Bottum On First Things

Put on your earphones and listen to what First Things is about. More fundamentally, what Joseph Bottum is going to do with it now that Fr. John Neuhaus is holing court in a more luminous place:

Interview with Joseph Bottum from Joe Carter on Vimeo.

Benedict Approves a Document on the Reform of the Reform

As with past councils, it is only now that the fruits of the council are budding.

Rejoice and be glad!

Succoth, the festival of Huts, was a harvest feast. It was called Pentecost in Greek (fifty days after.) It too will come! We will harvest the fruits of the Council!

There is a special irony. The Hebrews lived in tents (huts, booths, tabernacles=tents) for forty years. We seem fated to spend forty years in the dessert living in tents before we reach the promised land. So it was after Vatican I and so it has been liturgically after Vatican II!

You Never Know What Impact You Have.

Robert (not Michael) Novak died yesterday. Yes, that is the Novak of Novak and Evans. Atholic News Service tells us:

"Novak then started to go to Mass regularly and decided to convert a few years later. According to Novak, the turning point came when he visited Syracuse University in New York to lecture. Before he spoke he was seated at a dinner table near a young woman who wore a cross necklace. Novak asked her if she was Catholic, and she asked him the same.

"Novak said that he had been going to Mass each Sunday for the last four years, but had not converted.

“'Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever,' the woman responded, thus moving the journalist to begin studying for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, the rite by which people learn the Catholic faith. He was baptized at St. Patrick’s in 1998. His wife was also baptized a Catholic."

When biopsy revealed a major tumor and that he had six months to a year to live, Novak said, “Being read your death sentence is like being a character in one of the old Bette Davis movies. I believe I was able to withstand this shock because of my Catholic faith, to which I converted in 1998.”

If Cardinal Pell Is for It, It Is Worth a Look

Louie Verrecchio has crafted a program of study of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. According to Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sidney, "I found Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II to be a rich and detailed resource... I consider this to be an excellent way to study the Vatican II documents whether individually or in a group." Verrecchio's Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II is a highly acclaimed adult faith formation tool that has been helping parish based study groups and individuals worldwide since 2004. He also writes a column on Catholic News service entitled, you guessed it, "Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II."

The New Improved Confession

Progress comes to Spain? Or does it? Don't watch this in a quiet library or study hall, your laughter will disrupt everything! It is in Spanish, but the subtitles will have you rolling in the aisles.



Pray for vocations.

Today (7/20) is the feast of Saint Apollonaris.

Today (7/20) is the feast of Saint Apollonaris. Tradition has it that Peter, himself, ordained him bishop of Ravenna. He was sent a missionary bishop there during the reign of Claudius. He had a great reputatution as a healer for Christ. He suffered torture, exiles, and ultimately death. An evangelist, as any true missionary must be, his tortures at one point culminated in their beading his mouth with stones to shut him up. They sent him to Greece where his presences caused the oracles to cease. You could say he made Christ's enemies dumb. In the words of today's Proper, "This holy man fought to the death for the law of his God, never cowed by the threats of the wicked; his house was built on solid rock."

You see pictured the aspe of S.Apollinare en Classe. Revenna was a major port in Late antiquity. Ravenna was the capital of the Western Empire from 402 A.D. and the imperial capital in Italy when Justinian reclaimed it for the new Rome. This basilica and S.Apollinare Nuovo are what churches should be. They were built fifteen hundred years ago and have hardly been renovated since. You can see them as they were. The martyr is shown as a shepherd surrounded by his sheep. Jesus reigns above him.

Note the altar comes out from the wall. This allows the celebrant to walk around the altar, but it is clear that the mass is said to the east, the direction of the rising Sun/Son. I suspect this better in keeping with the General Instruction than the turn around altars of the last forty years when the Western liturgy has wandered in the desert.

The nave is lined with mosaics of the saints, martyrs, and angels, our coparticipants in the divine liturgy. They are less spectacular than those in S.Apollinare Nuovo. (The latter is marred by turn around altar in the nave.) There is a remarkable amount of light in these buildings, a reminder of the importance of creating interior light in the world before electricity. We do not feel older eras' awe of Christ who is the Light of the World.

Again from today's Proper: "Lord, may the mysteries we reeive give us spiritual courage which made your martyr, Saint Apollinaris, faithful in your service and victorious in his suffering. Grant this in the name of Jesu the Lord."

Saint Apollinaris pray for us.

Professor Tolkien join us in praying for the liturgy.

Pope Ratzinger's Liturgical Manifesto

Sandro Magister argues that for Benedict "The Christian revolution is born in the liturgy." He then explores Benedict's Holy Thursday homily which is a commentary on the Roman Canon and his catechesis for January 7, 2009, on "spiritual" worship. This latter, in particular, dovetails well with the Pope's recent Wednesday audience on Rabanus Maurus.

The liturgy is not something solipsistic, but draws on the integrity of body and soul, the senses as well as the mind, in one integrated whole.

In particular, he presents Benedict's "catechesis for January 7, the rest of which is dedicated to illustrating Christian worship as a whole. It is that worship which the Roman Canon, following St. Paul, defines as 'rationabile.'

"The current translation of 'rationabile,' in the modern languages, is 'spiritual.' But Benedict XVI warns against thinking that Christian worship is something metaphorical, moralistic, purely interior. No, he explains, true Christian worship draws upon men and the world in their entirety, it is also bodily and material, it is the 'cosmic liturgy' in which 'the peoples united in Christ, the world, may become the glory of God.'

"It is extremely rare, in modern theological and liturgical commentary, to find an explanation of the meaning of Christian worship that is as penetrating as in these two texts of pope Ratzinger's preaching."