical point that would prevent him from using the name "Catholic" without being granted permission from his local bishop. I see little problem, too, in admitting that it could be problematic to suppose that everything he says represents the official position of the Church, since some of his statements are simply too baldly unqualified. That, of course, is part of his popular appeal. His presentations often take the form of blistering jeremiads against hypocrisy and evil in high places. These are bound to offend; and those Catholic faithful, who have felt too long affronted by a discrepancy between word and deed among their leaders, quite likely feel at last a sense of vindication when this unrestrained Jeremiah stands up and calls it like he sees it, or, more-to-the-point, calls it like they see it.

The latest news, in any case, is that Real Catholic TV may be saved for the moment by a technicality of its own. According to CNA today:

... Voris maintains that Archbishop Vigneron is not the “competent ecclesiastical authority” over Real Catholic TV, which is owned by Indiana resident Marc Brammer.

“I don’t have ownership over the name of the organization. It’s not my organization. The headquarters are outside of the diocese,” Voris told LifeSiteNews in a Dec. 23 article. “It’s the wrong person, and the wrong outfit asking the wrong person the wrong question.”

Brammer told LifeSiteNews that “if all of a sudden now there’s this tussle over the use of the word 'Catholic,'” he would “deal with it through competent ecclesial authority.”

English Catholic converts who experienced V-II: reactionary cranks or prescient prophets?

2012-01-02T16:31:00.029-05:00

In his Foreword to A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes,Expanded Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), Joseph Pearce writes:

It is a singularly intriguing fact that the preconciliar Church was so effective in evangelizing modern culture, whereas the number of converts to the faith seemed to diminish in the sixties and seventies in direct proportion to the presence of the much-vaunted aggiornamento, the muddle-headed belief that the Church needed to be brought "up-to-date."

And the number of well-known literary converts from those pre-conciliar days is remarkable indeed. In the English-speaking world there were G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Dawson, Fr. Ronald Knox, Evelyn Waugh, Sheila Kay-Smith, Compton MacKenzie, Alfred Noyes, Hugh Ross Williamson, Sir Alec Guinness, and Malcolm Muggeridge -- not to mention, in the preceding generation, Cardinal Newman, Fr. F.W. Faber, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, to name a mere handful.

The numbers of well-known converts in Europe were equally impressive: Charles Péguy, Léon Bloy, François Mauriac, Henri Ghéon, Giovanni Papini, Gertrud von Le Fort, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Sigrid Undset, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Louis Bouyer -- not to mention the likes of Maria Alphonse Ratisbonne in the previous generation.

What is no less interesting about these converts is that most of them witnessed the liturgical experimentation and innovations leading up to the liturgical changes promulgated Second Vatican Council and were appalled by them. Nobody is more familiar with this fact than Joseph Pearce who built his career around this generation of English Catholic converts.

In his review of Joseph Pearce's wonderful book, Literary Converts(London : HarperCollins, 1999; rpt., San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), reprinted by Seattle Catholic (October 11, 2004) from The Latin Mass Magazine, Fr. Eugene Dougherty observes that Pearce's book has a special appeal for those who love the Church and the traditional Latin Mass. The subtitle of the book "Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief," he says, reinforced his own faith by affording him the company of authors with whom he grew up: G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Malcolm Muggeridge, and a host of others.

Fr. Dougherty's chief interest in these authors today, he says, is that many of them "experienced" the Second Vatican Council, and that their reaction was generally the same as the fifty prominent English authors who petitioned the Holy Father to preserve the traditional Mass. (Incidentally, the petition was presented to Pope Paul VI by John Carmel Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster in London. The story goes that it was the inclusion among the signatories of the non-Catholic mystery writer Agatha Christie, whom Pope Paul VI admired, which persuaded him to agree to what amounted to a unique national exemption from the Novus Ordo, which in fact came to be known as the Agatha Christie Indult.) These 20th-century converts were attracted to the Faith, says Dougherty, by "the very things that the leadership of the Church has now rejected, in the 'spirit' of Vatican II." He writes:

Malcolm Muggeridge, we are told by biographer Joseph Pearce, "could not (at first) bring himself to be a Roman Catholic. The reason centered on his dislike of the changes instigated by the Second Vatican Council. To Muggeridge, the "spirit of Vatican II was destroying Christendom: "Catholicism, he declared, was seeking to reproduce all the "follies and fatuities of Protestantism," and he would not climb aboard a sinking ship.

Ronald Knox, who died in 1957, did not witness the Council, but he was aware of the coming destruction of the liturgy. He spoke of the liturgical reformers as "a strange alliance between archaeologists absorbed in their speculations on the rites of the second century, and modernists who wish to give the Church the character of our deplorable epoch." On one occasion someone requested him to use the vernacular in the baptismal rite. His response was, "The baby doesn't understand English and the Devil knows Latin."(emphasis added)

In the following précis of Literary Converts, Fr. Dougherty limits himself to those converts who lived long enough to witness the Council, allowing them to speak in their own voices:

On behalf of these converts to the Catholic faith from Protestantism, Evelyn Waugh asked Cardinal Heenan:
Why were we led out of the church of our childhood to find the Church of our own adoption assuming the very forms we disliked?
Christopher Dawson:
[There is] ... a philistine and patronizing attitude to Baroque Catholicism expressed by certain "modern" Catholics.
Hugh Ross Williamson:
The changes [are] echoing everything that was done at the Reformation... the Martyrs have died for nothing.
David Jones:
One year they abolish the biretta, the next year they abolish the Mass.... I can't understand it all; they'll be pulling down Chartres Cathedral next.
Cecil Gill:
The vulgarization of the Mass.... One sighs for a Low Mass instead of this brash version of the sacred liturgy.
George Mackey Brown:
The vernacular has robbed the Mass of its majesty and mystery... so much of its glory has been sort of shed.... There was something very mysterious about the same language being used all over the world.
Robert Speaight:
The vernacular liturgy, popular and pedestrian, intelligible and distressing, has robbed us of much that was numinous in public worship; there is less emphasis on prayer and penitence, and the personal relationship between God and man... is neglected in favor of a diffused social concern.
Sir Alec Guinness:
Much water has flown under the Tiber's bridges, carrying away splendor and mystery from Rome since the pontificate of Pius XII... [T]he banalities and translations which have ousted the sonorous Latin and Greek are of a supermarket quality which is quite unacceptable. Hand shaking and embarrassed smiles or smirks have replaced the older courtesies; kneeling is out, queuing is in, and the general tone is like BBC radio broadcast for tiny tots....
Cardinal Heenan:
If the Church is to remain truly the Catholic Church it is essential to keep a universal language.
Christopher Dawson:
The existence of a common liturgical language of some kind is a sign of the Church's mission to reverse the curse of Babel and to create a body of unity between the peoples.

Fr. Dougherty concludes:

At the present time the Holy Father is proposing both Pope Pius IX and Pope John XXIII for canonization. Pius IX, a conservative, convoked the First Vatican Council; John XXIII, a liberal, convoked the Second - which Evelyn Waugh and our other literary converts considered "a betrayal of the principles of Pio Nono," a surrender to modernism with the "home improvements" that the Council proposed.

How can we reconcile these two opposites? Was the spirit of Vatican II the work of the Heilige Geist (the Holy Ghost), or the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the times)? Literary Converts answers the question.

Are these the sentiments of reactionary cranks or prescient prophets? Perhaps neither. Yet there are some remarkable agreements that may be noted. The Oxford Declaration on Liturgy (1996) asserted that ". . . the preconciliar liturgical movement as well as the manifest intentions of Sacrosanctum Concilium have in large part been frustrated by powerful contrary forces, which could be described as bureaucratic, philistine and secularist..

Again, a year before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his Preface to Alcuin Reid's The Organic Development of the Liturgy(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005) that those who, like himself, were moved on the even of the Council by the perception of the liturgy "as a living network of tradition" that awaited sensitive pruning by scholarly experts in order to properly flourish "can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for." (p. 11)

Yet again, in The Feast of Faith(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "Today we might ask: Is there a Latin Rite at all any more? Certainly there is no awareness of it. To most people the liturgy seems to be rather something for the individual congregation to arrange." (p. 84)

Reactionary cranks or prescient prophets? Or neither? You decide. What's your verdict?

New Hungarian constitution: "terrifying"

2012-01-02T14:53:00.005-05:00

New Catholic reports that the new Constitution [Fundamental Law] of Hungary went into force yesterday, and must be considered terrifying, considering the international media coverage it has garnered. Accordingly, he takes a look at its most distressing aspects:

[Preamble:]

God bless the Hungarians
...
We are proud that our king Saint Stephen built the Hungarian State on solid ground and made our country a part of Christian Europe one thousand years ago.
...
We recognise the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood. We value the various religious traditions of our country.
...
We do not recognise the suspension of our historical constitution due to foreign occupations. We deny any statute of limitations for the inhuman crimes committed against the Hungarian nation and its citizens under the National Socialist and Communist dictatorships.

We do not recognise the Communist constitution of 1949, since it was the basis for tyrannical rule; therefore we proclaim it to be invalid.
...
Article I
(1) Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman established by voluntary decision, and the family as the basis of the nation’s survival.
(2) Hungary shall encourage the commitment to have children.
...
FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
...
Article II
Human dignity shall be inviolable. Every human being shall have the right to life and human dignity; embryonic and foetal life shall be subject to protection from the moment of conception.

For the record: links on the Neocatechumenal Way

2012-01-02T10:05:00.002-05:00

Sandro Magister, "Bad History, Bad Guide. The Strange Liturgy of the Neocatechumenals" (www.chiesa, January 24, 2005)
"The Neocatechumenal Way sits for the Lord and says: 'We don't care, we already obey!'" (Rorate Caeli, January 6, 2006)
"How the Neocatechumenal Way defended their liturgy in 2004" (Rorate Caeli, January 2, 2012)

Chicago Church Tour to Break New Ground: First Public Tridentine Mass at St. Mary of the Angels

2011-12-31T12:14:00.006-05:00

Tridentine Community News (December 25, 2011):

King of the bus tours Michael Semaan has outdone himself this time. Not only has he put together a riveting two-day tour of ten of Chicago’s most famous historic churches on Thursday and Friday, December 29-30, he has also secured permission for Extraordinary Form Masses to be celebrated in two of them.

One of North America’s best-renowned churches for reverent celebrations of Holy Mass in both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms, St. John Cantius Church is known as a source of Latin Mass tutorial materials. The ubiquitous Red Missals were originally designed for this parish. More recently, they published Michel Ozorak’s book of Chant Sheets. Mass [was] celebrated there on Thursday, December 29 at 1:15 PM.

On Friday, December 30 at 10:00 AM, the first public Tridentine Mass in over 40 years [was] celebrated at the stunning St. Mary of the Angels Church, currently administered by priests of Opus Dei [below photo © 2009, Jeremy Atherton]. Originally threatened with demolition, St. Mary enjoyed a renaissance in the 1990s and has been restored to its original opulent appearance.

Both Masses [were] celebrated by Detroit’s own Fr. Titus Kieninger, ORC. Music [was] provided by Detroit’s St. Joseph Cappella. St. Josaphat and Windsor’s Assumption Churches [provided] the altar servers. It [was] a great privilege for our Detroit Latin Mass team to be a part of this memorable event.

[Two tour buses were taken from Metro Detroit. Both Masses were open to the public.]

A Hidden Gem: The Rosary Chapel at Windsor’s Assumption Church

It’s not all that unusual for a parish to have a secondary chapel for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Few parishes, however, have a chapel as distinctive as the historic Rosary Chapel at Assumption Church.

Seating approximately 70 people, the Rosary Chapel is used for Morning Prayer, weekday Mass in the Ordinary Form, and Eucharistic Adoration. Built in 1907 and restored a decade ago, it sports a High Altar, a Communion Rail, magnificent stained glass, and that rarest of features in an historic church, air conditioning. Despite its small size, it contains three confessionals. Though it lacks an organ, its live and reverberant acoustics make an excellent setting for a cappella music. Because of two recent events in the main church, the Tridentine Mass has been held in the Rosary Chapel twice over the past month, a different but inspiring experience. Visitors to Assumption should make a point to stop in to the chapel to see another one of our region’s architectural marvels.

Tridentine Masses This Week

Mon. 12/26 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Stephen, Deacon & Protomartyr)

Tue. 12/27 7:00 PM: High Mass at both Assumption-Windsor and St. Josaphat (St. John, Apostle & Evangelist)

Wed. 12/28 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Holy Innocents)

AOD: Michael Voris not "authorized" to use "Catholic"

2011-12-23T20:09:00.003-05:00

Archdiocese of Detroit says Michael Voris and RealCatholicTV.com are not “authorized” to use “Catholic” (WDTPRS, December 23, 2011).

Fr. John Zuhlsdorff writes:

For your opportune knowledge.

This comes from the website of the Archdiocese of Detroit. You can decide for yourselves what you want to do with this information.
Statement regarding Real Catholic TV and its name Issued: Dec. 15, 2011Contact: Joe Kohn, infodesk@aod.org / (313) 237-5943 Print this statement (Español)

The Church encourages the Christian faithful to promote or sustain a variety of apostolic undertakings but, nevertheless, prohibits any such undertaking from claiming the name Catholic without the consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority (see canon 216 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law). For some time, the Archdiocese of Detroit has been in communication with Mr. Michael Voris and his media partner at Real Catholic TV regarding their prominent use of the word “Catholic” in identifying and promoting their public activities disseminated from the enterprise’s production facility in Ferndale, Michigan. The Archdiocese has informed Mr. Voris and Real Catholic TV, RealCatholicTV.com, that it does not regard them as being authorized to use the word “Catholic” to identify or promote their public activities. Questions about this matter may be directed to the Archdiocese of Detroit, Department of Communications.

Fr. Z. adds: "You may also like - APNews: "Catholic bloggers aim to purse dissenters"

9 months later, we remember . . .

2011-12-23T13:23:00.002-05:00

As always, I continue to be moved not only by the great resiliency of the Japanese people, but by their great courtesy in always remembering to thank those who have showed them kindness. Very moving. Please join me in remembering them in your prayers.

"By now, pay later" gone to seed

2011-12-23T08:32:00.002-05:00

Drudge Report ran a banner beginning yesterday, which reads:

"Happy Holidays: USA DEBT NOW $15,123,841,000,000!"

So shop till you drop, eh? He who dies with the most debt wins? Out of sight, out of mind? Does anyone imagine that we shall be able to continue thus indefinitely without eventually running smack into the brick wall of reality?

Congress Banned from Saying 'Merry Christmas'

2011-12-22T17:01:00.002-05:00

The Franking Commission has banned House of Representative members from saying "Merry Christmas" in emails or tweets. The Commission statement put Congressmen (yes, that's inclusive for those of you who live in Pelosiland) on notice for possible House ethics violation should they disregard the ban. The statement reads: "Currently, incidental use of the phrase Happy Holidays is permissible, but Merry Christmas is not."

Merry Christmas everyone -- all TWELVE days!

Some Catholics still fast before Christmas

2011-12-22T16:52:00.002-05:00

Believe-it-or-not! And it's apparently still the custom in some European countries to fast and have fish on Christmas Eve.

Hobbit trailer

2011-12-22T08:26:00.002-05:00

For those of us who loved the cinematic version of Lord of the Rings, it looks like Peter Jackson has done it again! Coming December 2012 ...

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Plantinga against materialistic naturalism

2011-12-22T07:59:00.009-05:00

I'm not sure there couldn't be a non-materialistic form of naturalism, but Plantinga's argument against the materialistic variety, presupposed by most proponents of Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, is an interesting one: he argues (as posted yesterday at Philosophia Perennis) that it's incoherent.

The video is misleadingly entitled "Prof Alvin Plantinga on Reasons for God," because he doesn't really give any reasons, let alone argument. I think it's perfectly true, as he often avers, that the theist is within his epistemic rights to believe in God even in the absence of rational arguments, just as we often find ourselves reasonably believing all sorts of things we cannot prove, such as the reliability of our memories, sense experience, self-perception, being awake rather than dreaming, and even such curious things as the falseness of Bertrand Russell's hypothetical proposition that the world popped into existence five minutes ago with all the appearance it has had since then of great antiquity. But it's not a demonstrative argument, as much as it is a reasonable testament to common epistemic experience.

St. Thomas Aquinas himself says in his Summa Theologiae, Q. II, Art. 2, ad 1:

The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated.

Nope, nothing wrong with simply believing in God because one finds himself believing in God; and this needn't be seen as a form of fideism or "blind believe-ism" provided one does not close the door to reasoning about it.

Related:

Here's a related clip with a more extensive development of Plantinga's argument against materialistic naturalism: "ATHEIST DOGMA™ DEBUNKS ITSELF."
See also Plantinga's Evolutionary argument against naturalism (Wikipedia)

Latina reviviscunt!

2011-12-21T17:30:00.001-05:00

Charlotte Hays, "Latin Makes a Comeback" (National Catholic Register, December 21, 2011):

While Patrick Owens, a Latin instructor at Wyoming Catholic College, climbed to the summit of East Temple Peak last fall with a group of his students, not a word of English was spoken. The hike was sponsored as part of the college’s Latin-immersion program.

Standing near the summit, Owens recalled, “It suddenly hit me that we were surveying the grandeur of God and speaking Latin.”

This emphasis on Latin at the six-year-old Wyoming Catholic, where students read and discuss classical and Christian authors entirely in Latin, appears to be one indication of an emerging trend: an upswing of interest in Latin among Catholics. But it is far from being the only sign.

21 December – O Oriens and Solstice day

2011-12-21T08:56:00.007-05:00

We are all desperately in need of light, the Light of the World.

The Magnificat antiophons used at Vespers of the last seven days of Advent in the Catholic tradition each refer to an attribute of Christ mentioned in Scripture:

December 17: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
December 18: O Adonai (O Lord)
December 19: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
December 20: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
December 21: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
December 22: O Rex Gentium (O King of the nations)
December 23: O Emmanuel (O With Us is God)

These are commonly known as the "O antiphons."

The O antiphon for today is "O Oriens," which is variously translated "O dayspring," "O morning star," or "O dawn of the east." Fr. Zuhlsdorf writes:

LATIN: O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol iustitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis.

ENGLISH: O dawn of the east, brightness of light eternal, and sun of justice: come, and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Scripture Reference:

Luke 1:78, 79
Malachi 4:2

Relevant verse of Veni, Veni Emmanuel:

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer,
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

What is the reasoning behind this O antiphon? Fr. Z observes:

We are all desperately in need of a Savior, a Redeemer who is capable of ransoming from the darkness of our sins and from the blinding and numbing wound of ignorance from which we all suffer. In their terrible Fall, our First Parents inflicted grave wounds in the souls of every person who would live after them, except of course – by an act of singular grace – the Mother of God. Our wills are damaged. Our intellect is clouded. In Christ we have the Truth, the sure foundation of what is lasting. All else, apart from Him fails and fades into dark obscurity. He brings clarity and light back to our souls when we are baptized or when we return to Him through the sacrament of penance.

At Holy Mass of the ancient Church, Christians would face “East”, at least symbolically, so that they could greet the Coming of the Savior, both in the consecration of the bread and wine and in the expectation of the glorious return of the King of Glory. They turned to the rising sun who is Justice Itself, whose light will lay bare the truth of our every word, thought and deed in the Final Day.

This is the Solstice day, for the Northern Hemisphere the day which provides us with the least daylight of the year. From this point onward in the globe’s majestic arc about the sun, we of the north, benefit from increasing warmth and illumination. It is as if God in His Wisdom, provided within the framework of the cosmos object lessons by which we might come to grasp something of His good plan for our salvation.

Let us turn to the LIGHT, repent our evil ways and habits, and grasp onto Christ in His Holy Church, for as we read in Scripture:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.”

SSPX updates

2011-12-21T08:47:00.002-05:00

"Response to Doctrinal Preamble delivered" (Rorate Caeli, December 20, 2011):
The response of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX) to the Doctrinal Preamble presented by Cardinal Levada on September 14 was officially delivered on December 10. This information was recently made known to the District Superiors of that fraternity.

The Doctrinal Preamble was a "temporary" proposal; the Superior General of the SSPX made known in his interview of late November and in his sermon of December 8 his views on the Preamble.

(Source: Fecit Forum.)
"Really, Tornielli?..." (Rorate Caeli, December 21, 2011):
La Stampa's vaticanist Andrea Tornielli writes today that the SSPX response to the Doctrinal Preamble of the Holy See (which we mentioned yesterday) has surprised some in the Vatican:
A document has now arrived, but it was not what it was expected in the Vatican, because it consists in - the sources explain - "documentation", not a response. In short, Bp. Fellay seems to wish to take his time, postpone the decision, avoiding to speak in one sense or another, or to ask for clarifications and eventual modifications of the text proposed by the Holy See.
This is what Tornielli's Vatican sources say, and it seems plausible....

4th week of Advent: "ineffable Word"

2011-12-20T20:38:00.005-05:00

Today's collect:

Deus, aeterna maiestas, cuius ineffabile Verbum,
Angelo nuntiante, Virgo immaculata suscepit,
et, domus divinitatis effecta, Santi Spiritus luce repletur,
quaesumus, ut nos, eius exemplo,
voluntati tuae humiliter adhaerere valeamus.

Literal version (courtesy of Fr. Z.)

O God, eternal majesty, whose ineffable Word,
received by the Immaculate Virgin as the angel was announcing,
and, having been made the house of divinity, was filled with the light of the Holy Spirit,
we implore, that we, by her example,
may be able to cleave humbly to Your will.

"Last Days of Advent: 20 December – 'ineffable Word'" (WDTPRS, December 20, 2011)

Unbelievable rot in the Dutch Church that led the V-II "Rhine reforms"

2011-12-18T20:14:00.007-05:00

"Now we know in great detail just what much of the hierarchy of the Dutch Church - one of the national Churches that led the Universal Church in the run-up to Vatican II and in the implementation of the Conciliar reforms - was up to in the decades following World War II, before the Council, and after it: systematic abuse, cover-up in an almost unbelievable scale, spiritual death," writes Rorate Caeli in "The Church that led the Vatican II "Rhine reforms" was rotten" (December 16, 2011).

Citing reports from the Deetman Commission and Radio Netherlands (12/16/2011), Rorate Caeli summarizes: "This was the Church of 'The Dutch Catechism', the 'Church of the future', the Church that introduced Communion in the hand, wild liturgies, the newly-invented 'Eucharistic prayers' that were not the Canon that the Roman Rite had always known: it was the avant-garde Church that led the Council Fathers to the glorious springtime that would follow."

The Quandary of Personal Parishes – Part 3 of 3 Ghetto or Paradise? Personal Parish Compromises and Their Repercussions

2011-12-18T17:07:00.005-05:00

Tridentine Community News (December 18, 2011):

In a number of dioceses, the Personal Parish is one of few, if not the sole location for traditional liturgy. That doesn’t mean it’s liturgical paradise. For every St. Francis de Sales Oratory, St. Louis’ grand, Gothic Personal Parish, there is a Christ the King Church, Sarasota, Florida’s new Personal Parish housed in a small edifice that would disappoint readers of this column who are accustomed to our stunning historic churches (see www.livemass.net). The element of the vertical may be lacking; there might be no bell tower or pipe organ; the sanctuary might be cramped. If the edifice is lacking, its appeal will be limited to some extent. How can a world-class music program be established in a small church with poor acoustics? The same choir that sounds impressive and has gained renown at Windsor’s Assumption Church sounds dead in Flint’s non-reverberant All Saints Church.

Is it better to be the sole occupants of a smaller, compromised Personal Parish church, or the shared occupants of a grand edifice? This writer’s opinion is the latter. Is a thriving Personal Parish in a compromised building better or worse than having the Extraordinary Form spread throughout a diocese, as it is here? Are we striving to create a liturgical paradise for ourselves, or to expose the maximum number of people in a region to the Traditional Liturgy?

To show how widespread the concept is, below we present a list of the Personal Parishes and sole-church-occupant Extraordinary Form Communities in North America of which we are aware:

1. Mater Misericórdiæ, Phoenix, AZ (FSSP)
2. St. Gianna, Tucson, AZ (ICRSP)
3. Holy Family, Vancouver, BC (FSSP)
4. St. Stephen the First Martyr, Sacramento, CA (FSSP)
5. St. Anne, San Diego, CA (FSSP)
6. Our Mother of Perpetual Help, Santa Clara, CA (ICRSP)
7. Immaculate Conception, Colorado Springs, CO (FSSP)
8. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Littleton, CO (FSSP)
9. Christ the King, Sarasota, FL (FSSP)
10. St. Francis de Sales, Mableton, GA (FSSP)
11. St. Joan of Arc, Coeur d’Alene, ID (FSSP)
12. Shrine of Christ the King, Chicago, IL (ICRSP)
13. St. Rose of Lima, Quincy, IL (FSSP)
14. St. Mary, Rockford, IL (ICRSP)
15. St. Philippine Duchesne, Kansas City, KS (FSSP)
16. St. John Vianney, Maple Hill, KS (FSSP)
17. Blessed John XXIII, Lansing, MI (Diocesan, in formation)
18. Ss. Gregory & Augustine, Creve Coeur, MO (Benedictines)
19. Old St. Patrick, Kansas City, MO (ICRSP)
20. St. Francis de Sales, St. Louis, MO (ICRSP)
21. St. Francis of Assisi, Lincoln, NE (FSSP)
22. Immaculate Conception, Omaha, NE (FSSP)
23. Mater Ecclésiæ, Berlin, NJ (Diocesan)
24. St. Anthony of Padua, West Orange, NJ (ICRSP)
25. Holy Family, Dayton, OH (FSSP)
26. Queen of the Holy Rosary, Vienna, OH (FSSP)
27. St. Clement, Ottawa, ON (FSSP)
28. Queen of Angels Oratory, St. Catharine’s, ON (FSSP)
29. St. Damien, Edmond, OK (FSSP)
30. St. Peter, Tulsa, OK (FSSP)
31. St. Michael, Scranton, PA (FSSP) [the only inverse Personal Parish – it hosts an Ordinary Form Mass on Saturday only!]
32. Mater Dei, Irving, TX (FSSP)
33. St. Joseph the Worker, Tyler, TX (FSSP)
34. St. Benedict, Chesapeake, VA (FSSP)
35. St. Joseph, Richmond, VA (FSSP)
36. North American Martyrs, Seattle, WA (FSSP)
37. St. Joseph, Green Bay, WI (ICRSP)
38. St. Stanislaus, Milwaukee, WI (ICRSP)
39. St. Mary, Wausau, WI (ICRSP)

The FSSP and ICRSP are remarkable groups, without a doubt. Their selectiveness allows them to admit and train the best of the best candidates for the sacred priesthood. They bring a certain cachet to a parish: for instance, St. Margaret Mary Parish in Oakland, California had long offered a Sunday Tridentine Mass celebrated by diocesan clergy. When the ICRSP arrived – it was a shared-parish arrangement, not a Personal Parish – their “celebrity value” and implementation of weekday Masses caused Sunday attendance to increase from approximately 130 to 300. That would not necessarily happen in our area, however, as Oakland had no other Tridentine Mass sites in close proximity. The FSSP is also known for starting and administering parish schools. If a school is a long-term goal, St. Hyacinth and even St. Albertus are candidates, though the latter’s needs major restoration work. St. Josaphat’s property cannot accommodate a school.

It is this writer’s belief that a Personal Parish would not be economically sustainable in the Archdiocese of Detroit under present conditions. If sharing a parish continued to be the goal, the ICRSP would have to be excluded; they do not want that kind of arrangement any longer. Even the FSSP is not as willing to enter into those sorts of arrangements as they used to be, though their arm might be twistable in a large Archdiocese like Detroit. A shared apostolate for an FSSP priest, serving multiple regional Tridentine Communities, is almost certainly viable. Discussions over the advantages of diocesan vs. FSSP clergy aside, considering the FSSP might be unavoidable should availability of celebrants decline. In other dioceses, the FSSP has offered a trial arrangement over a few months to determine what the actual demand would be. We also have a handful of diocesan clergy who might be interested in a full-time, multi-site Tridentine apostolate.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 12/19 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Greater Feria of Advent)

Tue. 12/20 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Rosary Chapel at Assumption-Windsor (Greater Feria of Advent)

Wed. 12/21 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Thomas, Apostle)

Sun. 12/25 Midnight: High Mass at St. Joseph

Sun. 12/25 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat

Sun. 12/25 2:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor

[Comments? Please e-mail info@windsorlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.windsorlatinmass.org/latin/tnews.htm. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the Windsor Assumption Catholic Church bulletin insert for December 18, 2011. Hat tip to A.B.]

New Pentecost or dying of the light?

2011-12-17T08:50:00.005-05:00

It has been a while, perhaps, since we've heard those odious windbags of optimism yodeling those hopeful, ebullient exclamations about the "new springtime" and "new Pentecost" of the Church, although I think we should not be surprised to hear a return to such language in the soon-to-be-celebrated 50th anniversary of Vatican II.

What I sometimes feel is missing in the Catholic pew-sitter's experience is a sense of robust realism. No, scratch that. Replace with: "sense of any reality at all." Across the Atlantic, the Catholic Church is practically dead, except for a few fringe pockets here or there. Certainly it is no longer a culture-formative force, or perhaps even a notable "influence."

In the United States, the current administration has utterly no compunctions about ignoring statements by the Catholic hierarchy. The "Camelot" of the Kennedy and post-Kennedy years is long gone. And archdiocese after archdiocese is busy closing down churches and schools, because there are simply not enough Catholics any longer to support them. (Link: "Lean but not mean")

"Wisdom in God's Country"

2011-12-13T20:33:00.002-05:00

Build it, and they will come.

Côme de Prévigny on Monsignor Ocáriz and the problem of Conciliar "doctrinal innovations"

2011-12-12T22:12:00.008-05:00

Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz Braña, Vicar General of Holy Cross and Opus Dei (also one of the Vatican representatives in the doctrinal talks with the SSPX), writes, in "On Adhesion to the Second Vatican Council" (L'Osservatore, Romano, December 2, 2011):

A number of innovations of a doctrinal nature are to be found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council: on the sacramental nature of the episcopate, on episcopal collegiality, on religious freedom, etc. These innovations in matters concerning faith or morals, not proposed with a definitive act, still require religious submission of intellect and will, even though some of them were and still are the object of controversy with regard to their continuity with earlier magisterial teaching, or their compatibility with the tradition." (emphasis added)

Some of the commentary on this particular passage of the article (in the post linked above) has been remarkably illuminating if only to show how unresolvedly muddled some of the underlying assumptions may be (see in particular the comments by John Lamont).

In France, some observers have apparently decided to see in the intervention of Monsignor Ocáriz a "scathing response to Bp. Fellay." Côme de Prévigny points out in his brief response, however, that the implications flow in an unexpected direction:

1. The author, though an undisputed expert on religious liberty, admits that Vatican II introduced doctrinal innovations, among which is religious liberty....

2. He affirms that the compatibility of these novelties with Tradition do not follow automatically, that they are subject to debate, that their connection with Tradition is the object of "controversy". The undisputable character of Vatican II, in its more innovative lines, suffers an irremediable blow.

3. Mgr. Ocáriz shows, in this article, that this controversy is allowed, and he implies that it takes place within the Roman Church. He makes clearly known that to think that religious liberty and collegiality are in rupture with Catholic Tradition is allowed within the Church.

This text marks a turnaround because it introduces in the conciliar edifice, through the opinion of a great expert, a leaven of the destruction of innovative ideas, which cannot but place young theologians back into the hands of traditional doctrine.

Yet another response, much more substantial, is found in Italian by Mons. Gherardini, entitled "Mons. Gherardini sull’importanza e i limiti del Magistero autentico" (Disputationes Theologicae, December 7, 2011); English translation: "Msgr. Gherardini: Vatican II is not a super-dogma: The importance and the limits of the authentic Magisterium" (Rorate Caeli, December 12, 2011).

All just in time for the forthcoming 50th anniversary celebrations of Vatican II!

Catholic Star Trek: blogging where no one has blogged before

2011-12-12T19:07:00.004-05:00

You gotta see this, over at The American Catholic. It's hilarious. Read more >>

[Hat tip to C.B.]

The Quandary of Personal Parishes – Part 2 of 3: To Share or Not to Share

2011-12-11T22:09:00.006-05:00

Tridentine Community News (December 11, 2011):

Today we continue our discussion of the pros and cons of Personal Parishes for the Extraordinary Form. In 1988 and the immediately subsequent years following their formation, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) and Institute of Christ the King (ICRSP) were more interested in gaining a foothold in North America than in establishing parishes of their own. The early years consisted largely of their priests commuting about, celebrating Tridentine Masses for communities that shared parish facilities with Ordinary Form congregations. The need existed because of a lack of available, interested local clergy.

As time went on and an increasing number of diocesan and religious order priests learned the Tridentine Mass, the FSSP, ICRSP, and similar groups refocused their efforts on administering communities or parishes exclusively dedicated to the Extraordinary Form. The usual term for such an arrangement is a “Personal Parish”, signifying that the parish in question is non-territorial and created to serve a particular “personal” need of the diocesan bishop. Sometimes the term “oratory” is used for the same purpose. Canonically, an oratory is a non-territorial parish, not to be confused with a church run by the Oratorian Fathers, such as the Oxford or London Oratories.

Financial Realities

On the surface, a Personal Parish might look like a good thing. No worries about set-up and take-down of the church to switch between Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms, presumably fewer parish politics, greater freedom to conform the parish schedule to Tridentine events. Peel the skin off the onion, however, and other challenges raise their heads, finances being Issue #1.

Consider St. Josaphat: The Novus Ordo Community deserves our deepest gratitude for preserving and sustaining the parish before the Tridentine Community arrived in 2004. Their ongoing monthly fundraising dinners have for years provided key revenue that kept the parish solvent and out of debt. Today, however, the Ordinary Form Community could not financially sustain St. Josaphat on its own. Neither can the Tridentine Community, despite its higher attendance and higher offertory collections. It’s approximately a 50/50 arrangement financially; we need each other. Until the Tridentine Community can at least double its financial contributions, the notion of turning St. Josaphat into a Personal Parish for the Extraordinary Form is not viable. Sharing a parish is the only current practical option, unless a priest and cost-sharing venture with another Tridentine Community can be established. The priest sharing concept has been discussed with the Flint and Windsor Tridentine Communities, and a joint budget has been drawn up, but the idea can go nowhere unless the Archdiocese of Detroit indicates interest in such an arrangement.

The financial impediment to a Personal Parish is in large part due to the fact that metropolitan Detroit and Windsor now have so many churches offering the Extraordinary Form. We’re not Pittsburgh, which has the largest EF Personal Parish attendance-wise in North America; that parish also happens to be the sole Tridentine Mass site in the diocese. We’re not St. Louis, which has the second largest EF Personal Parish, but only two other, small EF sites in the region. Rather, here we enjoy 13 Tridentine Mass sites, plus four Novus Ordo Latin Mass sites, providing many options for those who prefer Latin Liturgy. Attendance is spread out across these numerous churches.

Though this column series does not directly deal with the Diocese of London, readers might be curious about Windsor’s Assumption Parish, too: Assumption is busier than most downtown Detroit churches, with numerous Masses and activities serving different constituencies. The Tridentine Community is the smallest of the several at the Parish. The Diocese has closed many smaller parishes in Windsor, thus it is unavoidable that the Windsor Tridentine Community will share a church with a larger Ordinary Form Community. The upside is that Assumption is, and will be over the long term, one of the best-preserved, most widely-supported historic Catholic churches in the area. It’s not going away; quite the contrary, it’s enjoying an unprecedented $9,800,000 capital campaign to restore the building and campus. The downside of such security is that the Tridentine Community is unlikely to experience significant growth given its 2:00 PM Sunday Mass time. A Personal Parish in Windsor is not economically feasible in the foreseeable future; Assumption’s Latin Mass Community runs very smoothly as is.

Rome’s Viewpoint

In the turbulent early days of St. Josaphat’s Tridentine Community, this writer sought the counsel of the Vatican’s Ecclesia Dei Commission. Perhaps the FSSP could make things run smoother and deal with then-unpleasant diocesan politics? The answer: A resounding “no.” We were told to overlook the inconveniences and realize that that there was a higher calling for our community: an opportunity if not a responsibility to expose and train diocesan clergy in the Tridentine Mass. Initial reaction: Aww, come on, that sounds like work! In retrospect, it was one of the wisest pieces of advice the Detroit and Windsor Tridentine Communities have ever received. We have trained over 30 priests on both sides of the border, providing a depth of celebrants that could not have been achieved had we had the comfort zone of a resident FSSP priest. Many of those celebrants have gone on to start Tridentine Mass sites of their own. Furthermore, the necessity of identifying, training, and scheduling celebrants has created a sense of urgency on the part of our volunteers that might not have been present in an FSSP operation. It has resulted in a drive to have the best music, the best vestments and altar supplies, the best trained altar servers, and so forth, all in a desire to render to almighty God the most perfect worship possible.

Next week we will survey the existing Personal Parishes.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 12/12 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria of Advent)

Tue. 12/13 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Lucy, Virgin & Martyr)

Fr. Z's rant on where seminarians learn the TLM

2011-12-11T13:17:00.007-05:00

Fr. Zuhlsdorff writes, in "QUAERITUR: Resources for seminarians to learn TLM on their own. Wherein Fr. Z rants" (WDTPRS, December 11, 2011):

During an ordination, someone must stand up in front of the ordaining bishop and attest that seminarians are properly formed and educated and suitable for ordination.

However, seminarians of the Latin Church are not being trained in the whole of the Roman Rite. According to the Church’s law, the Roman Rite has two forms. How many seminaries are training men also in the Extraordinary Form with adequate training, real training… not just an occasional Mass they get to watch. Furthermore, the Code of Canon Law requires that all seminarians be very well-trained in Latin (can. 249). Is that happening? Universae Ecclesiae reiterated this point. I also know of a document from the Congregation for Catholic Education which requires that there be a Patristic Theology component in the curriculum, not just the occasional reference in history or theology courses.

I think it is great, therefore, when – just as some of us did back in the day – seminarians are learning to row the boat all on their own.

From a seminarian:
I am wondering if you could recommend some sources for anyone interested in learning how to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass. I am a year and a half away from ordination to the priesthood and would like to be able to offer both forms down the road. Thanks and God Bless.
I would contact the Fraternity of St. Peter. They have a very good instructional DVD.

Also, the Canons of St. John Cantius in Chicago have a great page, online tutorials.

I know that both groups host workshops. Also, in England there are occasional workshops for seminarians and priests.

Fr. Z, "QUAERITUR: How to get Gregorian chant and a TLM in the parish" (WDTPRS,
Extraordinary! (Rorate Caeli, December 11, 2011):
This is not exactly a review, just a short note. After some time, it was at last possible for us to view the "Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite: An Instructional Video for Priests and Seminarians" DVD, produced by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), in all its details, angles, and taking a look at the different language settings, and it can be honestly said that there is nothing like it in instructional videos. The four different angles are extremely (extraordinarily?) useful for servers as well.

Note: the video was acquired by us, it was not sent as a gift. The DVD is available in the FSSP North America bookstore website, and it includes English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German audio options.

The other St. Francis

2011-12-06T21:52:00.003-05:00

December 3rd was the feast day of St. Francis Xavier, the Jesuit Saint, whom Fr. Hardon remembers in a worthy reflection here.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

A forgotten voice of English Catholicism

2011-12-06T21:28:00.005-05:00

A reader writes:

FASCINATING & MORE than a little depressing how many literary and articulate Christian voices from English Catholicism of the last century fell so completely and totally off the map of recognition that no one today remotely knows they ever existed. My candidate today for Rehabilitation:
C.C. MARTINDALE, crony of Mssrs. Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward.
Have been reading his essay on God in "God and the Supernatural," as well as his book "Faith of the Roman Church." Very good and relevant.

Also telling that in another lifetime America Magazine gave him such happy endorsement [See "Upon further review" (Some Wear Clerics, January 29, 2008). Today it wouldn't touch him -- nor likely he it -- with a bargepole!]

Father C. Martindale (1879-1963), a once renowned Jesuit author, scholar and Oxford philosopher, was born in London in 1879. After attending school at Harrow he became a Catholic and entered the Jesuit novitiate. He was ordained in 1911 and his priestly life has included teaching, much lecturing, travelling, and, of course, writing. One of his biographers says of him, "He has rebuilt Christian apologetics about the doctrines of the supernatural life and the Mystical Body." His books include The Vocation of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, The Mind of the Missal [see The Words of the Missal], Portuguese Pilgrimage, What Are Saints?Life of St. Camillus and many more.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

More 'gay' Catholic controversies

2011-12-06T21:08:00.002-05:00

Our HBCU correspondent we keep on retainer wired in the following email recently, with supplied links [Warning: reader advisory for explicit content]:

Somehow this focuses things far too uncomfortably clearly for me.

You can be a priest who is quite obviously gay, as long as you can parse words carefully when necessary if called on the carpet.

You can support the Democratic platform and ambiguously gay speakers and material fairly safely.

BUT if you say Satan is behind homosexuality, you get FIRED?

The reference is to Matt C. Abbot's column, "More 'gay' Catholic controversies" (RenewAmerica, November 23, 2011). Our correspondent continues:

That is all that I should say, but [to] lessen the pressure between my ears...

Mirus' referenced column is helpful, but also cringe-inducing since even he -- writing to conservatives -- has to tiptoe so delicately through the tulips in navigating political sensibilities connected with the practice if anal sex. Does anyone think we will make any headway if we are always apologizing before we even begin? We really need to stop and think: Flip Wilson got laughs for saying the Devil made him do it. In a Church setting today someone uses that line about a perversion, and gets fired?! The hierarchy is doing double-back flips over sensitivity issues when over half of their flock probably do not even now understand why gay sex IS a grave sin? It has been ALL OVER THE NEWS non-stop for two years. When is the last time we heard a clear talk on homosexuality as a sin, period, versus why gay marriage is a problem because, technically at least, marriage is between a man and a woman? The marriage issue pulls on people's "rights" buttons. I would fall off my chair if, in a session on gay marriage, someone just said,
"I am against gay marriage because I am against gay sex. It is unhealthy, immoral (yes!), and obv[iously] and on the face of it wildly against natural law. Just because someone has an urge does not mean they should or must fulfill it."
The zillion stories about men with several kids who later "come out" proves that lifestyle IS of course a choice as well as a mere inclination. People can and should control who they sleep with. Have we really gotten so sex-saturated we cannot even see *that*? Codifying homosex in marriage is wrong because it is a formalization and blessing of a behavior we should discourage, not institutionalize. And all the Oprahs, Ellens and Andersons in the world can't change that no matter how nice the may be.

That deafening silence of the Church on this is a pointed example of why the Vatican II mantra of "proposing, not imposing" -- when applied indiscriminately -- is disastrous and an example of saying "Peace, peace" when there is no peace. You have to wonder if folks like Bea, Sheed and company would have been so pleased with the openness and collegiality of the new Church or could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, where we are now in the Church and in the World.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

The pentatonic scale, Negro Spirituals, and Amazing Grace

2011-12-06T20:49:00.006-05:00

An interesting story about the alleged origin of the pentatonic scale used in Negro Spirituals, illustrated by black vocal artist Whitley Phipps:

[Hat tip to R.B.]

Larry: Vatican II means "no more Latin"

2011-12-06T19:30:00.003-05:00

And check out the 38 Responses to Videos for your amusement and edification at Fr. Z.'s.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Beyond the do-nothing "New Evangelization"

2011-12-06T19:26:00.003-05:00

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Signs of the times? Gag me.

2011-12-06T17:54:00.005-05:00

Today I stopped at the local post office to buy stamps -- Christmas stamps to mail Christmas cards to friends and relatives.

At the window, the lady presented the selection of Christmas stamps they had available. These included stamps with images of 1) abstract Christmas tree ornaments, 2) Kwanzaa, 3) Hanukkah, and 4) the Muslim holiday, Eid ul-Fitr, in ornamental Arabic.

I asked the lady what happened to the stamps of the Madonna and Child. She said she didn't know. She asked some of the other postal workers, but none knew anything about them.

I persisted: "Let me see, you're saying that these are your only selection of CHRISTMAS stamps?" She nodded. "... and this one is Christmas tree ornaments, that one commemorates an African-American celebration of dubious origin, this one a Jewish holiday, and the last one a Muslim holiday?"

She shrugged, and I walked away with stamps picturing the abstract Christmas tree ornaments.

Gag me.

Comic Larry & Sarah discuss ad orientem & Novus Ordo

2011-12-05T20:17:00.001-05:00

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

The Quandary of Personal Parishes – Part 1 of 3

2011-12-04T21:19:00.010-05:00

Tridentine Community News (December 4, 2011):

This week’s announcement from the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council of the Archdiocese of Detroit recommending possible further parish closures, merging, and clustering raises a number of questions for discussion. Of primary interest to readers of this column was the following statement:
“Sweetest Heart of Mary, St. Josaphat, and St Joseph should begin in February 2012 to develop a transition plan, to be submitted by June 2012, to eliminate 1 worship site and consolidate Mass schedules to conform to the archdiocesan policy of following Canon Law for a Priest to say no more than 3 Masses on a regular weekend.”
Without commenting on the pros and cons of making such a change, the particular rationale expressed is erroneous on two fronts:
Code of Canon Law Canon 905.2 states:
“If there is a shortage of priests, the local ordinary can allow priests to celebrate twice a day for a just cause, or if pastoral necessity requires it, even three times on Sundays and holy days of obligation.”
Thus, a priest is restricted to celebrating no more than three Masses per day, not per weekend. Think of the many parishes where a Saturday consists of a morning Mass, an afternoon wedding Mass, and an afternoon anticipated Sunday Mass. The same priest who celebrates three such Masses could not reasonably be expected not to celebrate a Mass the next day, Sunday, when multiple parish Masses might be scheduled.

There is a presumption that the pastor of our cluster is celebrating more than three Masses per weekend. One look at our cluster schedule would inform a reader that unless there is a wedding, it is physically impossible for our pastor to celebrate more than three Masses in the cluster on a weekend, because of the timing of the Masses in our three churches. The APC does not seem to realize that other priests are regular celebrants of our Masses. Indeed, all but one of the Sunday Tridentine Masses since July 1, 2011, the arrival date of Fr. Darrell, have been celebrated by priests other than our pastor.
Since the APC has opened the possibility of closing one of our worship sites on the basis of a perception of a shortage of priests, it is relevant to bring up two related subjects that have been on many of our readers’ minds for years: 1) The possibility of the Archdiocese of Detroit creating a Personal Parish for the Tridentine Mass, and 2) “Can the Fraternity of St. Peter help?”

Priests Are Available and Interested in Coming to the Archdiocese of Detroit

Surely one of the most positive developments in the Church in our age is the rapid growth of priestly communities devoted to the Extraordinary Form of Holy Mass. Since 1988, when such communities began to be founded, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), the Institute of Christ the King (ICRSP), the Institute of the Good Shepherd, and assorted others throughout the world have been growing as fast as they can construct or acquire seminaries and houses of formation to accommodate the flood of vocations coming their way. They need to promote vocations awareness about as much as the Super Bowl needs to advertise that tickets are on sale. The below chart from a recent FSSP mailing illustrates their staggering growth:

The FSSP is the fastest growing group. Others, like the ICRSP, intentionally restrict themselves to one seminary only, to give each seminarian exposure to the same instructors.

Since 2004, one formal and several informal discussions have been held between the Archdiocese of Detroit and the FSSP and ICRSP regarding sending a priest to help staff St. Josaphat. Both groups expressed interest, with the FSSP offering greater flexibility in options. While nothing came of the talks, the recent arrival of the SOLT order to assume responsibility for Detroit’s Holy Redeemer Parish demonstrates a welcome new openness to accepting outside priests. This writer recalls hearing on the Dialogue TV show or in the Michigan Catholic newspaper a few years ago that an African bishop offered to send priests to Detroit from the surplus that his diocese enjoyed, but Cardinal Maida declined because of challenges of inculturation. Interestingly, Old St. Mary’s Church now has an African pastor and has employed several African priests from the Holy Ghost Fathers over the years; inculturation is certainly possible. The point is that there are priests available to come to Detroit to make up for the shortage of diocesan clergy. Before taking as serious an action as closing a church, the Archdiocese would seem to be best served by exploring thoroughly the option of bringing in priests who are interested in coming here. Over the next two weeks, we will discuss the pros and cons of involving one of these groups of priests with the St. Josaphat Tridentine Community, and possibly the broader regional Extraordinary Form Mass scene.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 12/05 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria of Advent)

Tue. 12/06 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Nicholas, Bishop & Confessor)

Thu. 12/08 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Immaculate Conception – Holy Day of Obligation in the U.S.)

Sun. 12/04 12:15 PM: High Mass at Ss. Peter & Paul (west side) (Third Sunday of Advent – Gaudéte Sunday)

Archbishop of Westminster praises same-sex "Civil Partnerships"???

2011-11-30T20:39:00.005-05:00

Another case of idolatrous worship before the golden cow of political conformity with the trade winds of cultural fashion, I would suppose (here's the source) ...

... but 'New Catholic' draws on a Gaudium et Spes, 29, excerpt, which, he suggests, makes it also "A Vatican II moment in England" (Rorate Caeli, November 29, 2011).

SSPX update

2011-11-29T21:39:00.002-05:00

Via the Knights of Columbus' Headline Bistro comes this story (as of 8:48pm EST yesterday): "Interview with the SSPX Superior General: The Doctrinal Preamble" (Rorate Caeli, November 28, 2011).

New Ordinary Form Translation Debuts

2011-11-29T20:20:00.006-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 27, 2011):

[Last Sunday was] a major day for our fellow Catholics who follow the Ordinary Form of Holy Mass, as the new English translation of Mass is now mandated. Much has been debated about this translation, but in the end, it is an undeniably significant step forward in restoring sacral language to the Liturgy. The Confíteor, Glória, and Credo, among other parts, are more faithful to the original Latin text, which itself displays continuity with the Extraordinary Form. New Altar Missals place an emphasis on chanting parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, while the GIRM (rubrics) of the missal recommends use of the Proper Antiphons, until now rarely heard in the Ordinary Form. Those Catholics who attend the Tridentine Mass should find the new texts and rubrics closer to their preferences, while Catholics who normally attend the Ordinary Form will become more accustomed to the style of language which is used in the Extraordinary Form.

Recommended Books for Traditional Catholics

Over the years, this column has made mention of many books that might interest those who attend the Extraordinary Form. As Christmas approaches, it seemed beneficial to round up a list of books which might make good gifts. This list is purely subjective and represents the opinion of no one but this writer. Most of these books are issued by a small set of publishers; perhaps that is a comment on their good skills in creating or reprinting some excellent titles. Space prevents us from providing publishers’ and retailers’ addresses; please Google the names of the books in order to find vendors.

Hand Missals for the Extraordinary Form

A wide variety of hand missals are available. Of those which are in print, the Baronius Press Daily Missal 1962 and the Angelus Press 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal are the most up-to-date, with the former carrying an Imprimátur. Be sure to get the latest editions, which correct typos present in earlier editions. Also worth considering is the Marian Daily Missal, the most typographically accurate hand missal produced, and one filled with numerous devotional prayers: the 1958 edition has been reprinted by Loreto Publications.

General Prayer Books

Fr. Lasance’s Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook (Loreto Publications) is the most comprehensive traditional prayer book currently in print.

The 2006 Manual of Indulgences (USCCB Publishing), and the Latin book from which it was derived, the 2004 Enchirídion Indulgentiárum (www.paxbook.com), are the currently in-force lists of Indulgenced prayers and works. It cannot be overstated how important it is for Catholics to know about the opportunities for grace found in these acts.

The Purgatorian Manual (Loreto Publications) is a compact 300 page handbook featuring extensive devotions to the Holy Souls. The similar but thinner Novena for the Relief of the Poor Souls in Purgatory is available from JMJ Religious Books for only $1.25 [more at Amazon].

Holy Hour of Reparation (CMJ Books) can be used for public or private prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

The Divine Office and Little Offices

After several years of delays, Baronius Press is now promising that their long-awaited Latin-English Breviary will ship before Christmas. No other 1961 Breviary in print is as comprehensive as this edition, though the particular English translation used does not employ the hierarchical English typically found in hand missals.

Baronius’ 2011 (third) edition of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the most accurate rendition of the traditional version of this relatively brief Indulgenced Little Office.

The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception (with Explanation) (www.miqcenter.com) is a pocket-sized, inexpensive, very brief Indulgenced Office.

Spiritual Reading

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis is a classic. Few books condense as much common-sense spirituality into as few sentences as this one. Each chapter, though short, provides a tremendous amount of food for thought; this book is not meant for quick skimming. Two good editions exist: The hardcover edition from Catholic Book Publishing is a small and durable, modern but orthodox translation, while the hardcover and paperback editions from Baronius Press are larger and employ Bishop Challoner’s more traditional translation.

True Devotion to Mary a.k.a. True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by St. Louis de Montfort (Baronius Press) and My Daily Bread (Confraternity of the Precious Blood) are similarly meaty reading.

Hand Missal for the Ordinary Form

Readers seeking an updated hand missal for the Ordinary Form of Holy Mass need look no further than Midwest Theological Forum. Their Latin/English Daily Roman Missal is now out in a seventh edition incorporating the new English translations. A variety of cover styles and colors are available. This book is ideal for use at the various Novus Ordo Latin Masses celebrated around the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 11/28 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria of Advent)

Tue. 11/29 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Feria of Advent)

Wed. 11/30 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Andrew, Apostle)

Sun. 12/04 1:00 PM: High Mass at Rosary Chapel at Assumption-Windsor [Special time this Sunday only]

More Vatican tweaking, now on architecture

2011-11-28T21:01:00.002-05:00

"New Vatican commission cracks down on church architecture" (Vatican Insider, November 21, 2011).

As one writer put it: "Long time coming, but sorely needed."

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Another must-watch Nigel Farage broadside at EU Parliament

2011-11-21T20:27:00.003-05:00

You just gotta love this guy, who doesn't hold back from speaking his mind and telling the facts even at the cost of offending everyone in the chambers. I wish we had a few more like him.

[Hat tip to Cranmer]

Tridentine Travelogue: Minor Orders at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary Chapel

2011-11-20T21:09:00.003-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 20, 2011):

Many readers of this column are aware that Fr. Josef Bisig, the co-founder, founding Superior, and current Seminary Rector of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, has been a longtime friend of the Detroit, Windsor, and Flint Tridentine Mass Communities. He recently extended an invitation to visit the new chapel at the FSSP’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary near Lincoln, Nebraska on the occasion of the conferral of Minor Orders on 17 seminarians, one of whom happens to hail from Flint.

This writer attended the ceremony, celebrated by Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, Ontario. His Excellency has celebrated Solemn Pontifical Masses at the FSSP’s parish in Ottawa, St. Clement’s, and was clearly comfortable with the Extraordinary Form.

In seminaries structured primarily according to the Extraordinary Form, a seminarian first receives Tonsure, a formal commitment to study to the priesthood. Later he receives the Minor Orders of Porter and Lector; later, Exorcist and Acolyte; and later still, Subdeacon. Further on he receives the Major Order of Deacon, and finally is ordained Priest. This system of progression was explained in greater detail in the May 13, 2007 edition of this column, available on our web site.

One of the most selective seminaries in the world, OLGS accepts only a small fraction of its applicants. Seemingly perpetually under construction for over ten years to accommodate this influx of dedicated young men, OLGS’ year-old chapel is a rare example of new construction patterned on classic ideals. Elements of the vertical, a baldacchino over the high altar, choir stalls, and a communion rail all combine to create a beautiful atmosphere for the classic liturgy. Some aspects are not yet complete, for example the walls are relatively bare, and no stained glass windows are yet installed, but these can come as time and finances allow. One cannot help but notice that as other seminaries struggle to attract vocations, the FSSP and similar priestly communities dedicated to the Extraordinary Form have to turn them away. Surely there is a lesson in this continuing phenomenon.

A complete set of photos is available at www.flickr.com: Search for “FSSP Minor Orders 2011”.

Fr. Ross Bartley Celebrates First Sung Tridentine Mass

Congratulations are in order to Fr. Ross Bartley, former Assistant Pastor of Windsor’s Assumption Church and longtime proponent of the Extraordinary Form. On Sunday, November 6, Fr. Ross celebrated his first Missa Cantata at Assumption, only a few days after having celebrated a Low Mass in the Extraordinary Form elsewhere on the Feast of All Saints. Fr. Ross now serves as pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in Aylmer, Ontario. (Photo by James & Mary Cincurak)

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 11/21 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Tue. 11/22 7:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Cecilia, Virgin & Martyr)

Thanksgiving

2011-11-19T21:11:00.007-05:00

In addition to our Church traditions and liturgical seasons, there are secular traditions worth remembering for their original purpose and meaning. Some of these are being rapidly eclipsed, like everything else, by our consumerist culture that tends to overwhelm the psyche and erode long memories by its tyrannical volume and immediacy.

Lest we forget, during these post-Christian times, it bears repeating that our national Thanksgiving Day was established by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War by means of a Proclamation on October 3, 1863, which read, in part:

"It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people." (emphasis added)

I doubt you have heard recently or will hear anytime soon such an unreserved call to national prayer from the White House. Yet it does us good when we see where we stand today in our place in history, to see from whence we've come, and how far we've fallen into oblivion of our dependence upon God as a nation. "In God we trust" says our coinage. If only that were true! But if it's not true nationally, it can at least be true for those of us as a believing counterculture.

The traditional story of that September in 1620, when a small wooden ship called the Mayflower sailed from England with 102 passengers and came to the New World, may be a Protestant story. Yet it remains a Christian story of a faith, which, however crippled by wounds from earlier historical schisms, owes its life to parentage traceable to common Apostolic stock.

After sixty-five days at sea, those Pilgrims arrived in the New World, created a settlement and suffered through a bitter winter, whose freezing temperatures and diseases killed nearly half of their population. With the help of two English-speaking Indians, Samoset and Squanto, they planted crops of native corn and pumpkins and trapped and hunted game. By October of 1621, they were finally prepared to weather their second winter, which gave cause to their celebration of their first Thanksgiving Day with an impressive spread of venison, goose, lobster, vegetables, and assorted dried fruits, as well as roasted corn furnished by the Indians.

Let it be remembered, too, that they paused collectively to offer their thanks to God, who had so miraculously preserved them and blessed them with abundant stores and a new future and a hope. Let us as Catholics exhibit at least as much gratitude this year and thank God publicly for having preserved us yet another year, along with the freedoms we still enjoy, our families, our country, and our Church.

Two interpretations of the Novus-Novus Ordo

2011-11-19T12:06:00.006-05:00

Here is a tale of two contrasting interpretations of the NEW Roman Missal (now the 3rd edition of the Novus Ordo Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI four decades ago):

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, "Is the New Translation More Reverent?" (Standing on my Head, February 2, 2011)
Jeffrey A. Tucker, "Down to the Wire on New Missal" (New Liturgical Movement, November 15, 2011)

Both pieces make very good points.

The first, while appreciative of the improvements in translation, is doubtful that these changes alone will make Catholic worship more reverent. What is more important than the words, says Fr. Longenecker, is how the Mass is celebrated by both the priest and the people:

I am quite sure that when the new Mass is introduced that Fr. Folkmass will still celebrate Mass in his usual game show host style while other priests will celebrate the Mass casually and carelessly. Many Americans will still shuffle into Mass late wearing shorts and flip flops. Comfort hymns and crooners with hand held microphones will still lead the music and politically correct former nuns will still bully everyone into singing protest anthems instead of hymns.

Mass isn't reverent simply because you start using lofty language that 'sounds religious'. True reverence is the fruit of a condition of heart. Reverence in worship is a by product of a certain type of Catholic mindset. It is not the automatic product of a particular form of words.

This is why I am not that optimistic about the new translation making Catholic worship more reverent. To understand the irreverence in much Catholic worship we have to probe much deeper than the form of words we use for worship. Catholic worship is too often irreverent because Catholics (priests and people) have stopped really believing the Catholic faith.

I'm sorry to call a spade a spade, but far too many Catholics don't actually believe in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. They believe in the fellowship meal. They don't believe in transubstantiation. They believe in 'the real presence' (a vague and flexible term which can mean practically anything)....

The second piece is more hopeful and more detailed in its analysis. Tucker acknowledges that the new translation is "serious, solemn, dignified, and even a bit remote in the way that mysterious and awesome things really should be," and that the sentence formulations, unlike typical vernacular, are elevated without being affected. The language, however, is not the most significant part of the new Missal, he claims:

The biggest evidence of this change concerns the music. There is a long history in the Catholic Church of missteps in this regard. The people who produce the Missals don’t think much about the music question.... There is a tendency to focus on the words alone while forgetting that the Roman Rite really is a sung ritual and has been since the beginning.

The people involved in the production of the English version of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal got it right. They embedded the music as part of the text. You can hardly turn a page in this Missal without bumping into musical notation. This is just fantastic because it establishes a norm for both tunes and for the preferred style of the music to be used at Mass. This style is call[ed] chant. The prayers are all chant. The people’s parts are chanted. There is a provision for all the parts of the Mass to be sung from beginning to end. We won’t have to wait 50 years or 300 years for the music question to be settled. It is already settled with the printing of the Missal itself.

This is just great because it solves a serious and major problem that currently exists within the Catholic Church: the music that is commonly employed in the liturgy works at cross purposes with the ritual itself. The establishment of a new (actually old) musical norm will have a gradual effect on the choices that the musicians make in the future. Pop music will not fit in well with a chanted Mass. There will be a gravitational pull toward making the entire Mass a chanted event, thereby fulfilling one of the goals of the Second Vatican Council to grant chant “first place” at Mass.

After reading these two reflections on the new Novus Ordo Missal, I was appreciative of the insights of each writer, as different as they are. Each also provoked a number of questions for further thought.

Fr. Longenecker's piece raised the question: What if Fr. Folkmass continued "to celebrate Mass in his usual game show host style," but the parishioners hearts were miraculously converted to embrace the Gospel? Wouldn't there still be a problem? Is it not also of some significance that the form of worship is reverent and that the liturgy is recognizably Catholic?

Jeffrey Tucker's piece raised the question, once raised by one of my commentators: Isn't a Ford Pinto, even with a shiny new coat of paint, still a Ford Pinto? Is it not, as the Holy Father himself has suggested more than once, the product of a hijacked liturgical reform that was animated by a hermeneutic of rupture from Catholic liturgical tradition?

Your thoughts?

[Hat tip to J.M.]

On the fate of historical religious affiliations of universities

2011-11-14T16:12:00.004-05:00

In "A Tale of Two Colleges" (November 8, 2011), Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, Jr., comments on contrasting decisions made by two Georgia universities. Shorter University (Rome, GA) adopted a series of statements intended to protect its historic religious commitments, including guidelines governing both faith and morals. Within days of that decision, Mercer University (Macon, GA) announced personnel policies to allow for coverage of domestic homosexual partnerships.

Mohler develops a bit of background of each institution and draws three predictable lessons (here I offer only the headings):

As time goes on, colleges and universities that choose to identify with the ethos and standards of the secular academy will inevitably increase the distance from their founding churches and theological commitments.
Colleges and universities attempting to maintain accountability to churches and Christian denominations will discover that specificity and clarity in terms of worldview commitment and lifestyle expectations is required, and not optional.
The issue of homosexuality now presents an unavoidable test of conviction for Christian institutions of higher learning. The pressure to normalize homosexual relationships and behaviors will be strong, and the cost of resisting this pressure will be steep.

Since the 1980s the last-mentioned issue has developed into the soft, vulnerable underbelly of Evangelical Protestantism . . . as well as (need we even mention it?) mainline Catholic universities. Goodbye, Good Men!

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body

2011-11-13T22:12:00.004-05:00

The Ascension by John Singleton Copley
By Michael P. Foley

“Glory be to God for dappled things!” exults the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. And among those dappled things, shaded with their various spots and hues, we must count not just “skies of couple-colour” and “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim,” but the traditional liturgical year, that great annual pageant of all things “counter, original, spare, and strange.”

And one of the strangest things found in the liturgical year and in Christian dogma (strange in that it is a surprise to common sense) is belief in the resurrection of the dead. In an age where victories over sin, ignorance, and doubt seem to be increasingly rare, it is easy for Catholics to forget that their ultimate hope is not simply in avoiding Hell and reaching Heaven but in enjoying God with their souls reunited to their bodies. Spiritual masters such as Saint Augustine have even gone so far as to suggest that until that reunion takes place, the blessed in Heaven experience a restlessness or “patient longing.”¹ The Beatific Vision just won’t be the same without new bodies in a new Heaven and a new earth.

Our Glorified Bodies

Belief in bodily resurrection is no easy matter. The difficulty begins with answering a seemingly simple question, “what is the body?” Shakespeare plays upon this when Prince Hamlet describes how a king may go “through the guts of a beggar.” A king dies, his body is eaten by worms, a beggar goes fishing with one of the worms, and then he eats the fish that ate the worm.² Whose body is whose?

And yet this ambiguity also belies a great potential. If we can’t pin down the nature of the body, then who can naysay what it is capable of becoming? Saint Paul chides doubters who ask, “How do the dead rise again?” by comparing the body to a seed that must die before it truly lives.³ It is a metaphor worth dwelling on. The human body, which is a magnificent creation, is a mere acorn in comparison to the oak tree it is destined to become. Acorns retain their substance when they grow into trees (they don’t become butterflies), yet the difference between an acorn and an oak could not be more profound; the former is virtually nothing in comparison to the latter. If our bodies, impressive as they are, are mere acorns now, imagine what they will be as trees on the Last Day.

* * * * * * *

As excellent as the Beatific Vision is, the human soul is naturally designed to rule a body, and thus there remains some unfinished business even for a saint in Heaven.

* * * * * * *
To give an example of what may await us, consider the four properties of a glorified body as singled out in Catholic theology: agility, subtlety, impassibility, and clarity. Agility is the perfect responsiveness of the body to the soul, which will allow it to move at the speed of thought. Subtlety is the power of penetrating solid matter, while impassibility is the impossibility of suffering or dying. Lastly, clarity is the total absence of bodily deformity and a “resplendent radiance and beauty.”⁴

The astonishing excellence of a resurrected body was cleverly expressed by a young colonial printer named Benjamin Franklin, who at the age of 22 wrote his own epitaph:

The body of B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ’d) Appear once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.⁵

God’s Path to Being All in All

The general resurrection of the body is also a most fitting consummation of Christ’s Paschal victory over death. The Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord open the gates of Heaven to our souls but do not immediately end our vulnerability to the effects of original sin. Those effects include a degradation of the body: every bodily deformity or disease, every violent injury or accident, every misuse or abuse, is a sad reminder that we still live east of Eden. And death remains what it always was, a literal humiliation for one and all, a return of the body to the ground (humus).

As excellent as the Beatific Vision is, the human soul is naturally designed to rule a body, and thus there remains some unfinished business even for a saint in Heaven. This body of ours, this temple of the Holy Spirit that is mocked and exploited by the world, the flesh, and the devil, is also in need of redemption. How splendid, then, that the Elect are not only promised eternal life in Heaven but a “reform” of “the body of our lowness” into a body like that of our risen Lord,⁶ a body that Saint Paul refers to as “glorified” and even “spiritual.”⁷ The body, which this side of the grave can be a handful to deal with, will become a luminous reflection of the soul’s divinely-given excellence once it is glorified. In Saint Augustine’s words, “what was once [the soul’s] burden will be its glory.”⁸ And how fitting that this glory is part of God’s ongoing transformation of creation until He becomes “all in all.”⁹

* * * * * * *

Our Lord assumed a human body in the Virgin’s womb, and the Feast of the Ascension celebrates the fact that that same body now sits at the right of the Father; therefore, our human bodies are included in the divine plan of salvation. For the first time in history, there is a human body in Heaven!

* * * * * * *
Easter Sunday

The extraordinary form of the Roman rite excels in the re-presentation of these eschatological realities, and it does so gradually. Easter, for instance, celebrates not only Christ’s victory over the grave but the first full-fledged instance of a glorified body. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus’ body on that first Easter morning was not a resuscitated corpse like that of Lazarus, for although it was indeed the selfsame body that was born of the Virgin Mary, it had undergone a significant transformation. That is why His closest friends did and did not recognize Him,¹⁰ and it is why the risen Lord was able to pass through locked doors¹¹ as well as appear and disappear.¹² In other words, His body now possessed the properties of glorification. The implication for the rest of us is clear. As Saint Paul explains, our Savior will take “the body of our lowness” and make it like “the body of His glory.”¹³ Consequently, during the Easter Octave we pray that we may be transformed into a “new creature”¹⁴ and pass on to “heavenly glory.”¹⁵

Ascension

As a whole, however, the theme of our bodily glorification remains rather muted during the Easter season. This is true for the Feast of the Ascension as well, since the Church understandably focuses more on Christ’s completion of His earthly ministry and His promise to send the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Collect for the Ascension prays that we learn to “dwell in mind amidst heavenly things,” not in body. Still, there are hints about the future of God’s Elect. To paraphrase Saint Gregory Nazianzus, “What is not assumed is not saved.”¹⁶ Our Lord assumed a human body in the Virgin’s womb, and the Feast of the Ascension celebrates the fact that that same body now sits at the right of the Father; therefore, our human bodies are included in the divine plan of salvation. For the first time in history, there is a human body in Heaven!

In fact, by the end of the first Ascension Day, there may have been three bodies: Our Lord’s, Elijah’s—who was finally allowed into the Empyrean Heaven (see below)—and Enoch, the figure in the Old Testament who was mysteriously “taken” by God after his death but who could not have been allowed to experience the Beatific Vision prior to the resurrection of our Lord.¹⁷ What we do know is that our Lord did not enter into the true Holy of Holies empty-handed: besides His own glorified body and body, he brought the souls He had rescued from limbo on Good Friday, when “He descended into Hell.” The Breviary hymn for the Divine Office speaks of our ascended Lord at the head of a “triumph,” a Roman parade in which a victorious general showcased all of the slaves he had captured in battle.¹⁸ The hymn artfully inverts this image, showing Christ as the liberator of souls from limbo now parading them into Heaven after having completed his earthy campaign, as it were.

Corpus Christi

Shortly after Paschaltide, the Church celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi. Again the main focus is on the meaning of the feast at hand (in this case, the miracle of transubstantiation), but not without reference to our promised glorification. In the Divine Office for Corpus Christi, the Eucharist is called the “pledge of our future glory.”¹⁹ Jesus Himself says as much when He links Holy Communion to the Four Last Things: “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day.”²⁰ The Eucharist is not only essential to our earthly pilgrimage as spiritual food and medicine, it is preparing us, by what it is and what it does, for our final transformation into a glorified creature of God. For the Eucharist is not just the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, but His glorified Body and Blood.²¹ When we receive Holy Communion, we are therefore receiving a token of what we, God willing, will one day become.

The Poem of the Soul - Memory of Heaven by Anne Francois Louis Janmot
And it is not just our bodies that are being glorified by the Eucharist. Pope Benedict XVI writes eloquently of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass transforming the entire landscape of being:

The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of “nuclear fission,” to use an image familiar to us today, which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).²²

The Transfiguration (August 6)

The Pope’s reference to the transfiguration of the world brings us to our next feast. On the Second Sunday of Lent, the Transfiguration of our Lord is commemorated in order to arouse the faithfuls’ desire for the glory of Easter; and on August 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration to reflect more properly on the significance of this event. Part of that reflection involves meditating on the refulgence and majesty that our own glorified bodies will one day have.²³ The Breviary hymn for the feast speaks of the event in terms similar to the praise of the Eucharist we have just seen, as a “sign of perennial glory.”²⁴ Moreover, the little chapter used during the Divine Office is Philippians 3:20-21, the passage about reforming our body of lowness. Just as the historical Transfiguration prefigured the Resurrection of Our Lord, so too does the liturgical celebration of the Transfiguration prefigure the general resurrection of the body.

* * * * * * *

The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is therefore a beautiful thing not only in its own right (for who was more worthy than she of such an honor?) but with respect to all of the Elect, as it brings to the fore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

* * * * * * *
How interesting that both of Jesus’ spiritual companions on Mount Tabor that day had bodies missing in action. Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot, while according to Jude 1:9, Saint Michael the Archangel and the devil fought over Moses’ body after he died. Some have interpreted Saint Jude’s cryptic statement to refer to the struggle between Michael and Satan through their earthly agents in Egypt, Moses being an emissary of God and the angels while Pharaoh and his magicians being minions of the devil. Others interpret the verse in reference to a fight over Moses’ remains, with Satan wanting the body buried in such a way that would seduce the Hebrews into idolatrizing it.²⁵ But Saint Michael prevailed, and to this day the location of Moses’ grave is unknown.

A third interpretation is that both Moses and Elijah represent different states of the afterlife, Moses’ soul having come from limbo to witness the Transfiguration and Elijah’s body and soul (for they were never separated by death) coming from Heaven—albeit not the “Empyrean Heaven,” according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, for that is only accessible to man through Christ’s Paschal mystery.²⁶ The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor thus discloses a fascinating spectrum of human existence: the living “acorn” bodies of Saints Peter, James, and John; the disembodied soul of Moses; the departed yet unglorified body of Elijah, and the transfigured body of Jesus as the foreshadowing of total glorification on the Last Day. In particular, our Lord’s Transfiguration foreshadows the gift of clarity, when “His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as snow.”²⁷

The Assumption (August 15)

If bodily resurrection is promised to every faithful Christian disciple, then it is eminently fitting that Christ’s first and most faithful disciple should receive this gift before anyone else save Christ Himself. The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is therefore a beautiful thing not only in its own right (for who was more worthy than she of such an honor?) but with respect to all of the Elect, as it brings to the fore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

The Assumption of the Virgin by Nicolas Poussin
The Mass for the Feast of the Assumption makes this connection explicit. The Collect prays that we “may deserve to be partakers of her glory,” while the Postcommunion beseeches God that through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, “we may be brought to the glory of the resurrection.” This teaching emanates outward from the Mass to various private devotions. A novena to the Blessed Virgin on the occasion of the Assumption prays: “Teach me how small earth becomes when viewed from Heaven. Make me realize that death is the triumphant gate through which I shall pass to your Son, and that someday my body shall rejoin my soul in the unending bliss of Heaven.”

* * * * * * *

By defining the Assumption only five years after the close of WWII, it was as if the Pope were saying: Yet again, the Nazis and all such racists and eugenicists are wrong. Mary’s body, Mary’s Semitic body, is in Heaven, loved by God.

* * * * * * *
Even the timing of the proclamation of the dogma on the Assumption seems attuned to highlight God’s regard for our bodily existence, now and in the future. I once heard an outstanding sermon from an FSSP priest who speculated that Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition of the doctrine in 1950 was in part (intentionally or not) a corrective to World War II, the bloodiest war in human history. Specifically, the Third Reich, which the Pope so valiantly resisted, harbored an unprecedented hatred of not simply the Jewish religion but Jewish “embodiment,” the DNA of Abraham and his descendents, which is why they tried to exterminate that DNA entirely in their death camps. By defining the Assumption only five years after the close of WWII, it was as if the Pope were saying: Yet again, the Nazis and all such racists and eugenicists are wrong. Mary’s body, Mary’s Semitic body, is in Heaven, loved by God.

Time After Pentecost

These festal reminders of the resurrection from the dead elide nicely with the Time after Pentecost, that portion of the liturgical year which commemorates the pilgrimage of the Church from its birthday to the end of days—in other words, the period in which we are currently living. Because the Time after Pentecost symbolizes the time of the Church on earth, it is also a profoundly eschatological season, a season that looks ahead to the “Eschaton,” the Last Day, just as Christians facing east when they pray or assist at Mass do so as a sign of their anticipation of the Second Coming, when Christ shall come in glory from the East.

The Poem of the Soul - Up the Mountain by Anne Francois Louis Janmot
The eschatological note of the Time after Pentecost becomes noticeable around the Eighteenth Sunday, at which point the readings and prayers grow increasingly apocalyptic in tone. Verses from the prophets become much more common and references to the final manifestation of Christ more insistent. This sense of anticipation grows each week until it crescendos with the last Sunday after Pentecost (the last Sunday of the liturgical year), when the Gospel recalls Christ’s ominous double prophecy concerning the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the terrifying end of the world.

* * * * * * *

The Lord’s Bride escorts us through a patchwork of feasts that teach us bit by bit about the immutable beauty that, God willing, will not only be ours but will render us, in the twinkling of an eye and at the sound of the trumpet, perfect icons of His brilliant glory.

* * * * * * *
But the eschatological theme is present earlier as well, and it includes a meditation on the future of our bodies. On the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, for example, the Gospel reading is of our Lord’s raising from the dead the only son of the widow of Naim (Luke 7:11-16), while the Postcommunion prays: “In soul and in body, O Lord, may we be ruled by the operation of this heavenly gift; that its effect, and not our own impulses, may ever prevail over us.” And the bodily theme is central on the Twenty Third Sunday, when the Epistle lesson returns to Philippians 3:21 and the Gospel reading proclaims the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, a prominent official of the Capharnaum synagogue (Mt. 9:18-26).

The Temporal and Sanctoral cycles of the Church calendar thus reinforce each other in marvelously conveying to us the meaning of the article in the Creed we pray every Sunday: “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Conclusion

Hopkins ends his poem “Pied Beauty,” which began this essay, with the verses, “He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.” The Lord God, Hopkins tells us, is past change, and yet the way He brings us to His changeless beauty is through a revolving and dynamic symphony of patchy or “pied” beauty. In a similar way, the Lord’s Bride escorts us through a patchwork of feasts that teach us bit by bit about the immutable beauty that, God willing, will not only be ours but will render us, in the twinkling of an eye and at the sound of the trumpet, perfect icons of His brilliant glory.+

Notes

City of God 13.20. [back]

Hamlet IV.iii.27-31. [back]

I Cor. 15:35ff. [back]

John A. Hardon, S.J. Pocket Catholic Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 79. [back]

The epitaph was not used when Franklin died at the age of 84. [back]

Phil. 3:21. [back]

See Phil. 3:21; I Cor. 15:44. [back]

Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.35.68 [back]

I Cor. 15:28. [back]

See Lk. 24:13-32; Jn. 20:1-16, 21:1-7. [back]

See Jn. 20:19, 26. [back]

See Lk. 24:36, 24:31. [back]

Phil. 3:21. [back]

Postcommunion for Easter Wednesday. [back]

Secret for Easter Tuesday. [back]

Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter (101) to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius. [back]

See Genesis 5:24. [back]

See the hymn Jeus nostra redemptio: “Breaking through the gates of Hell/ Redeeming Those of yours held captive/ A Victor in a noble triumph/ You now reside at the Father’s right hand.” [back]

Magnificat antiphon for II Vespers. [back]

John 6:55. [back]

In fact, this is one of the reasons that Holy Communion is not act of cannibalism, even though it involves consuming the flesh and drinking the blood of our Lord. No cannibal has ever come close to receiving a living and glorified body. [back]

Sacramentum Caritatis, 11; see also 71. [back]

For more on this topic, see Michael P. Foley, “Divine Do-Overs: The Secret of Recapitulation in the Traditional Calendar,” The Latin Mass 19:2 (Spring 2010), pp. 46-49. [back]

The hymn is Quicumque Christum quaeritis, and the verse is Signum perennis gloriae. [back]

A divergent theory posits that Satan argued that Moses was unworthy of burial at all since he had murdered an Egyptian as a young man. [back]

See Summa Theologiae III.45.3.ad 2. [back]

Mt. 17:2; see Mk. 9:1; Lk. 9:29. [back]

[Michael P. Foley is associate professor of patristics at Baylor University. He is author of Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008) and Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Foley's article, "Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body,” Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 38-42, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060. This article has been permanently archived at Scripture and Catholic Tradition.]

Socrates for the 21st century, dude . . .

2011-11-13T20:06:00.002-05:00

[Hat tip to Dennis Wingfield, dude.]

Joe Balistreri Appointed to Detroit Chancery Post

2011-11-12T13:35:00.008-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 13, 2011):

Many of our readers know Joe Balistreri, who has volunteered as substitute organist and cantor for Wassim Sarweh on several occasions. Joe is one of our region’s musical prodigies, having been appointed Music Director of St. Matthew Parish on the east side of Detroit at age 16. A few weeks ago, Joe received his Masters degree in Organ from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.

We are delighted to announce that Archbishop Allen Vigneron has appointed Joe as Pastoral Music Director for the Archdiocese of Detroit. Joe succeeds Louis Canter in this position in the chancery. He will be a central resource for musicians throughout the Archdiocese and will be involved with the Archdiocesan Chorus at major events at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. Dr. Steven Ball will continue in his position as Organist for Pontifical Events at the cathedral, quite fitting as Steven was one of Joe’s professors at U of M.

Joe’s appointment comes at a time when the new English Missal for the Ordinary Form places an increased emphasis on the celebrant chanting portions of the Mass. Led in part by Jeffrey Tucker of the Church Music Association of America, there is also a new push for singing the Propers in the Ordinary Form, as is required at Extraordinary Form High Masses. Joe’s background with the Tridentine Mass makes him uniquely qualified to advocate the use of both Chant and the Propers during this time when Church authorities are seeking to use traditional music as a means to restore a sense of the sacred to the Ordinary Form.

We congratulate Joe and ask for your prayers for Joe as he undertakes his new responsibilities.

Ss. Peter & Paul (West Side) To Host Tridentine Mass

Another traditionally-outfitted church in the Archdiocese of Detroit will be hosting a Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form: The historically Polish parish of Ss. Peter & Paul on the west side of the city will hold a Tridentine Mass on Sunday, December 11 at 12:15 PM. Celebrant for the Mass will be Ss. Peter & Paul Assistant Pastor Fr. Mark Borkowski. Music Director for the Mass will be the aforementioned Joe Balistreri.

Built in the 1950s, the current and third church of the parish is traditionally outfitted, with a high altar, side altars, spacious sanctuary, and Communion Rail. While not an historic edifice, it was nevertheless built to Borromean standards, with elements of verticality and art which evoke the sacred. Ss. Peter and Paul is located at 7685 Grandville Ave., one block north of Warren Ave., and a few blocks west of the Southfield Freeway.

Relaunch of The Mass of Ages Magazine

The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales has announced a new design for their signature quarterly magazine, The Mass of Ages, under the leadership of newly appointed editor, Gregory Murphy. The LMS intends to broaden the appeal of the magazine: they recognize, as many of us observers in the Extraordinary Form world do, that a modern approach to marketing the EF is called for in today’s media-savvy culture. Printed in full color throughout, with a more attention-grabbing and headline-filled cover, the magazine is designed to catch the attention of those skimming magazine racks who may not yet be familiar with the Traditional Latin Mass. Think of it as an effort to blend the modern media appearance of a People Magazine with a more positive version of The Latin Mass Magazine. Such an outreach effort has not yet been attempted by any other periodical serving readers interested in the Tridentine Mass.

The Mass of Ages enjoys wide distribution in Catholic bookstores in England. Whereas many Catholic bookshops in North America carry very little in the way of traditional books and periodicals, many if not most British Catholic stores devote a portion of their retail space to Latin Mass-related items. A striking example is the enormous (by Catholic standards) St. Paul’s Bookshop adjacent to London’s Westminster Cathedral, which has one section devoted to the Extraordinary Form, another section devoted to Gregorian Chant including many of the books of Solesmes, and an extensive selection of traditional monstrances, chalices, and ciboria. We in North America may dream of the day when the EF is considered an integral part of the Catholic scene; in England, this goal has already been achieved.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 11/14 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Feast of St. Josaphat)

Tue. 11/15 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Albert the Great, Bishop, Confessor, & Doctor)

The Tridentine Calendar

2011-11-12T13:26:00.002-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 6, 2011):

There has been some confusion of late brought about by the St. Josaphat parish bulletin. Various articles offer reflections on “the readings” of the day, yet those commentaries do not match the readings employed at the Tridentine Mass. This is because there are two sets of readings used in the Latin Rite of Holy Mass, and only one set is currently being commented upon in the parish bulletin, those for the Ordinary Form. The name of the Feast Day as well as the readings often differ between the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms: For example, while today is the 21st Sunday After Pentecost in the Tridentine calendar, it is the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo.

The Extraordinary Form employs a one year calendar of Feasts and Readings. The Ordinary Form uses a one year calendar for Feasts, a two year calendar for weekday Readings, and a three year calendar for Sunday Readings. The Ordinary Form seeks to expose the faithful to more Sacred Scripture via an expanded Lectionary over these years, while the Extraordinary Form achieves the same goal by incorporating Scriptural Proper Antiphons and Graduals at each Mass.

Terminology also differs: First Class, Second Class, Third Class, and Fourth Class Feast Days in the Extraordinary Form are referred to as Solemnities, Feasts, Obligatory Memorials, and Optional Memorials in the Ordinary Form. Older Tridentine missals employ additional terms such as Doubles and Semidoubles, but that nomenclature was superseded in the currently-in-force 1962 Missal.

The Bishops of England and Wales once again take the lead in matters liturgical: Unlike the U.S. and Canadian Conferences of Catholic Bishops, whose web sites only provide the Ordinary Form Calendar, the U.K. Bishops offer both the Extraordinary and Ordinary Form calendars on their web site. They give due credit to The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales – the U.K.’s remarkably effective and omnipresent Tridentine Mass advocacy group – for providing the calendar information to the bishops’ conference. Perhaps the EF Calendar could be given higher profile in North America if a similar advocacy group offered to assist our own national conferences. In other words, don’t complain, volunteer to solve the problem!

To provide a clear indication of the Extraordinary Form Sunday Feast of the week, we will henceforth print the name of the current Sunday’s Feast at the top of the page, adjacent to the date.

This is an appropriate time to mention that we are once again taking orders for 2012 Tridentine Wall Calendars. As in previous years, we will be providing the Fraternity of St. Peter’s calendar at cost, which has not yet been set as of the date of this writing. If you attend the Tridentine Mass, you will want these calendars instead of, or in addition to, the wall calendars for the Ordinary Form that many parishes give out. You may sign up for a calendar on the sheets at the missal table at the entrance to Assumption and St. Josaphat Churches. Payment in advance is requested so that we order only as many calendars as are actually desired.

Book Review: The Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook

In recent years many wonderful Catholic books have been reprinted. In September, 2009 this column mentioned Blessed Be God, a comprehensive collection of prayers. Today we are pleased to bring to your attention an even better resource, Fr. F.X. Lasance’s Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook, recently reprinted by Loreto Publications (www.loretopubs.org).

Both books are similar, in that they strive to present a complete set of devotional prayers for the entire liturgical year. The Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook, however, excels. It uses a smaller type font and has less white space on the pages, compressing more content onto its pages. Many of the prayers are provided in both Latin and English. It is one of very few books to include the Little Office of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, two of the rarely printed, currently indulgenced Little Offices.

The Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook employs florid and traditional language with hierarchical pronouns. The rich language of prayer that one sees in Extraordinary Form hand missals is mirrored in this book. The extensive collection of Morning Prayers is unparalleled. Here is one of them, representative of the content in the rest of the book:
“I adore Thee, O my God – one God in three Persons; I annihilate myself before Thy majesty. Thou alone art being, life, truth, beauty, and goodness. I glorify Thee, I praise Thee, I thank Thee, and I love Thee, all incapable and unworthy as I am, in union with Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Father, in the mercifulness of His Heart and through His infinite merits. I wish to serve Thee, to please Thee, to obey Thee, and to love Thee always, in union with Mary immaculate, Mother of God and our mother, loving also and serving my neighbor for Thy sake. Therefore, give me Thy Holy Spirit to enlighten, correct, and guide me in the way of Thy commandments, and in all perfection, until we come to the happiness of heaven, where we shall glorify Thee for ever. Amen.”
One caution to readers: Because the book is a literal reprint, and not an updated version, the citations concerning Indulgences no longer apply. The rules for Indulgences were revised after the Second Vatican Council, thus none of the references are still in effect. Nevertheless, the book remains a marvelous resource for private prayer, for Holy Hours, and for quick visits to the Blessed Sacrament.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 11/07 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria – Celebrant may choose a Votive Mass)

Tue. 11/08 7:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Daily Mass for the Dead – High Requiem Mass with Absolution at the Catafalque)

Wed. 11/09 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Dedication of the Archbasilica of Our Holy Savior [St. John Lateran])

The Masses of All Souls Day

2011-11-12T13:14:00.004-05:00

Tridentine Community News (October 30, 2011) [somewhat after the fact]:

For the fourth year in a row, we will be holding a special All Souls Day evening of three Masses. This year’s event will take place at St. Josaphat Church. Today we are running an updated version of an explanatory column which first ran in 2008.

Four Low Masses, simultaneously celebrated at each of the four side altars of the church, will begin at 6:00 PM. Then, at 7:00 PM, a Solemn High Mass with Deacon and Subdeacon will be celebrated at the high altar, to be followed by Absolution at the Catafalque, in commemoration of all of the faithful departed.

Bination & Trination

Under normal circumstances, Monday through Saturday, a priest is permitted to celebrate no more than two Holy Masses. The celebration of two Masses on the same day is called “bination.” On Sundays and Holy Days, a priest may celebrate three Masses (“trination”) if he has the permission of his bishop or because of necessity, which is increasingly become the norm in these days of scarcity of priests.

As with many other laws of the Church, this limitation makes common sense. Priests should celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with attentiveness and devotion. The more Masses that a priest must say on the same day, the greater the possibility that he may lose focus and concentration. Holy Mass must not be celebrated distractedly, absent-mindedly, or in a bored fashion.

All Souls Day is the only non-Sunday/Holy Day in the Church Year on which a priest is permitted to celebrate three Masses. This permission is a vivid symbol by which Holy Mother Church encourages us to pray for the Souls in Purgatory. The Tridentine Missal contains three distinct sets of Mass Propers to be celebrated, should a priest be able to celebrate all three. Note that no matter how many Masses are celebrated, the faithful may receive Holy Communion at no more than two Masses per day.

Our own situation is somewhat nuanced: Three priests will celebrate their Low Mass as the First Mass of All Souls Day, as that will be the only Mass he celebrates that day. Per the rubrics, one priest will celebrate his Low Mass as the Second Mass of All Souls Day, then he will celebrate the Solemn High Mass as the First Mass of All Souls Day, as the Sung Mass of the day must be the First Mass (“First” and “Second” referring to the Mass Propers set, not the sequence in which the Masses are said). The celebrant of the Solemn High Mass will binate, while the priests, who serve as Deacon and Subdeacon at the Solemn High Mass, will not binate, because the Deacon and Subdeacon at a Solemn High Mass are not concelebrants. Indeed, they do not need to be priests at all. Thus, we will have five Masses on All Souls Day, but we will not be using all three sets of Mass Propers unless we happen to have a trinating priest, always a possibility in these post-Summórum Pontíficum days.

Side Altars

Many if not most churches built prior to 1965 incorporated one or more side altars. We are fortunate that our churches have several. Today, these altars serve mostly devotional purposes, in St. Josaphat’s case as shrines to our Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. Casimir, and St. Francis d’Assisi. But they had and still have a primary purpose: To host the celebration of Holy Mass.

Mass may only be celebrated on an altar containing consecrated relics. Those relics are contained within an altar stone, placed in the middle of the altar. In fact, the altar stone itself is actually the “altar”, whereas the table surrounding it is properly termed the “mensa.” All of our side altars contain altar stones.

Each side altar also contains a functional tabernacle. The purpose of these tabernacles is not to serve as a primary repository for the Blessed Sacrament; that function is reserved for the main tabernacle on the high altar. Rather, these tabernacles can temporarily hold a ciborium with Hosts consecrated at the Mass celebrated at that altar until those Hosts can later be transferred to the main tabernacle; can contain pre-consecrated Hosts to be distributed at a Mass celebrated at that altar; can contain pre-consecrated Hosts needed for distribution at major event Masses that fill the church; and can serve as temporary repositories when the high altar tabernacle must be kept empty, such as during a construction project or on Good Friday.

Every priest should celebrate one Mass per day. In the era when there were multiple priests assigned to a parish, and the parish may only have had one public Mass per weekday, the side altars were the places where the other priests in the parish would celebrate their daily Masses, often at the same time as Mass was being celebrated at the high altar. Nowadays, one only generally sees this happening at churches where there are many priests, such as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome; the Brompton Oratory in London, England; and at liturgical conferences.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 10/31 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria – Celebrant may choose a Votive Mass)

Tue. 11/01 7:00 PM: High Mass at both Assumption-Windsor and St. Josaphat (All Saints Day)

Wed. 11/02 6:00 PM: Masses at St. Josaphat (All Souls Day: Low Masses at Side Altars at 6:00 PM; Solemn High Mass at High Altar at 7:00 PM, followed by Absolution at the Catafalque)

Sun. 11/06 Noon: High Mass at St. Albertus (21st Sunday After Pentecost – the last Tridentine Mass at St. Albertus for 2011)

Marini’s Conciliarist Manifesto

2011-11-12T13:13:00.005-05:00

[The views expressed in the following article are solely the responsibility of its author and are not necessarily shared by the editor of this site.]

Peter A. Kwasniewski

“Just before sunrise, the wind got up. It was a vile, stubborn wind ...”

—Tove Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea¹

As a historian phenomenon, “conciliarism” refers to the erroneous view that a general council of the Church is superior to the Pope in matters of faith and morals — that a Pope can be trumped, so to speak, by all the bishops assembled. This heresy was dealt a series of blows throughout the second millenium of Christianity, culminating in the double coup de grace of a pair of dogmatic constitutions on the Church: Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus and Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium. As those who have studied the latter document know, section 25 of Lumen Gentium contains the clearest, most extensive teaching ever given concerning the unique, supreme, direct authority of the Pope over the entire Church and all her members, including the bishops who must remain in union with him in order to remain truly Catholic.²

In the past forty years, however, a new form of conciliarism has arisen, one harder to define with precision and far more influential: the view that Vatican II, all by itself, was a Council that redefined the Church and her theology from top to bottom. For historians of the influential “Bologna school,” the Council gave birth to a new Church, ushered in a new age, cleared away ages of debris and decadence, proclaimed at last an ecumenical Gospel that sought out the world and passionately embraced it. While the falsity of such a bald statement may cause a wry smile, it is a sad fact that this peculiar brand of conciliarism has been the main force at work in the wreckage of the sacred liturgy for the past forty years. So much so, indeed, that a new “Great Schism” appeared in the twentieth century: a schism between a self-styled modern Church and the Church of Tradition. This virtual schism, like the doctrinal rupture and rampant liturgical abuses that are the hallmarks of its proponents, is far worse than any internal crisis the Church has ever faced before, outstripping in combined ignorance, error, and contempt even the horrors of the Protestant revolt.

* * * * * * * *
It is a sad fact that this peculiar brand of conciliarism has been the main force at work in the wreckage of the sacred liturgy for the past forty years. So much so, indeed, that a new “Great Schism” appeared in the twentieth century

* * * * * * *
As students of Chuch history know, the Holy Spirit does not long allow the Church to be storm-tossed and in danger of shipwreck. All the hard-won gains of the aging old guard—religious liberalism, laicism, secularism, feminism, soft modernism, horizontalism, relativism, and so forth, a whole litany of -isms that have replaced the Litany of Saints as the standard and measure of Catholic life today—are now being called into question by a new generation of believers and, ironically perhaps, by the elderly Pope who was a major force at the very Council whose spirit is claimed to be embodied in the new order of Mass and the new style of worship it promotes. Those who follow the Catholic media can see it daily: the graying liberals sound outraged, panicked, desperate. The more intelligent among them must surely know that the sun is beginning to go down on their long-reigning agenda.

Standing tall and unrepentant in the ranks of the rupturists is the retired papal M.C. for John Paul II, Archbishop Piero Marini, who was unceremoniously replaced at Pope Benedict XVI’s behest by the infinitely more competent and traditional Monsignor Guido Marini (no relation), a model M.C. if ever there was one. For the remainder of this article, “Marini” will always refer to the bishop plagued with a futuristic agenda and no future.
Back in 2007, Marini published a book that made quite a splash. A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal contains little to surprise those who are already familiar with the standard (“Bologna”) history of the Council and the divinely inspired reforms attributed to it. Anyone who has dared to dip into Bugnini’s disturbing memoirs will find Marini’s book not terribly original. It comes across rather as the last gasp of a dying cause, a kind of “rage against the dying of the light” from an energetic retiree. At a press conference in England, Marini portrayed in livid terms an ongoing battle between “conservation and progress,” and “the center and the periphery.” He wanted his book to sound “an invitation to look to the future, to take up with enthusiasm the path traced by the council.” How’s that for tendentious? We—the Church of the ages—are the periphery? I believe it was Chesterton who said that Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It is the soft modernist faction of the Council that are the periphery, with their loud minority opinion.

Benedict XVI has been the only pope since Blessed John XXIII who seems to have understood with crystalline clarity that Vatican II can have been a legitimate council only if it was intended to be, and is continually received as being, in continuity with the entire Tradition that preceded it. “The path traced by the Council” is, de facto and de iure, the path traced by Tradition—or it is irrelevant, not to say worse. The speech Pope Benedict delivered to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2006 was a beautifully clear indicator of the mind of Holy Mother Church: the Council is to be received within a hermeneutic of continuity, not a hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity.

Journalist John Allen summarizes Marini’s identification of historical factors that paved the way for the Consilium’s triumph. First, “the presence of the council fathers in Rome during the first two years of implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II’s constitution on liturgy. The bishops themselves, [Marini] said, were ‘the first guarantors of reform.’” How easily the victors rewrite history! Many who were present at and involved in the Council have testified that the bishops had no idea they were about to witness the wholesale dismantling and reconstruction of the Roman Rite. Archimandrite Boniface Luykx (1915–2004) frequently noted that not a single bishop at the Council believed that Latin would be abolished, in practice, from the celebration of the Mass, that the priest would face the people, or that the prayers would be notably altered. In a moment of honesty, could Marini admit that Sacrosanctum Concilium did NOT ASK FOR most of the changes that were implemented?

* * * * * * *
Not a single bishop at the Council believed that Latin would be abolished, in practice, from the celebration of the Mass, that the priest would face the people, or that the prayers would be notably altered.

* * * * * * *
The second factor in the Consilium’s success, according to Marini: “The personal support of Pope Paul VI.” Alas, this is no relevation; it is but one more reason to hold this beleaguered pontiff of modernist sympathies in suspicion. People often rush to Paul VI’s defense by pointing out his heroically countercultural defense of chastity and the natural law in Humanae Vitae. We might be in danger of damning with faint praise. Humanae Vitae may seem bizarrely backwards or startlingly revolutionary to a world of hedonist nitwits, but any Catholic with an instinctive attachment to healthy sexuality, a modicum of religious education, and a morally sound outlook on family life would not for a moment be tempted by something as disgustingly unnatural as artificial contraception, nor would he or she register any surprise about what the Church had always taught and will always teach.

Let us move on to Marini’s third factor: “The rapid emergence of a network of ‘competent scholars,’ led by Lercaro and Bugnini.” Do I sense what the logicians call a petitio principii—a begging of the question? Competent by whose definition? Many of the fashionable scholarly theories of the mid-century have long since been discredited, even ridiculed, by liturgists and scholars whose first job is not grinding axes but understanding the history of Western liturgy. The business about how the Pope historically celebrated versus populum in St. Peter’s basilica was one of the main myths that drove the novelty of the priest’s turning his back to Christ, the symbolic East. We now know, thanks to better studies, that the Pope and the people faced eastwards at the most solemn part of the Mass, so important was their unanimous orientation felt to be.³

As the old guard present at Vatican II passes away year by year, Marini pleads that “it is important for the church to retain and renew the spirit that gave rise to the liturgical movement, and that inspired the council fathers to approve the constitution on the liturgy as the first fruit of that great grace of the 20th century which was the Second Vatican Council.” Hmm. The “spirit” behind the liturgical movement—is that anything like the particolored “spirit of Vatican II”? What about the origins of the liturgical movement among people who deeply and dearly loved the Church’s traditional liturgy and would have been disgusted by the superficial (if not sacrilegious) hootenanny that often replaced it? I can’t help thinking of a funny quotation by British Dominican Herbert McCabe, no traditionalist he, who nonetheless points out with brutal honesty:

There are satisfying experiences that are immediately satisfying, like drinking good Irish whiskey, but there are other satisfactions that occur only over long periods of time, like having a decently-furnished room. . . . If you are deprived of a decent liturgy for a fairly long period of time you discover an important gap in your emotional life. I might as well say at this point that I think there is a mistaken tendency, more especially in the United States but to some extent here [in England], to design the liturgy for too immediate a satisfaction. I have been with the “underground” groups in the American Church who do not really feel they have celebrated a Eucharist unless they get some kind of immediate experience of personal warmth and enhanced sensitivity. I think the liturgies designed by these people are very frequently in bad taste. I agree with those critics who find the Missa Normativa a little dull, except that I do not think it is altogether a criticism. A room furnished in good taste is a little dull compared to one covered in psychedelic posters saying “Love is Love” and “Mary, the ripest tomato of them all.”⁴

At the same press conference, Marini pontificated: “The goal of the liturgy is none other than the goal of the church, and the future of the liturgy is the future of Christianity and Christian life.” Even the devil quotes Scripture, and Balaam’s ass had intelligent counsel to offer. The future of the liturgy, in reality, is nothing other than, and nothing less than, the Mass of the Ages, the traditional Roman Rite that had organically developed for almost 2000 years until its violent deformation at the hands of Bugnini & Company.

The end of Mass at Rocafort by Jose Benlliure Ortiz

Our Lord gave the Mass to the Church for all her people, especially for the simple and the childlike. It is precisely such lowly laity who are not sophisticated enough to judge on the basis of theories and hypotheses, but who judge by what they see and hear—“O taste and see how gracious the Lord is...”

* * * * * * *
Anyone with good sense can see that the sudden virtual suppression of huge parts of Catholic liturgical tradition can only have had a profoundly unsettling, disorienting, and destabilizing effect on the Church as a whole. The apparent “success” of the reform has been belied by the bitter problems of doctrine and morals that have plagued the Church in the past four decades, centering on a loss of priestly identity, a drastic decline in priestly vocations, and an almost universal ignorance of the Faith and of the Sacred. The glamorous meetings of ICELated conspirators conveniently fail to mention the countless Catholics who felt betrayed, alienated, and even scandalized by the drastic changes that occurred as if overnight. I was talking to a neighbor one day—someone I’d gotten to know from seeing him so often around town—and when he found out that I taught for the Catholic College, he volunteered that he was a fallen-away Catholic who stopped going to Mass back in the seventies. “I went one Sunday and it was Hallelujah this and Hallelujah that, and I said to myself: What the hell is all this? It sure isn’t Mass!” Years ago, another friend told me a similar story. He said when the drums and guitars invaded the sanctuary, practically overnight, and routed the quiet low Mass he had grown up with, he felt dismayed, betrayed, assaulted, actually sick to his stomach. He stopped going to Mass for years, and nearly lost his faith entirely. Fortunately, he was one of those who, thanks be to God, returned to the Church after the indult Masses began.

Our Lord gave the Mass to the Church for all her people, especially for the simple and the childlike. It is precisely such lowly laity who are not sophisticated enough to judge on the basis of theories and hypotheses, but who judge by what they see and hear—“O taste and see how gracious the Lord is...” And judging by what they saw and heard, many came to the conclusion that the Church had either gone bonkers or had “come of age” and surrendered to secularism. In either case, it was time to stop going to Church. Rather than rejoicing in a botched reform conducted with all the finesse of bulldozers, one ought to feel righteous indignation about the high and mighty doings of the liturgical elite in the heady days of the late sixties and beyond, as they indulged in their liturgical fantasies while carelessly trampling on the hearts and minds of innumerable ordinary Catholics who loved the beauty and dignity of the Church’s worship as they knew it.

* * * * * * *
Anyone with good sense can see that the sudden virtual suppression of huge parts of Catholic liturgical tradition can only have had a profoundly unsettling, disorienting, and destabilizing effect on the Church as a whole.

* * * * * * *
Marini’s talk in London was full of that peculiar messianism characteristic of Vatican II nostalgics. Here is how it ended: “The Holy Spirit that inspired the liturgical movement and the council fathers still encircles us like a sacred cloud, and guides us like a column of fire,” offering “beauty ever new” as well as “joy and hope.” That’s what they call rhetoric, folks, but not in the most flattering sense of the word. If it was indeed the Holy Spirit and not the Zeitgeist or something more infernal yet, then the entire way we receive and rejoice in the Council and in the liturgical movement will of necessity exemplify the hermeneutic of continuity: the Council is to be interpreted in line with and in light of the great Tradition of Catholic theology and worship. It will not, pace Marini, cleave to the “hermeneutic of rupture,” whereby the Council would signify a decisive change of course that requires systematically deconstructing what came before and terrorizing those who adhere to it.

Let us remind ourselves again and again that Sacrosanctum Concilium expressly says that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” (§23). To those who are familiar with the wonderfully durable and ineffably beautiful preconciliar sacramental rites, it would seem obvious that few, if any, changes could have been defensible according to this strict criterion of “genuine good.” It would be like looking into a chest filled with treasures fashioned of precious metals and jewels, and saying: “Let’s get rid of anything in here that’s worthless.” Good luck finding the iron and bronze brooches. But the Consilium came along and—to the horror of orthodox Catholics, the delight of far-seeing modernists, and the surprise of just about everyone—discovered that the rites of the Roman Church were thoroughly defective and in need of a massive overhaul. An overhaul, in fact, that would culminate, decades later, in a pathetic banalization of the very rite of exorcism, as if we could pull the wool over Old Scratch’s intellectual eyes. According to many exorcists, the new rite does not even work very well; it is certainly much less effective than the old. A personal friend of mine, an exorcist for a major diocese, told me that water blessed by the old solemn formula is considerably more effective against demons than water blessed with newer formulas. In a way, if one may compare great things to small, Church leaders made the same mistake as Coca-Cola did, but lacked the marketing brains to realize it and bring back the original recipe. It seems that hierarchical office does not bring with it a charism of factual analysis.

The Consilium found that the Tradition was defective and the People of God were crying out for a new Mass, a new Liturgy of Hours, new blessings, new everything. This sounds like special pleading. Who are we to trust: the Tradition of the Church, which embodies the faith, hope, and love of countless believers and pastors over many centuries, or the Experts whose theories embody (at best) the ephemeral wisdom of academia, here today and gone tomorrow? Why do the Experts think that they know better than the common man—or, for that matter, than the Common Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, who is always on the common man’s side? The whole tenor of the Consilium ascendancy, as of Marini’s book, smacks of the spirit of Protestantism: we, a select few enlightened by the Spirit of God, will choose what is the best way forward in Catholic worship.

In any case, one thing is certain: we will see a lot of this kind of nostalgic resistance from the aging conciliarists; it will be a hallmark of at least the next ten years, and it will become more and more acerbic, accompanied by an increase in clandestine acts of desperation. They accuse the traditionalists of wallowing in nostalgia, but as brilliant a light as Fr. Richard McBrien finds himself caught short trying to explain how young Catholics who never grew up with the Latin Mass are flocking to it, loving it, and passing it on to their children. A “nostalgia” for what one could never have remembered is positively indecent and categorically illogical! (I was born in 1971, after Pope Paul VI had safely earned his place in the ranks of the worst popes of history, so I can add fuel to McBrien’s ire.) In an interview for the National Catholic Reporter, Marini memorably compared the traditional nostalgics with the carnal Jews who, having been liberated from the bondage of Pharaoh and his evil empire, longed for the fleshpots of Egypt:

First of all, it’s important that I spoke about a path [of liturgical reform], one that I believe is irreversible. I often think about the journey of the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament. It was a difficult journey, and sometimes the people became nostalgic for the past, for the onions and the melons of Egypt and so on. In other words, sometimes they wanted to go back. But the historical journey of the church is one which, by necessity, has to move forward.

Marini is not quite finished, however, with his penetrating analysis. He is puzzled that so many young people are drawn to the older liturgical forms—how can this be? He shares his reasoning process with us:

I see a certain nostalgia for the past. What concerns me in particular is that this nostalgia seems especially strong among some young priests. How is it possible to be nostalgic for an era they didn’t experience? . . . I’m always surprised to see young people who feel this nostalgia for something they never lived with. “Nostalgia for what?,” I find myself asking.

In reality, now that we are finally beginning to see genuine liturgical renewal thanks to Summorum Pontificum and the “reform of the reform” movement, the nostalgia is all on the side of the wrinkled cheerleaders with their placards of “Man has come of age; so should the Mass.” They are gazing wistfully back to the sixties while younger and wiser Catholics are thanking God that we’ve made tracks away from that benighted time of false hopes and Teilhardian illusions. Or better, the younger Catholics who take their faith seriously are doing just that: taking it seriously. Taking it as given, not as manufactured; as timeless, not as up-to-date. The Mass is not an experiment, a proving ground for academic theories, a do-it-yourself when ordained ministers run dry. It is the one and only Sacrifice of Calvary made present in our midst, in a hallowed form we receive from our forebears, bearing not only its own sanctifying reality, but also the sanctified history of the communion of saints. The reaction of any sane believer is to fall to his knees in adoration, along with generations of his fathers and—may God in His mercy grant it—generations of his children to come.

* * * * * * *
The Mass is not an experiment, a proving ground for academic theories, a do-it-yourself when ordained ministers run dry. It is the one and only Sacrifice of Calvary made present in our midst, in a hallowed form we receive from our forebears, bearing not only its own sanctifying reality, but also the sanctified history of the communion of saints.

* * * * * * *
In my years of teaching undergraduate and graduate theology, I have seen how young people who are serious about their faith flock to the traditional Mass, with little prompting or explanation required, and how they continue to attend it throughout their adult lives, eventually introducing their children to it. I have seen the spectacle of college students who, because they grew up in a parish or chapel run by the Fraternity of St. Peter, have never attended a Novus Ordo Mass, and who therefore need it to be explained to them. I was one of those young people who flocked to the (once-forbidden) “old Mass,” and as the years pass, my love for it only grows deeper and stronger. It has nothing to do with nostalgia. Nostalgia would be impossible for people who existed only in God’s mind, not on earth, when Paul VI made his fateful decision to promulgate the Novus Ordo Missae. It has to do with something much more fundamental than nostalgia: the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. Every soul is created by God to resonate with these transcendentals. We yearn for their presence in a modern world hell-bent on falsity, evil, and ugliness. And the traditional Mass, the crown of all the sacred rites and ceremonies of our Faith, powerfully contains and expresses them. What a gift! And what a privilege is ours to see this gift once more given and received!+

Notes

Trans. Kingsley Hart (n.p.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993), 88. [back]

The same section 25 redresses an imbalance from Vatican I: while Pastor Aeternus seemed to focus on infallible ex cathedra pronouncements, i.e., what could be called the extraordinary Magisterium, Lumen Gentium broadened its consideration to include, and to emphasize, the authoritative nature of the Pope’s ordinary Magisterium—a lesson the vast majority of Catholics, both liberal and conservative, have still not accepted. [back]

For more on this, see Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, and Lang, Turning Towards the Lord. [back]

Herbert McCabe, God Matters (New York/London: Continuum, 2005), 215-6. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Marini's conciliarist Manifesto," was originally published in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 6-10, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author. This article is permanently archived at Scripture and Catholic Tradition.]

Newt's daughter's back story on his divorce

2011-11-07T20:52:00.002-05:00

From our "For What It's Worth" department, "About that story where Newt Gingrich served divorce papers on his wife while she was in the hospital ..." (Lex Communis, November 3, 2011): "... totally bogus, according to his daughter," who writes:

My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested.

Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother. She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a tumor. The tumor was benign.

Anglican order of nuns becomes Catholic

2011-11-07T20:47:00.002-05:00

Deacon Greg Kandra reports at Deacon's Bench (November 6, 2011).

[Hat tip to C.B.]

A side of George W. Bush the drive-by media didn't see

2011-11-07T16:21:00.003-05:00

A plagiarism scandal forced Timothy Goeglein to resign in 2008 from former President George W. Bush's administration. Christianity Today magazine interviewed him (published November 3, 2011):

What happened after a reporter revealed that you had plagiarized?

When you embarrass the President, a divorce takes place. You become persona non grata immediately. Through my own fault, no pressure, no stress, no extenuating circumstances, because of what I did and the choices I made, I inflicted shame and embarrassment on the man who has given me the greatest professional opportunity of my life. I inflicted shame and embarrassment on my wife, my children, my 20 years of interns—I was a total hypocrite—and I resigned.

How did President Bush react?

I resigned, no excuses, on a Friday. On a Monday I came in to take the pictures off my wall and clear off my desk, and I received a call from the chief of staff, Josh Bolton. He asked me how my wife and children were doing and told me he forgave me. He said, "The boss wants to see you." That means the President. When I got there, it was just the President and me, and I apologized. He looked at me and said "Tim, I forgive you." I tried to apologize a second time, and he said, "Grace and mercy is real. I've known it in my life and I'm sending it to you." And I said, "Mr. President, I apologize. Please forgive me." He said, "I'll say it again: Grace and mercy is real. You are forgiven. Now we can talk about all of this, or we can talk about the last eight years." We spent 20 minutes together. We prayed and we embraced. I cried when I was looking around the Oval Office for the last time. And as I prepared to leave he said, "By the way, I want you to bring your wife and sons here so I can tell them what a great husband and father you've been." Sure enough, he invited them to come. He was the leader of the free world, validating me, after I did what I did, before my wife and children. (emphasis added)

[Hat tip to C.B.]

On Jimmy Fallon's preference for traditional Catholicism

2011-11-06T10:01:00.002-05:00

Boniface, in "Jimmy Fallon Prefers Traditional Catholicism" (Unam Sanctam Catholicam, October 24, 2011), writes:

Did anybody happen to catch the NPR interview with Jimmy Fallon on "Fresh Air" the other day? It was quite interesting. After a lot of banter about his television program and Saturday Night Live, he talked about his upbringing as a Catholic in the 1980s. Unlike a lot of popular comedians who were raised Catholic, Fallon had nothing negative to say about Catholicism whatsoever. He said that he was very grateful for his Catholic upbringing and loved everything about the Church - he loved Catholic school (St. Mary of the Snow in Saugerties, NY), loved the nuns, loved going to Mass, loved receiving at the rail, and loved the way attending Mass made him feel. He even shared that he had been an altar server, revered and looked up to his parish priest and had once believed he had a vocation to the priesthood. This sort of warm praise of Catholicism was a very welcome thing to hear from a pop comedian.

But even more interesting was when the host, Terry Gross, asked him if he was still a practicing Catholic. Fallon explained that, as often happens, the practice of his faith waned during his teen years. He ended up getting into show business and moved out to Los Angeles. There, around the mid-ninties, he tried to attend Mass again but complained that the Mass had "changed" from the Irish-Catholic Masses he knew as a boy in Saugerties. Among his complaints: the atmosphere was way too casual, there was a rock band playing, people were holding hands constantly, and (tongue in cheek of course, or hopefully) he complained about frisbees being thrown around. This, he said, was not Mass. He went on to say how he cherished the old Mass - the bells, the incense, the kneelers and the aesthetic it all created. Then, in the one quote I can recall with certainty from the interview, he said that he totally disapproved of Mass with all the "bells and whistles," following that up by saying, "Just give me the Mass."

It was inspiring, but also sad, because this experience of an apparently ultra-banal Novus Ordo in the L.A. diocese turned him away from the practice of his faith and, though he still considers himself Catholic, he no longer attends Mass at all. Sure, Fallon is ultimately responsible for whether or not he fulfills his Sunday obligation, but I'd have to think, when stuff like this happens, the persons responsible for these abominable liturgies also share the blame.

Also interesting is what more "traditional" Mass it is that Fallon is remembering so fondly. As someone born in 1974, he never knew the pre-1969 liturgy. It sounds like what he experienced as a boy was simply the Novus Ordo done more or less according to the rubrics in one of New York's more historic churches. He recalls nuns, communion rails, and incense, and this all in the late eighties!

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Boniface: "I am mad" about Assisi

2011-11-06T09:53:00.002-05:00

Boniface writes, over at Unam Sanctam Catholicam (October 28, 2011): "I am mad. More than mad, fuming. So, we were supposed to not get upset about Assisi III? We were supposed to trust that the indiscretions of Assisi I and Assisi II under John Paul "the Great" would not be repeated at Assisi III .... Pray. Do penance. Preach the truth. This nonsense has to stop...."

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Scaring liberals on Halloween

2011-11-06T09:34:00.004-05:00

H. W. Crocker III, an author whose naughty sense of humor I naughtily approve, has given us another gift, this one apparently well in time for Halloween, even though this reporting is somewhat after the fact. In "How to Scare a Liberal to Death" (NRO, October 26, 2011), he offers several juicy suggestions about possible costumes to don for trick-or-treating in neighborhoods infested with blithely smug political liberals:

Nothing offends liberals more than colonialism. It is, in their eyes, racism, sexism, and chauvinism all in one; it is the forcible imposition of Christianity and capitalism; it is the epitome of Western triumphalism. It is everything that leftists profess to hate.

So, what better costumes to don for Halloween than those of great British imperialists throughout the centuries? ...

Eine feste Burg ist Luther?

2011-11-02T21:31:00.016-04:00

While not a convert from Lutheranism, I spent over twenty years of my life among more-or-less Lutheran colleagues at an ELCA university, and if I were to count two of my childhood years boarding with a Missouri-Synod missionary family while attending an international school my parents sent me to in Sapporo, Japan, the number of years would run even higher. Like Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion, we know all the Lutheran jokes, including those about Sven and Ole and their cousins, Ole and Lena.

I have watched a generation of old guard Lutherans suffer through the implosion of their denomination after the merger of three erstwhile Lutheran denominations into the ELCA in 1988. In 2009, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis voted to allow congregations to call and ordain gays and lesbians in committed monogamous relationships to serve as clergy. Seeing the writing on the wall years earlier, conservative Lutheran clergy and laity have been bailing out, forming new denominations, going east to Orthodoxy or swimming the Tiber and becoming Catholics. The ranks of the latter have included the likes of the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Robert Wilken, Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Huetter, Leonard Klein, David Fagerberg, and Mickey Mattox, prompting Carl E. Braaten to write an open letter to his bishop in 2005 about an ELCA "brain drain."

Another former Lutheran, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, wrote yesterday in a post, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (WDTPRS, November 1, 2011):

I, a former Lutheran, think all readers of the Fishwrap should pay special attention to this post I picked up from Fr. Longenecker.

These ... what do you call them ... incongruities? ... exist in order to make irony redundant.

This, friends, is where the liberal agenda will take Catholics:
In celebration of Reformation Day I thought readers might like this photograph of the heirs of Luther:

That would be Lutheran bishop of Stockholm Eva Brunne on the left. Eva is in a 'registered and blessed' homosexual partnership. She and her 'partner' have a child conceived through artificial insimination.

Fr. Z adds:

I remember how in [Catholic] seminary I was forced, over my objections and with realistic threats of expulsion from the faculty, to go to a Lutheran church on [R]eformation [Day] and sing as part of a choir “A mighty fortress is our God”.

Redundant ironies indeed.

Questions for seminarians

2011-11-02T17:46:00.002-04:00

Fr. Zuhlsdorf solicits anonymous feedback: "Questions for seminarians" (WDTPRS, November 2, 2011):

As we know, Universae Ecclesiae spoke to the need for Latin Church seminarians to know the Extraordinary Form.

I would appreciate notes by email from seminarians about what is going on in their programs of formation.

I will of course preserve your anonymity.

On the linked post, Fr. Z gives instructions on how to reach him and offer feedback.

Occupiers: so many costs in such little time

2011-11-02T17:40:00.002-04:00

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Cardinal Pell helping FSSP raise funds for its house in Sydney

2011-11-02T17:29:00.001-04:00

Check it out!

Get your plenary indulgence today ~ and tell a Lutheran

2011-11-02T17:25:00.002-04:00

Nov. 2nd, of course, is a wonderful day to get yourself a plenary indulgence. Visit a cemetery and pray for the faithful departed; go to a church and pray a Pater Noster and recite the Credo for the intentions of the Holy Father; go to Mass today or within a few days; make a good confession on the same day that you assist at Mass; and make sure you are free of all attachment to sin. The Catholic equivalent of frequent-flyer miles, as our Master of Ceremonies reminds us! =)

Fr. Z on an instance of sacrilege at Assisi III

2011-10-30T20:11:00.004-04:00

Nothing overblown, no goats or chickens sacrificed, but a few incisive remarks about a video clip of a "Pagan chant to the deity Olokun in the Basilica of St. Francis during Assisi III" (WDTPRS, October 28, 2011).

As Father says: "For pity’s sake, couldn’t the organizers learned from the mistakes made at Assisi I, back in the day?"

But see also the address of Pope Benedict XVI at Assisi.

Bishop Slattery: "They shouldn't have viewed the old liturgy...as something that needed to be fixed."

2011-10-30T19:56:00.002-04:00

Bishop Edward Slattery, in an interview with the National Catholic Register (October 28, 2011), responded to a question about problems with the liturgy and what changes he would like to see with the following:

I would like to see the liturgy become what Vatican II intended it to be. That’s not something that can happen overnight. The bishops who were the fathers of the council from the United States came home and made changes too quickly. They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed. Nothing was broken. There was an attitude that we had to implement Vatican II in a way that radically affects the liturgy.

What we lost in a short period of time was continuity. The new liturgy should be clearly identifiable as the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church. Changes, like turning the altar around, were too sudden and too radical. There is nothing in the Vatican II documents that justifies such changes. We’ve always had Mass facing the people as well as Mass ad orientem [“to the east,” with priest and people facing the same direction]. However, Mass ad orientem was the norm. These changes did not come from Vatican II.

Also, it was not a wise decision to do away with Latin in the Mass. How that happened, I don’t know; but the fathers of the Council never intended us to drop Latin. They wanted us to hold on to it and, at the same time, to make room for the vernacular, primarily so that the people could understand the Scriptures.

His Excellency goes on to say that he has himself begun celebrating Mass ad orientem, leading by example rather than by dictate. Most importantly, he declares:

But we must approach the liturgy on bended knee with tremendous humility, recognizing that it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God. It is a gift. We worship God not by creating our own liturgies, but by receiving the liturgy as it comes to us from the Church.

A point, surely, that needs to be reiterated throughout the Church these days.

[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]

Ominous signs: state repression of religion on its way

2011-10-26T21:30:00.002-04:00

Russell Shaw, "Are we seeing the beginning of religious persecution in America?" (OSV Newsweekly, November 6, 2011): "Is America on track for a religious freedom crisis generated by secularists in and out of government bent on pushing churches around on a variety of fronts? Fresh evidence strongly suggests that the answer is yes."

[Hat tip to Fr. Zuhlsdorff]

Comments about Communion in the hand attributed to St. Cyril a deception?

2011-10-26T20:37:00.005-04:00

Rev. Fr. Giuseppe Pace, S.D.B., has published an article, "S. Cirillo di Gerusalemme e la Comunione sulla mano" Chiesa Viva (January 1990) (Civiltà, Brescia.), arguing that the words attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem ("When thou goest to receive communion ... [place] thy left hand as a throne for thy right, ... to receive so great a King, and in the hollow of the palm receive the body of Christ, saying, Amen") are an historical deception promoted by a crypto-Arian.

The author, says the article, was "an anonymous Syrian, a devourer of books, an indefatigable writer who poured into his writings, indigested and contaminated figments of own his imagination" -- whose writings became part of the Mystagogical Catechesis through the work of a successor of St. Cyril, who most scholars identify as "Bishop John," a crypto-Arian, influenced by Origen and Pelagius and thus contested by Sts. Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustine.

A translation by Rorate contributor Francesca Romana is available under the title of "The great Catholic horror story: the pseudo-historical deception of Communion in the hand" (Rorate Caeli, Octobwer 26, 2011).

It will be interesting to hear what the patristic scholars have to say about this.

When diocesan offices undermine Catholic faith

2011-10-25T20:11:00.002-04:00

It's not as if this hasn't happened before in Church history, but we may sometimes forget that it does happen. That is, official representatives of the Church can sometimes be, either through malignant neglect or deliberate sabotage, the Church's own worst enemy.

This is truly remarkable. I urge you to view this report in full. The spiritual battle of our times is one that is sometimes being waged, not between those inside and outside the Church, but between the Catholic faithful and those directly charged with the care of their souls.

And for anyone who missed the earlier report, see below:

Don Pietro Leone's "The Roman Rite: Old and New"

2011-10-25T20:00:00.003-04:00

Rorate Caeli has been posting a 4-part series on the short, yet powerful masterpies: The Roman Rite: Old and New, by Don Pietro Leone Monselice:

Part I: "Introduction: Preface and Historical Introduction" (October 18, 2011)
Part II: "Catholicism, Protestantism, and the theology of the New Roman Rite" (October 20, 2011)
Part III: "The theology of the Traditional and New Rites: Offertory, Canon, and the 'Eucharistic Prayers'" (October 23, 2011)
Part IV: "The theology of the New Mass: crisis in faith in the Real Presence, Sacramental Priesthood, and the Ends of the Mass" (October 24, 2011)
Part V: "The theology of the New Mass: Latin, Orientation, Altar as Table, Participation"

20 Years of the Tridentine Mass in Metro Detroit

2011-10-24T20:11:00.003-04:00

Tridentine Community News (October 23, 2011):

It all began with a plan. A group of enterprising Canadians wanted to worship according to the historic Latin Rite of the Church. A similar group of Americans, undeterred by the Archdiocese of Detroit’s unwillingness to permit a Tridentine Mass on their own turf, formed a partnership of sorts with their Canadian brethren to attempt to start one in Windsor. A complete operational plan was drawn up before approaching the Diocese of London, Ontario: celebrant, chapel, supplies, budget, handouts, and most every detail were pre-arranged. All that was needed was permission.

]
Then-Auxiliary Bishop Frederick Henry approved of the plan, and in 1991 Mass began in the chapel of Assumption College High School (photo above), on Huron Church Road just south of the Ambassador Bridge. The first regular Chaplain of the group was Fr. Alexander Barna.

In 1999, the Mass was relocated to the chapel of the Villa Maria Nursing Home (photo above), located on the bank of the Detroit River. The Chaplain at the time, Fr. Ronold [sic] Pazik, was rather short of stature, and as a result, the main altar in the chapel could not be used. Mass was celebrated at a tiny side altar. These were difficult years; the nursing home setting unfortunately caused attendance to decline.

Incoming Diocese of London Bishop Ronald Fabbro sympathized with the group’s desire to relocate to a more fitting setting for the Mass, and granted permission in 2003 to move to the 1950s-era St. Michael’s Church (photo above). The Chaplain in those years was the indefatigable Fr. Ulysse Lefaive, and the pastor of the host parish at the time just happened to be the Episcopal Vicar, Fr. James Roche, whose wise counsel and continuing assistance helped the Mass to grow.

In 2007, the group experienced a blessing in disguise. Parish politics at St. Michael’s put some obstacles in the way of proper celebration of the Mass. Then-Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Daniels agreed with the group’s suggestion that this was an opportune time for an upgrade. His Excellency arranged a relocation to the most beautiful church in Windsor, Our Lady of the Assumption (photo above), the oldest parish in Ontario. God graced the group with a new Chaplain, Fr. Peter Hrytsyk, who was intent on improving the quality of the liturgy to match its new home.

In 2004, members of the group helped to found Detroit’s long-awaited first Tridentine Mass at St. Josaphat Church, and later its descendant Masses at St. Albertus, St. Joseph, and Sweetest Heart of Mary Churches. The professional choir that sings every Sunday year-round at Assumption has been called upon to sing at special occasion Masses at the National Shrine of the Little Flower, St. Peter’s Seminary, St. Hyacinth Church, Flint’s All Saints Church, and elsewhere.

The pioneering souls behind this enterprise have names. May we ask your prayers for the founders and original members of the Windsor Tridentine Mass Association: Helen Broderick, Ray Cameron, John Foot, Brad Nelson, Michel Ozorak, Richard Walczak, and the late Earl Amyotte, Germaine Deimling, Murray Harris, and Thomas Marshall. Metro Detroit and Windsor’s currently thriving Tridentine Mass scene would not exist without their well thought-out efforts.

All Souls Day – Wednesday, November 2

For the third year in a row, we will be holding a special All Souls Day evening of liturgies. This year’s event will take place at St. Josaphat Church, with Low Masses at 6:00 PM and a Solemn High Mass at 7:00 PM. Details will be provided next week.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Mon. 10/24 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Raphael the Archangel)

Tue. 10/25 7:00 PM: High Requiem Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Daily Mass for the Dead with Absolution at the Catafalque)

Fri. 10/28 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Ss. Simon & Jude, Apostles)

Bishop Sample's simple and compelling catechesis on EF liturgy

2011-10-24T20:00:00.003-04:00

Bishop Alexander King Sample (b. 1960) is the twelfth and current Bishop of Marquette.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]