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Benedict's Secret Plan is Working!

Cross-fertilization requires diversity.  Pope Benedict's plan of letting the older forms of the Roman Rite as well as the rich liturgical patrimony of the West cross-fertilize the liturgy after Vatican II is progressing.

Over the years I have grown increasingly uneasy with the reductionist reforms of the Council of Trent. They reduced genuine, legitimate liturgical diversity in the West. In its true form as envisioned in the Liturgical Movement, that diversity is again flowering up amid the withering weeds of false diversity and the banal desert characterizing the forty years after Sacrosanctum Concilium.  Consider these news items:

1) A Jesuit celebrated his first mass according to the Extaordinary Form of the Roman Rite in Massachusetss: "Fr. William V. Blazek, S.J., newly ordained for the Jesuit Chicago-Detroit province, celebrated his first Solemn High Mass (Extraordinary Form) on June 24 (Nativity of St. John the Baptist) at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton, MA."  Father Jungmann must be smiling in heaven.

2) In Melbourne, the Australian Students Association celebrated the mass three times once according to the extraordinary Form, once chanted (apparently in Latin) according to the Ordinary Form ad orientem (the Proper was chanted), and once in the Ordinary Form versus populum.  The New Liturgical Movement tells us that "The conference was entitled Defending Human Dignity and Fr Aidan Nichols OP was the invited international speaker.

'ACSA with an appreciation and understanding of the full worth of the Sacred liturgy as described by the Church, desires to have its liturgies celebrated with dignity and in accordance with the mind of the Church, particular under the light of the Second Vatican council’s document Sacrosanctum Concilium.' (ACSA Liturgical Guidelines)"

3)  In my old diocese (Arlington) "former Anglican archbishop, Father Sly, 63" was ordained into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter." It is the second such jurisdiction established under the provisions of Pope Benedict's 2009 apostolic constitution 'Anglicanorum coetibus,'" which created a structure united with Rome for former Anglicans ans Episcopalians who now use a form of the Latin Rite using a liturgy based on the Book of Common Prayer and presumably the Sarum Use.

4) And "the Dominican Friars at St. Patrick’s in Columbus, OH [have announced] the celebration of the Solemnity of Holy Father Dominic with a Missa Cantata, celebrated according to the Dominican Rite, on Saturday, August 4th at 10:30 AM. In the old calendar of the Mass, the Solemnity of Our Holy Father Dominic fell on August 4."

Inflaming your Chances of Heart Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer', Stroke & cancer

Beyer rightly touts aspirin as "the miracle drug:" aspirin reduces inflammation. The reason why is becoming clearer as we learn how much damage inflammation does.

Kaua Landro asks in the Wall Street Journal, "What do heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, stroke and cancer have in common?" It turns out that each is linked to chronic inflammation, and she tells us scientists "are studying how high-fat foods and excess body weight may increase the risk for fatal disorders."

Thus that beer belly is a worry. Arthur Agatston, the famed heart specialist tells us in the South Beach Heart Program that an extra pound of fat requires the heart to pump blood through an extra mile of arteries and veins.  Now Laura Londo tells us those pounds around the waist also causes inflammation.


You can read her article, "The New Science Behind America's Deadliest Diseases." or watch her video interview: "How Inflammation Can Ravage the Body:"



Some good news: she tells us a new test helps detect that inflammation within us better: