ex corde ecclesiae

Michael Novak on Joe Paterno

2012-01-30T21:22:00.002-06:00

In National Review Online, Michael Novak decries the shoddy "Injustice Done to Joe Paterno."

Read and weep.

Should We Sing "The Streets of Wichita?"

2012-01-29T22:24:00.000-06:00

Jasmine Bonnin - Strassen unserer Stadt 1975
Deutsche Version von Ralph McTell's Hit 'Streets of London' (1969)

Siehst du dort den alten Mann?
Mit ausgetret'nen Schuh'n schlurft er über's Pflaster
und er sieht so müde aus.
Hin und wieder hält er an,
nicht nur um sich auszuruh'n,
denn er hat kein Ziel und auch kein zu Haus'.

Doch du redest nur von Einsamkeit
und dass die Sonne für dich nicht scheint.
Komm und gib mir deine Hand,
ich führe dich durch uns're Straßen,
ich zeig' dir Menschen,
die wirklich einsam sind.

Kennst du die alte Frau,
die auf dem Marktplatz steht mit schneeweißem Haar,
welken Blumen in der Hand?
Die Leute geh'n vorbei,
sie merkt nicht, wie die Zeit vergeht,
so steht sie jeden Tag und niemand stört sich dran.

Siehst du dort den alten Mann?
Mit ausgetret'nen Schuh'n schlurft er über's Pflaster
und er sieht so müde aus.
Denn in einer Welt,
in der nur noch Jugend zählt,
ist für ihn kein Platz mehr und auch kein zu Haus.

Doch du redest nur von Einsamkeit
und dass die Sonne für dich nicht scheint.
Komm und gib mir deine Hand,
ich führe dich durch uns're Straßen,
ich zeig' dir Menschen,
die wirklich einsam sind.

Here is the composer himself singing it in English, Ralph McTell, singing "The Streets of London:"

The Centrality of Faith to our Founding and Our Human Rights

2012-01-28T13:51:00.000-06:00

Much commentary is being written about the last debate of the Florida Republican primary.

Rick Santorum was asked last night what role faith would play in his decisions as president. Commentary's Peter Wehner is right when he calls former senator Santorum's reply,"[t]he best answer of the night in terms of political philosophy":

"Faith is a very, very important part of my life, but it’s a very, very important part of this country. The foundational documents of our country — everybody talks about the Constitution, very, very important. But the Constitution is the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. The “why” of America, who we are as a people, is in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Constitution is there to do one thing: protect God-given rights. That’s what makes America different than every other country in the world. No other country in the world has its rights — rights based in God-given rights, not government-given rights. And so when you say, well, faith has nothing to do with it, faith has everything to do with it. If rights come… (applause) if our president believes that rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away. And so the answer to that question is, I believe in faith and reason and approaching the problems of this country but understand where those rights come from, who we are as Americans and the foundational principles by which we have changed the world."

The father of our constitution, James Madison, advised that the only real guarantee of our liberty is that there is a Higher Authority than the state.

Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind

2012-01-28T01:21:00.001-06:00

My favorite anti-war song. Marline Dietriech singing "Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind." There is quite a shift in the English ("Where Have All the Flowers Gone?") in tense and action. As for the English, think Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Fidelity

2011-12-27T08:21:00.002-06:00

Quote of the Day: the "central issue of our culture is fidelity, not adultery or sex abuse." -Alfred McBride.

Crushing Grapes with the Turn of the Season: The Seekers and "Turn, Turn, Turn"

2011-10-24T20:35:00.001-05:00

Pete Seeger wrote "Turn, Turn, Turn" with his Co-Author, God. The words are straight out of Ecclesiastes (no, not Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Ben Sirach, one of my favorite books in the bible.) The Byrds made it wildly popular. The Seekers take us the the Barossa Valley in South Australia at wine harvest season to make it real. An absolutely beautiful version.

2011-10-24T02:17:00.000-05:00

The seekers did the haunting Beatles ballad, "Yesterday." Judith Durham makes entirely forget that it was a guy singing. It's worth comparing with the Lennon McCarthy gang.

Jasmine Bonnin's FAB Interview [Auf Deutsch]

2011-10-23T22:15:00.001-05:00

Jasmine Bonnin in der Sendung Dorffmann & King-Show auf FAB.
Ihre bisherige Erscheinungen: LPs: "Gelöstes Haar", "Keine Angst", "Zuhause"; CDs: "Gelöstes Haar", "best of...", "Sehn-süchtig." [Jasmine Bonnin's interview on German TV.]

The Seekers - "I am Australian."

2011-10-23T19:38:00.001-05:00

They look a little older here. This is at the Spirit of Australia Day celebration. That looks like Slim Dusty in the audience (the guy with the Akubra and the hook nose.)

If you did not know it, the Seekers are Aussies.

The Seekers: "I'll Never Meet Another You"

2011-10-23T13:44:00.000-05:00

The Seekers were a folk group during the mini "folk" boom of the '50s and '60s. When I first heard this song, I did not the antecedent of "you." Eine Schade! You can have the lyrics displayed while they sing.

"Mit siebzehn"

2011-10-22T22:29:00.001-05:00

Jasmine Bonnin sings live on the Dorffmann & King-Show. This is a Joni Mitchell song. Very pretty. Very well done. Poignant. In german.

Noch Einmal

2011-10-08T21:13:00.003-05:00

And then you can hear the German version "in our streets." Never in our streets of course.

Jasmine Bonnin sings a compact and powerful version in German:- "Strassen unserer Stadt." it is too easy to think this is a song about somewhere else.

The Power of Folk songs

2011-10-08T20:56:00.002-05:00

Teller sings "The Streets of London." I have heard folksingers sing this in many a place, often changing the lyrics to reflect where we were. It is evocative, haunting.

The Mass In English

2011-09-22T16:22:00.002-05:00

The English have a home court advantage when it comes to Shakespeare's tongue. They have stolen the march on us with the new translation of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. They started using the new translation with this month already. We do not start until Advent, the start of the next liturgical year.

Bishop Davies also wrote his flock:

"I am also conscious we have just begun to use the new translation of The Roman Missal which unites us in worship. At the heart of Pope Benedict's visit to our country was always the Holy Eucharist celebrated with great dignity and adored with love and reverence. The Holy Father asked that the introduction of this revised English translation would be something more than simply a change of wording: "I encourage you now to seize the opportunity that the new translation offers," he asked, "for in-depth catechesis on the Eucharist and renewed devotion in the manner of its celebration." As we become more familiar with this fresh translation, I hope it will enrich our prayer and understanding, help us to recognise more clearly in the Liturgy the words and images of Scripture and, by the beauty and richness of its language, express our wonder at the mystery and reality of the Mass. I hope we will always go beyond the translated words to the reality they express at the heart of the Mass: Jesus Christ, His Sacrifice and His Real Presence with us as we come together with all the Church. "

Courtesy of Zenit.

Is Tommorrow Is Fast Day #1 In England and Wales

2011-09-22T16:16:00.000-05:00

Meatless Fridays are back (in England at least.) Mark Davies, the Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury, wrote his flock that:

"From Friday this week, the Bishops of England and Wales have restored the practice of abstinence from meat every Friday. We are familiar with this act of penance on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday but now it is extended to every Friday other than Feast Days like Christmas Day.

"For a number of years we have been asked to choose our own act of self-denial on Fridays to mark the day on which Our Lord gave His life for us. But we know this obligation has in practice been often forgotten. So abstinence from meat each Friday (and for those who do not eat meat, abstinence from some other food) will become a weekly reminder that we are a people called to penance and to conversion of life together. It will become a small but significant weekly witness to our Catholic life and identity. And so I wish us to embrace this in a positive way despite the practical difficulties we may encounter. The very fact this will be an act of penance shared by all Catholics will be a witness to our faith in the midst of our working and family lives. "

"The times they are a changin'" as Mr. Dylan once told us. The letter can be read in Zenit.

Feast of the Holy Name of Mary

2011-09-12T10:05:00.000-05:00

Today is the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. Since the decree of Pius X, it commemorates the great Polish Hero, John Sobieski [1629-1696], who raised siege of Vienna on September 12, 1683. Mark Alessio provides the background and more.

Links to Chants

2011-08-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

You can find chants and music for Sundays and feasts at:

Jogueschant.org

There are links for both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite.

2011-08-05T14:24:00.000-05:00

I cited Johnny Hixson's quotation of Pius XII on Facebook in the previous post. I seemed to have elicited some hot responses. I apologize for having thrown lighter fuel on the fire. My previous posting was a little more nuanced than my Facebook response.

My dislike for low masses is personal not something I would like to impose. And I would, of course, make exceptions for private masses and extraordinary circumstances. A Chinese priest hoping to say mass before the commissar caught him might, like our Irish and English ancestors, want to be quick and quiet about it. (Think of Tom Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing.) I would also like to ban all high masses that are not chanted even though it means no Byrd, no Tallis, no Palestrina, and no, sigh, Mozart. I can love them in the concert hall and on CD, but there is no room for the congregation when the mass becomes a concert.

I still have bitter memories of 15 minute speed masses from the fifties. I am not saying all masses were that way, but a mass production mentality was too easy a temptation. (Sorry about the pun.) When I see younger clergy like Fr. Lies or Bishop James Conley celebrating the liturgy using the Missal of John XXIII with a spirituality nurtured by the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, I can understand how that spirituality then animates their celebration of the Ordinary Form. It is a reflection of the human condition that we needed forty years in the liturgical desert before we were able to rediscover the Roman Rite with fresh eyes and hear it as we chant a new song.

There is no reason why, with a modern, educated laity, that all masses can’t be chanted with the congregation chanting the Gloria, the Credo, the Pater Noster, the responses, etc. whether using the Missal of John XXIII (1962) or that of Paul VI (1970). Indeed the new English Missal will even facilitate the congregation’s chanting the Propers in English! I prefer Latin, of course. There will be no excuse for Marty Haugen or the St. Louis Jesuits, not that I expect to see them banned unfortunately.

Senseless Antiquarianism

2011-08-02T19:27:00.001-05:00

Anachronism in the reform of liturgy is no virtue.

Organic development is no vice.

Johnny Hixson quotes Pius XII on Facebook:

"Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See."
-Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947

A few observations:

I have not checked the accuracy of the translation, but"straying from the straight path" sounds too much like a Maoism. Pius forgive me (or is it your translator?)

In paragraph 64, Pius XII rejects "senseless antiquarianism." I agree. Mr. Hixson's quote is from Paragraph 62 and should be read in this context. Benedict has explained this with great theological insight both now and before his papacy. Renewing the liturgy is central to renewing the church. Wrecking the liturgy to reconstruct some scholar's mistaken imagining of how the primitive church must have performed the liturgy is not renewal.

In the context of all three paragraphs of Mediator Dei, Pius rejects those who attack as inauthentic any development of the liturgy after that of the primitive church, i.e., as reconstructed in the mind models of scholars. He himself reformed the Holy Week liturgy which is how it came to its form in the Missal of John XXIII: the 1962 Missal commonly used as the missal in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

Personally I believe that the idea the altar should be a Renaissance dinner table is anachronistic. Whether the table is like Michelangelo's Last Supper or Luther's Tisch, it is neither like what Christ sat at nor like the altar in the Jewish Temple. Both are Renaissance projections back to the first century: "senseless antiquarianism."

Personally I love sacred polyphony, but prefer chant in mass and think every mass should be chanted. I would eliminate low masses other than private masses and under extraordinary circumstances. Music after Praetorius, even that of divine Mozart, robs the congregation of its rightful role. This is a tragedy of the reductionist reforms of Trent. It is even true even of my beloved Renaissance polyphony. Am I throwing the baby out with the bath water? Tallis forgive me!

Men at Work playing "Land Down Under"

2011-07-29T22:48:00.001-05:00

This is the real deal!

Peter Allen's "I Still Call Australia Home "

2011-07-29T22:34:00.002-05:00

A More Sydney oriented version:

John Williams: Gallereries of Pink Galahs

2011-07-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

Nothing Without You: Chandelier of Stars

2011-07-04T21:55:00.000-05:00

Great country song by John Williamson: Chandelier of Stars. All rights belong to him. If you would like to buy it: http://bigpondmusic.com/Album/John-Williamson/Chandelier-Of-Stars2.aspx?searc...

John Williamson Malle Boy

2011-07-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

A Pub With No Beer

2011-07-03T23:26:00.000-05:00

Unthinkable - A Pub With No Beer, here's the great Slim Dusty.

I Am Australian

2011-07-03T23:04:00.000-05:00

This is a song written by Bruce Woodley (him you see here starting to sing the song) and Dobe Newton and should warm the cockles any Aussie's heart where every he or she might be.

Some Straight Men Are Too Straight

2011-06-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

Your Aussie a bit rusty? Here's an Australian TV mob reacting to one of their number's trying to tell a joke to the Dalai Lama:

Thanks to Carl McColman via Jim Graf:

http://anamchara.com/2011/06/14/what-not-to-say-to-the-dalai-lama/

One Smart, Determined Lady

2011-04-03T23:01:00.002-05:00

Usually Ph.D.s in neuroscience spend their lives chasing federal grants and finding Darwinian explanations for common sense or replacing the truths of revelation with the law of the jungle. Michelle Nihei took the analytical mind of a scientist and the stick-to-it-ivity of a successful scholar and channeled them into her passion: horses.

Dr. Nehei left an academic job at Johns Hopkins to go back to Kentucky seeking work exercising horses, a sure fire path to poverty. Bill Finley in the New York Times tells us, "She could have had a long career as a scientist. Instead, she chose to take her diplomas, her training and her background and virtually dump them in the trash."

Why?

“'I just knew I’d be happiest doing this,'” she said." So much for stereotypes!

She is now that rare soul, an increasingly successful woman trainer in a man's world of racing.

How did she do it?

"In 2003 she joined trainer Todd Pletcher as an assistant and soon was handling strings in Kentucky, Florida, and Delaware. During this time she rode and helped train champions Ashado and English Channel in addition to many other stakes winners." Jacqueline Duke is writing about her on BloodHorse.com, the web site for Blood Horse magazine a trade publication in the thoroughbred horse industry. Todd Pletcher might be thought of as the IBM of horse training, commanding many of the best as well as many of the less classy horses. To manage horses in various parts of the country requires management skills as well as hands-on horse training. Duke tells us, Nihei "learned important lessons about organization and consistency." There's more to being a trainer than just handling the horses.

When it comes to determination, do not underestimate this lady. Remember that riding three quarters of a ton horses in not quite a safe profession. As an exercise rider for Pletcher, a filly filliped over on her, breaking "her tibia and tore all the supporting structures in a knee."

Duke tells us, "As paramedics loaded her into the ambulance, one of them told her, 'You’ll be lucky if you ever walk again. You will never ride again.'"

Did that daunt her? Heck no! She told them, "'Watch me. Even if you cut this thing off, I will ride again.'”

Leigh Hornbeck, a writer for the Saratoga Times Union, puts it in perspective after she interviewed Nihei: "She’s an exceptional person – if she wasn’t so gracious you might hate her – smart, pretty, incredibly fit."

What Really Happened When They Reformed the Liturgy?

2011-02-16T22:34:00.002-06:00

Nicola Giampietro: "They have all the best intentions, but with this mentality they have only been able to demolish and not to restore." (192)

The Rev. Dr Alcuin Reid, one of the most sensible liturgists in the Catholic world, reviews Nicola Giampietro, The Development of the Liturgical Reform: As Seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948-197 (Fort Collins CO: Roman Catholic Books, 2009 xx + 347 pages. Paperback. $33.75 in Antiphon, the journal of liturgical renewal.

Giampietro was there when it all happened. He was heavily involved in the liturgical Movement. He was the secretary to the second Vatican council's work on Sacrosanctum Consilium, its constitution on the liturgy. You can read his review on the New Liturgical Movement.

2011-01-02T19:48:00.000-06:00

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://video.news.com.au/1700540296/Tim-Wintons-shore-thing"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;VIDEO: Tim Winton's shore thing&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

From The Australian via News.com.au, enjoy this fair dinkum video in which Aussie Tim Winton reads from his book Land's Edge, A Coastal Memoir. The images are by Narelle Autio. Winton is from West australia (Perth maybe?)

Dancing

2010-09-26T14:19:00.000-05:00

Dancing has been frowned upon by some denominations at various times. Generally speaking, the Catholic church has consider dancing a good thing until proven otherwise. Certainly David danced into Jerusalem before the Ark of the Covenant. Nevertheless, liturgical dance is not something I am convinced has a place in the mass.

Dancing is an activity that allows the more "mature" in age (if not necessarily in wisdom) to get physical exercise and help the romance in our marriages.

YouTube has a wealth of instruction:

You will find following some examples:

Beginners Waltz - Left Foot Closed Change

Now Andy and Wendy do the Beginner's Waltz - Reverse Turn

And Andy and Wendy do the Beginner's Waltz - The Hesitation

And Andy and Wendy do the Bronze 1 Waltz - Whisk and Chasse:

And Andy and Wendy do the Bronze 1 Standard Routines - Waltz

And Andy and Wendy do the Bronze 2 Waltz - Basic Weave

I suspect the Hiltons are British and they are doing International style:

Beautiful Basics - Marcus and Karen Hilton

Visit VNDANCE.INFO - Marcus and Karen Hilton - Beautiful Basics

Slow Waltz Part 2 - Group 2 - Running Chasse & Oversway

Marcus & Karen Hilton - Simply The Best

A Bohemian Beer Garden In Queens!

2010-08-16T06:51:00.001-05:00

The Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria Queens serves Pilsner Urquell, Czechvar (i.e., the real Budweiser), and Spatten Oktoberfest on a great beer menu.

Jim Farber and Gina Salamone report in the Daily News that it is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. Eric Krajkovic, 31, of Long Island City, told them, "You can come here when it's packed by yourself and sit there at a table and get into a conversation with 30 other people." He "has been coming to Bohemian Hall since he went as a baby with his family."

Ahoy!

Stupak Steps Down

2010-05-27T15:30:00.001-05:00

April 9th, 2010: Naftali Bendavid reports in the Wall Street Journal that Congressman Stupak will not run again. Stupak was the leader of the pro-life democrats in the battle over the health care finance bill.

"Last month, when the House took its final vote on the Senate bill, Mr. Stupak went along with slightly less restrictive language requiring that women write a separate check to their insurer for abortion coverage. He did so with the promise that Mr. Obama would sign his executive order, which he subsequently did. When Mr. Stupak's agreement became known early on the day of the vote, opponents of the health bill knew they'd lost."

"Mr. Stupak, leading a group of other anti-abortion House Democrats, forced Democratic leaders to include strict anti-abortion language in the House health care bill. He ultimately agreed to the slightly less restrictive Senate bill, with the agreement that President Barack Obama would sign an executive order specifying that no federal funds would go to abortion.

"Since then, he has been vilified by both sides. Mr. Stupak has faced unrelenting hostility from the abortion rights community, which sees the new provisions as a major setback for women. Anti-abortion activists have depicted Mr. Stupak as a traitor who caved to Democratic leaders at the last minute."
"

Sacred Language and the Sacred Liturgy

2010-02-28T22:48:00.000-06:00

We have a new (and better) translation of the liturgy coming soon. The current English translation of the mass became available in 1970. Vatican II permitted it to be used in whole or in part during the mass. The de facto transition from its being being an option to its being a mandate occurred with dizzying rapidity.

Christine Mohrmann gave the Dougherty lectures at Catholic U. in 1957 on the development of Liturgical Latin and its relationship to Early Christian Latin. What she, a renowned expert on the subject, had to say is extremely interesting in light of Rome's current guidelines on translation (Liturgiam Authenticam) and the recent "translation wars."

I transcribed two quotations from hose lectures. Please note that one popular, but simplistic, misconception about the transition of the Roman liturgy from Greek to Latin is that this was a attempt to put the liturgy into the ordinary language of the people. Far from it!

Dr. Mohrmann writes, "Latin used in the liturgy displays a sacral style. The basis and starting point of Liturgical Latin is the Early Christian idiom, which, however, through the use of features of style drawn form the Early Roman sacral tradition mingled with biblical stylistic elements, has taken on a strongly hieratic character, widely removed from the Christian colloquial language."

"The earliest liturgical Latin is a strongly stylized, more or less artificial language, of which many elements–for instance the Orations–were not easily understood even by the average Christian of the fifth century or later."

Apparently, in the late 1950s, there was already a strong movement in liturgical circles to put the liturgy into the vernacular. Not only is Mohrmann aware of this tendency, but she is quite clear that least common denominator language of the street does not reflect the tradition of the early church. Indeed, she tells us, "The advocates of the use of the vernacular in the liturgy who maintain that even in Christian Antiquity the current speech of everyday life, 'the Latin of the common man,' was employed, are far off the mark."

The quotations are from Chrstine Morhmann, Liturgical Latin Its Origins and Character: Three Lectures (Catholic University Press: Washington, D.C.: 1957.)

2009-12-15T22:23:00.000-06:00

Scelata is a blog by a Catholic parish music director.

He/she has a great picture (I assume it was enhanced):

Laetabundus: the Sequence for Christmas

2009-12-03T15:47:00.000-06:00

As long time readers of "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" know, I have never forgiven the Council of Trent for eliminating all but a handful of sequences. Christmas is a glaring hole in the liturgical calender. Although it is a big feast for ordinary folk in the pews, it does not merit a sequence in wither the Missal of John XXIII or Paul VI.

Sequences are lengthy chants that should follow the Gospel Alleluia, hence the name "sequence." (The General Instruction seems to require that order be reversed in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite which makes no sense liturgically, musically, or historically.) As I see it, the sequences' main function is to give musical coverage for a more elaborate gospel procession on special feasts or in big Cathedrals. Sequences are a "drawing out' of the Alleluia verse while the procession processes. Their cadence suits a procession.

It turns out there is a Christmas sequence and it is not a liturgical fossil. It is the Eleventh Century chant, "Laurabundus." It is still in the Dominican Missal, which is one of the uses of the Roman Rite

Jeffrey Tucker alerts us to its existence and has posted a video of its being sung. Read "Sweeten Your Christmas Song: Laetabundus."

Alleluia!

There is a New Biography of Ayn Rand–in Fact, Two!

2009-12-01T23:01:00.001-06:00

Jennifer Burns has written a new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. And it has gotten a good deal of attention and Kendra Marr writes in Politco.com that Ayn Rand is having a mainstream moment."

On National Review Online, Peter Wehner hopes it will pass because "Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut." He reminds us that "Whittaker Chambers...in 1957, reviewed Atlas Shrugged in National Review and read her out of the conservative movement." You can find that review online. Rand's system seems as rational and inhuman as that of the socialists, yet her books have great appeal to libertarians and others. They sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Michael Berliner critiques Chambers' review in Capitalism Magazine. Read both and judge for your self.

there is also a second new biography out: Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Doubleday, 2009.)

Bottum On First Things

2009-10-20T06:43:00.000-05:00

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

2009-08-22T23:31:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-08-19T08:46:00.002-05:00

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

2009-08-19T08:39:00.004-05:00

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

2009-08-11T06:51:00.002-05:00

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.

2009-07-20T08:28:00.006-05:00

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

2009-06-09T05:35:00.003-05:00

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."

They Shoot Students, Don't They?

2009-06-05T06:21:00.007-05:00

Last week I recalled my memories of the day blood ran on Tiananmen Square. Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the massacre.

Click through to view a series of of video reports at the Financial Times including an interview with Bao Pu who edited Prisoner of the State.

On this memorial of the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square, Cardinal Joseph Zen raised up the example of Tobias as one who honored the dead.

Pentecost: Today's Introit

2009-05-31T16:45:00.000-05:00

This website Gives virtual tours of Ravenna's churches!

2009-05-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

It's Now Four Polls showing a Shift to a Pro-Life Majority

2009-05-22T13:48:00.002-05:00

On May 20, 2009, Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, wrote, "Fourth Poll This Month Shows U.S. Public Opinion Trending Pro-Life on Abortion".

A Question for Fr. Jenkins

2009-05-22T09:11:00.005-05:00

Rhetoric is easy on the internet or if you are a commencement speaker. You do not have to worry about the hearer punching you in the face if you are uncivil.

If President Obama's address to Notre Dame was a model of civility, Dr. Patricia McQuire, President of Trinity University in Washington was not. Judge for your self whether her speech to the graduating class displayed "self-righteous condemnation." I wonder if she counts Notre Dame alumna Lacy Dodd among those who "defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living." Would she count her among "the grand inquisitors" and "uber-guardians." Apparently the good doctor will brook no dissent from the imperial Presidency of a Catholic University.

In contrast, Ms. Dodd, who spoke at the Grotto Sunday, asks Fr. Jenkins a question that gets heart of the issue civilly and powerfully. Although I first learned of her remarks from Dr. Pia de Solenni, her full talk is back home at First Things:

"For many members of the Notre Dame Class of 2009, the uproar surrounding the university’s decision to honor Barack Obama with this year’s commencement address, and to bestow on him a doctorate of laws, has provoked strong feelings [read on]"

Tiananmen Square: June 4th, 1989

2009-05-21T10:23:00.006-05:00

Next week on June 4th, we will mark the twentieth anniversary of the day the tanks rolled over the students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. I remember the day well.

That was Commencement at St. John's University in New York where I was teaching. The ceremonies were in the field house where the Redmen played basketball. It was right across from Bent Hall (named after Bruce Bent, inventor of the money market mutual fund) where my office was.

St. John's robes are scarlet, so the whole field house was a sea of red as three governors (and alumni) spoke to the graduates. That image of the color of blood is etched into my psyche for the news of the horror was just seeping out as we gathered. The blood bath had begun over night as the army moved in with tanks and armored personnel carriers, shooting indiscriminately and rolling over the students. The official estimates according to Wikipedia are 241 dead and the unofficial estimates run as high as 7,000.

The students had occupied the Square since mid-April in a huge pro-Democracy demonstration. There was a division of opinion in the Chinese elite about what to do. The hard liners ultimately won. The loser was Zhao Ziyang, the General Secratary of the Communist Party of China, who overnight went from the most powerful man in the largest country in the world to a prisoner under house arrest.

In its editorial, "Zhao Ziyang's Revenge," the Wall Street Journal explains, "Zhao was a champion of economic liberalization and famous among China's farmers for his agricultural reforms. In the spring of 1989, he agreed with student demands for transparency, less corruption and a freer press." The occasion for its editorial is the publication of Zhao's secret memoirs. As the Journal editorializes in its Asian edition, "As the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approaches, that history remains as dangerous as ever to China's leadership." Sky Canaves reviews the book in the Asian edition and read and hear (in Chinese) excerpts in "Memoir of Former China Communist Chief." Zhao taped his memoirs over a number of years and these transcribed memoirs are coming out in book form: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, Adi Ignatius, ed.". Simon and Schuster are the publishers.

In a related piece, Bao Pu, who with Renee Chiang translated and edited the English version, explains "What Happened in Tiananmen Square."

Mr. Caves reports "A Chinese government spokesman brushed off questions from the foreign media about" Zhao's memoirs.

Will Obama At Notre Dame Be the Selma, Alabama Of the Pro-Life Movement?

2009-05-18T10:04:00.004-05:00

On March 21, 1965, 3,200 civil rights protesters marched from Selma, Alabama singing "We Shall Overcome" and heading for Montgomery. Their numbers grew to 25,000 when they eventually reached Montgomery. Selma had been the scene of a two year effort to register black voters and desegregate public lunch counters.

Many people look to that march, the culmination of the civil rights movement's protests and its courage in the face of violence and retaliation in Selma, as a turning point in American history. For many Americans at that time, the denial of Blacks' civil rights was the defining moral issue of the age. This courageous minority eventually captured the imagination of the nation and brought about fundamental reform. To this day, there are individual Americans of my generation who look back at the March from Selma as life changing. It certainly was nation changing.

Notre Dame University honored President Barak Obama with a Doctor of Laws and its choice of him as its commencement speaker. Many Catholics saw this honoring of a man whose actions contribute to further deaths of the unborn as a dishonoring of the charism of the premier Catholic University in America.

Two thousand five hundred protesters gathered at the Grotto for prayer and in the quadrangle for mass and a peaceful protest. Many more protested outside the campus and scores were arrested on Notre Dame's campus. Among the arrests were eighty year old Father Father Norman U. Weslin founder of Lambs for Christ, Alan Keyes, and Norma McCorvey. Norma McCovey is the "Jane Roe" the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that abolished America's abortion laws.

Many people, indeed most people, in America do not view abortion as the defining moral issue of our age. That is true of most people who identify themselves as Catholics. History often has a very different perspective from that of the majority in any given time and place. It would be ironic if America's first Black President occasioned the protests that history looked back on as the Selma, Alabama of the Pro-Life movement: the turning point in the nation's treatment of its most vunerable citizens' civil rights.

We Are Now A Pro Life Nation

2009-05-16T07:07:00.002-05:00

Bill Pascoe in CQpolitics reports that the latest Gallup poll shows those who identify themselves as "pro life" now out number those who identify themselves as "pro choice" 51 percent to 42 percent.

Mary Ann Glendon Tells Notre Dame, "No."

2009-05-13T19:43:00.001-05:00

Declining Notre Dame: A Letter from Mary Ann Glendon

By Mary Ann Glendon

Sunday, April 26, 2009, 9:30 AM

April 27, 2009
The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President
University of Notre Dame

Dear Father Jenkins,

When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame’s most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the medal, and of your students and faculty.

Last month, when you called to tell me that the commencement speech was to be given by President Obama, I mentioned to you that I would have to rewrite my speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated by a number of factors.

First, as a longtime consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree. This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” That request, which in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution’s freedom to invite and engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes, seems to me so reasonable that I am at a loss to understand why a Catholic university should disrespect it.

Then I learned that “talking points” issued by Notre Dame in response to widespread criticism of its decision included two statements implying that my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event:

• “President Obama won’t be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal.”

• “We think having the president come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the president and for the causes we care about.”

A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision—in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops—to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.

Finally, with recent news reports that other Catholic schools are similarly choosing to disregard the bishops’ guidelines, I am concerned that Notre Dame’s example could have an unfortunate ripple effect.

It is with great sadness, therefore, that I have concluded that I cannot accept the Laetare Medal or participate in the May 17 graduation ceremony.

In order to avoid the inevitable speculation about the reasons for my decision, I will release this letter to the press, but I do not plan to make any further comment on the matter at this time.

Yours Very Truly,

Mary Ann Glendon

Mary Ann Glendon is Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. A member of the editorial and advisory board of First Things, she served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican from 2007 to 2009.

Is Calvin Borel Happy?

2009-05-02T23:10:00.002-05:00

Mine the Bird won the Derby.

Calvin Borel is the most enthusiastic of all winners.

He went off at 50-1.

I did not even look at him.

Still, he was the 2008 Canadian Two Year Old champion. And his breeding is marvelous. I suspect they dd not look carefully at his distaff side.

The Kentucky Derby is here!

2009-05-01T15:01:00.009-05:00

Pictures Top to Bottom:

Frisien Fire

Bollinger with her foal, Frisian Fire

I Want Revenge

Dunkirk

The Favorite

I Want Revenge is the current favorite, although the weather in Louisville may change that. Joe Talmo rode a fabulous race in the Wood Memorial. The horse had a horrendous start and conceded two or three lengths to the next to last horse. Talmo steadied his horse and rated him. He made a number of moves, threading him through the second pack about half way around and fighting his way near the final turn to get out four wide around. He took charge in the stretch and held off a very credible challenge by West Side Bernie by a length and a half. He ran the mile and an eighth in 1:49:49. His grand sire is A.P. Indy. His mother was Argentine, sired by Roy—a top notch sire with blood lines including both speed and stamina.

Dunkirk

Dunkirk is an intriguing entry. He ran second, a length and a half behind Quality Road in the Florida Derby at a mile and an eighth. I estimate he ran it in just over 1:48, at least five lengths better than anyone one else in the field ran that distance.

Had he not had cracked hooves, Quality Road would have been the favorite.

You can see this dappled gray in Bob Coglianese picture. His grand-sires have both won the Belmont (Unbrideled and A.P. Indy.) His mom, Secret Status, won the Kentucky Oaks. Garrett Gomez has chosen to ride Prince of the Nile rather than Dunkirk which some see as a negative signal. Dunkirk gains Edgar Prado. Dunkirk may be better off.

The Aussie Connection
The Land Down Under has a horse to back. Andrew Eddy writes in the Age, "THERE will be plenty of Australian horse owners and breeders tuning into this weekend's Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs as victory in the classic by one of the race favourites, Friesan Fire, would create quite an impact in the breeding barn down under."

Friesan Fire is Bollinger's second foal. The second picture shows him as a youngster. Gai Waterhouse trained Bollinger. Among others, the the mare won the Group One Coolmore Classic in Australia six years ago. Vinery Stud, which used to own Vinery Study in New South Wales, brought Bollinger, to America. Colitis cut her racing career short. Ray Thomas tells us in the Daily Telegraph, "Friesan Fire didn't sell as a yearling but Vinery Stud aren't complaining now."

Friesan Fire's father is A.P. Indy who was scratched from the Derby, but won the Belmont and the Breeders' Cup Classic. His grand father is the Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew. Friesan Fire has had a long layover (seven weeks.) His last race was impressive winning the Lexington over a mile and a sixteenth in the slop. You could see the water on the track, it was so wet. I would prefer to see my horse run a mile and an eighth, but with the forecasted rain over the next twenty four hours, I think I am going with the Aussie connection.

A straw in the Wind

2009-04-30T01:19:00.002-05:00

The British and European media have been enthusiasts for our new president. Does anyone remember any interest remotely similar to this for George Bush's first hundred days?

Curiously, the Democracy in America blog on the Economist web site has a posting "another boring press conference." Could this be the turning point? Would Malcolm call it the tipping point? No, no, that's a different more marketable concept.

Another perspective is that the former junior senator form Illinois has arrived at the perfect strategy for defanging criticism: hold so many press conferences and make them so unewsworthy that no one bothers anymore.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing for the Obama white House is the Economist's last sentence: "I'm starting to feel suckered into watching an hour-long campaign advertisement."

The Ideology of Terror or the Peace of Islam?

2009-04-28T10:04:00.003-05:00

Is Islamic terrorism better understood as a return to Islam at its core or as an ideological version of Islam, a culture politicized? I would contend that ideology is a rationalistic distortion of reality and the product of literacy and Western thought.

Yale University Press has published a new book by Ali Allawi, The Crisis of Islamic Civilization. Judging from the reviews, Awawi the political route followed by the Islamofacists is untrue to Islam and Islam must reach into its own resources to deal wit the challenge of modernity.

The Economist writes: "Mr Allawi calls his new book an 'attempt to understand the factors behind the decay of the spirit of Islam'. He locates this decay not in the personal piety of the world’s Muslims—which remains vibrant—but in the collective failure of Muslims, over the past 200 years, to come up with an adequate and effective response to Western modernity. The problem is not that Islam is incapable of finding its own path to modernity. Mr Allawi wholly rejects the popular notion that Islam is inherently incompatible with tolerance, democracy, women’s rights—in short, all that the West holds dear.

"The difficulty, he says, is that the predominant Muslim response to the Western challenge has been narrowly political instead of being rooted in the inherited ethos of Islamic civilisation. Seen in this light, the Islamist movements which have received so much attention since the Islamic revival in the 1970s are shallow and passionate. For all their pretence of offering an 'Islamic alternative', they represent, or so he argues, nothing more than Western modernity in Islamic garb."

Mr. Allawi is an experience politician in the post-Sadam government and worldwide bestselling author.

Say it Ain't So, John

2009-04-24T21:33:00.003-05:00

Baseball is not everybody's sport these days: the national pastime is less national than it once was. The sport's power flowed from that special glow radiating from youngsters' eyes as they saw the big stadium and the luxurious green field in an urban industrial world. For anyone who has felt baseball as the emotional personification of American culture, the words, "Say it ain't so" hit you in the gut.

This is, of course an allusion to the Black Sox scandal: the crisis of our identity a hundred years ago. The image of the little boy looking up in disbelief and hopeless hope to Shoeless Joe Jackson is more than most can bear as he calls out the legendary, "Say it ain't so."

The stories leaking out of that city by the Potomac are such as to make us cry, "Say it ain't so."

Georgetown is the oldest Catholic university in the United Sates. John Carroll, later to become the first bishop in the United States, founded the university. I cried when I read the account of how he learned the Jesuits were dissolved. This evil news caught up with him in Britain in a letter from his brother received on his way back to the U.S. from Europe.

President Obama spoke at Georgetown, Tuesday April 14th. (Read the story at Catholic News.) His handlers requested that the symbols behind him be covered. I suppose they figure they have an infinite right to control the setting. But it doesn't mean that his hosts had to comply. Over the place where the President was to speak were the initials IHS in the usual stylized manner the Jesuits use to indicate the name of Jesus. The image above gives you the idea. This picture is from the Church of the Gesu, the Jesuit church in Rome.

What is amazing and disheartening is that Georgetown complied. They covered the name of Jesus to bask in the President's reflected glory. Jesus told us not to hide our light under a basket. The Jesuits hid Him under a basket, or more precisely a piece of plywood.

The University and the President's office both claim the shrouding was the unintentional consequence of their attempt to set a proper background for the U.S. flags. Image is everything, right? I guess you can't expect a bunch of flacks to understand the symbolism of covering the name of Jesus in a Catholic university.

When President Obama spoke, he used Jesus' parable of the two men one who built his house on sand and the other who built it on rock. Some might wonder just what Georgetown's Catholicism is built on.

Keep In Touch with the Campus Groups that Are Opposing Honoring President Obama's Pro Abortion Policies

2009-04-23T08:54:00.002-05:00

A coalition of twelve student groups have joined to protest Notre Dame's granting an honorary degree to President Barak Obama. Click on NDResponse's web site. In this internet age, the pro life students and faculty are not hiding their light under a bushel basket.

The Journal On the Shroud

2009-04-11T10:19:00.004-05:00

In the Wall street Journal, Peter Manseau writes on the Shroud of Turin.

Is the Shroud real, i.e, is it the real burial cloth of Christ? We will never know for sure. Science can refute its authenticity, but never prove it.

The carbon dating in 1988 is only one of a great many scientific studies of the Shroud and, like most of them, it is controversial. In many ways the Shroud is far more of a scientific enigma than an object of faith. Surely some from a strong reformed tradition (he mentions Calvin) will enjoy schadenfreude from any evidence against the Shroud.

Manseau mentions studies of pollen in the cloth. These were done by a top forensic scientist from Interpol, Max Frei. He demonstrated that the cloth contained extinct pollens that date its presence in Anatolia and Syria to the turn of the first millennium and during Late Antiquity, respectively.

The historical record of the Shroud's existence prior to 1204 is based on documents about the Mandalion, a display of Jesus' Head which had a profound effect on Christian and particularly Eastern Christian art. This theory fits the scientific evidence well and explains the fold marks. It probably inspired the legend of Veronica's veil.

The controversy over the carbon-14 dating has to do with the representativeness of the fragments that were used for the dating. The Shroud is not an archeological specimen that was undisturbed for two thousand years. It was repaired a number of times, some documented and some not. Moreover those entrusted with its safekeeping, to the extent they believe it might be the true burial cloth of Christ, are loath to allow any destructive testing such as carbon-14 dating which requires burning a piece of the cloth itself. Thus they only permitted something from the periphery. There is evidence that actual fibers used to do the carbon dating were contaminated both by earlier repairs and by the fire. To write "these studies found, with 95% certainty, that the fabrication date of the linen of the Shroud was sometimes between 1260 and 1390," is to misunderstand the null hypothesis.

The biggest mystery (in the non theological sense of that word) is how the image was created. Not only was the concept of a photographic negative unknown in the fourteenth century, but using modern image enhancement technology scientists found that the Shroud contains three dimensional information. No known scientific process can explain how this particular image come to be on the Shroud. That is one reason why the studies keep piling up as chemists, physicists, physicians, astrophysicists and others investigate the Shroud. The vast majority of these scientists, as befits their disciplines, start from a skeptical point of view. To disprove the authenticity of a major relic would, after all, be a great coup.

From my personal point of view, the greatest benefit of all this research (as you mention) has been our deepened understanding of the physical reality of crucifixion. Crucifixion had been outlawed for a millennium at the time the Shroud reappeared in the fourteenth century. There was little accurate knowledge of the physical details of crucifixion. Those anatomical details were mostly rediscovered in the last century. One of the verses of the Anima Christi is "Passion of Christ strengthen me." Using this knowledge to meditate on the existential reality of the Passion brings home the price He paid and inspires courage to do what the right thing.

Maybe Mr. Blair's Views Will Mature

2009-04-10T19:33:00.002-05:00

Mr. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, thinks the church's teaching that sex outside marriage, including homosexual sex, is wrong will have to change. He seems to think Benedict's exposition of that teaching is an "attitude" that results from his age. The church will just have to get with the times, it seems.

Mr. Blair when he took RCIA apparently was taught that the Church's teaching is simply a matter of opinion and needs to get with the program, so to speak.

In the London Times, Ruth Gledhill reports, "Speaking to the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister, himself now a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted to urge religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal, and suggested that in time this would make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.''

The church teaches that all people are equal in that they they are made in the image and likeness of God. Not all behavior is equally moral, however.

Damian Thompson in the Telegraph suggests maybe Mr. Blair ahould change his attitudes, particularly on abortion. Blair "calls for Pope Benedict to rethink the Church's "entrenched" attitude on homosexuality. [Thompson asks,] Well, the Pope would rather like Mr Blair to rethink his entrenched support for abortion, but he hasn't done so, has he?"

The outgoing primate of the English church, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, received Tony Blair into the church. The good Archbishop of Westminster seems to think burdening his flock with the church's teaching is too heavy a cross. Both Damian Thompson and the Economist ("The church’s new English head is a tougher customer than his predecessor") see his successor, Manchester's Archbishop Vincent Nichols, as cut from a different cloth.

Ten Notre Dame Priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross Object to Honoring Obama As Creating "Moral Confusion"

2009-04-09T10:08:00.003-05:00

From the Notre Dame student Newspaper, The Observer:

Work to maintain Catholic traditions

By: Letter to the Editor

Posted: 4/8/09

We write as priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross and as proud graduates of the University of Notre Dame to voice our objection to the University's decision to honor President Barack Obama by inviting him to deliver this year's Commencement address and by conferring on him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

We wish to associate ourselves with and encourage those courageous students and treasured alumni who, while deeply loving Notre Dame, vigorously oppose this sad and regrettable decision of the University administration.

It is our deep conviction that Notre Dame should lead by word and deed in upholding the Church's fundamental teaching that human life must be respected and protected from the moment of conception. In so doing the University must take seriously the 2004 instruction of the U.S. Catholic Bishops that "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

We especially regret the fissure that the invitation to President Obama has opened between Notre Dame and its local ordinary and many of his fellow bishops. We express our deep gratitude to Bishop John D'Arcy for his leadership and moral clarity. We ask that the University give renewed consideration to Bishop D'Arcy's thoughtful counsel which always has Notre Dame's best interests at heart.

The University pursues a dangerous course when it allows itself to decide for and by itself what part of being a Catholic institution it will choose to embrace. Although undoubtedly unintended, the University administration's decision portends a distancing of Notre Dame from the Church which is its lifeblood and the source of its identity and real strength. Such a distancing puts at risk the true soul of Notre Dame.

We regret that our position on this issue puts us at odds with our brother priest in Holy Cross, Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C. Yet, in this instance, for the good of Notre Dame and the Congregation of Holy Cross, we cannot remain silent. Notre Dame's decision has caused moral confusion and given many reason to believe that the University's stance against the terrible evil of abortion is weak and easily trumped by other considerations.

We prayerfully request that Fr. Jenkins and the Fellows of the University, who are entrusted with responsibility for maintaining its essential character as a Catholic institution of higher learning, revisit this matter immediately. Failure to do so will damage the integrity of the institution and detract from all the good work that occurs at Notre Dame and from the impressive labors of its many faithful students and professors.

We offer these views as we enter Holy Week, recalling the triumph of Christ's holy cross. As "men with hope to bring" we are confident that Notre Dame may yet give true honor to its patroness, and witness to Her Son, through its commitment to the sanctity of life.

Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.

Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C.

Gregory P. Haake, C.S.C.

Daniel J. Parrish, C.S.C.

Michael B. Wurtz, C.S.C.

Mark R. Ghyselink, C.S.C.

Terrence P. Ehrman, C.S.C.

John A. Herman, C.S.C.

Ronald J. Wasowski, C.S.C.

Vincent A. Kuna, C.S.C.

Holy Cross Priests

April 7

© Copyright 2009 The Observer

Fourteen Easy Ways to Improve the Liturgy

2009-04-05T20:51:00.003-05:00

Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker provide a straightforward guide to improving your parish's liturgy according to the true meaning of Vatican II's dogmatic constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Consilium.

George Weigel: An Honorary Degree Is Not The Same As an Invitation to Dialogue

2009-04-01T15:14:00.003-05:00

Why might orthodox Catholics be upset with Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barak Obama with an honorary degree?

George Weigel addresses this in the Chicago Tribune, "When a university invites a prominent personality to deliver a commencement address and accept an honorary degree, a statement is being made to graduates, students, faculty, parents, alumni and donors: 'This is someone whose work is worth emulating.' The invitation, in other words, is not to a debate, or to the opening of some sort of ongoing conversation. The invitation and the award of an honorary degree are a university's stamp of approval on someone's life and accomplishment.

"Which is precisely why the University of Notre Dame, which claims to be America's premier Catholic institution of higher learning, made an egregious error in inviting President Barack Obama to address its May commencement and accept an honorary doctorate of laws degree."

Francis J. Beckwith is the 2008–2009 Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Portions of this essay were delivered by Prof. Beckwith on March 28, 2009 at the University of Notre Dame for the 2009 Notre Dame Right to Life Collegiate Conference.

Is this simple a matter of disagreement? a difference of opinion?

No. The President has already taken actions that advance an evil which the Second Vatican Council called "an unspeakable crime" [Gaudium et Spes]. Weigel elaborates: "The president has put the taxpayers of the United States back into the business of paying for abortions abroad. He has expanded federal funding for embryo-destructive stem-cell research [in contradistinction to non embryonic stem cell research] and defended that position in a speech that was a parody of intellectually serious moral reasoning. The Obama administration threatens to reverse federal regulations that protect the conscience rights of Catholic and other pro-life health-care professionals."

The Tribune published Weigel's piece with one by Professor Douglas W. Kmiec as a kind of debate over Notre Dame's decision. You can click through the Catholic News Service's coverage of it to get to Kmiec's arguments.

On the magazine's blog ("On the Square"), Stephen Barr, the physicist and frequent contributor to First Things, writes an intellectual reaction colored by the fact that his son is to be among the graduating class at the commencement.

Barr puts it plainly in perspective, "Abortion is a defining issue of our time, in the way that slavery was in the mid-nineteenth century and segregation and racial discrimination were in the mid-twentieth century. Overlooking the pro-abortion views of a politician now would be analogous to overlooking pro-slavery or segregationist views in those eras. Would Notre Dame have invited a champion of segregation to be a commencement speaker in the 1960s, however brilliant or talented, however well-meaning in other ways and on other issues he or she may have been?"

Barr concludes that Notre Dame, the premier Catholic brand, is willing to give Obama cover on this, the defining moral issue of our age, to secure the Faustian bargain of this world's acclaim. It is well we begin each Lent being reminded of the three temptations in the desert, representing the flesh, power, and fame.

Francis J. Beckwith is one of the foremost recent converts (actually a "revert") to Catholicism and the former head of the Evangelical Theological Society. Beckwith is the 2008–2009 Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. On March 28, 2009, he addressed the 2009 Notre Dame Right to Life Collegiate Conference. You will find his edited talk reproduced in "On the Square." His arguments are both theologically weighty and powerfully expressed

He ends quoting a the Reverend Martin Luther King's prophetic call for a return to the early church so "god intoxicated" it was neither intimidated nor impressed by the power and approval of this world. How different from today: "Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

"But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth [and twenty-first] century."

Obama to the Vatican: Give Me Cover

2009-03-28T22:33:00.004-05:00

I have met Austin Ruse and heard him speak. His wife, the former Cathleen Cleaver, chief pro-life spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is an even more dynamite paraclete for life than he is. What a couple!

He writes in The Catholic Thing, "A reliable source tells me that someone representing the Obama administration is about to put pressure on the papal nuncio to the United States to get Archbishop Raymond Burke to be quiet."

Now why does the President want to gag Cardinal Burke? You need a bit of background.

Katherine Sabelius is my governor. She was an early and effective supporter of Barak Obama who carried the Kansas caucuses very nicely. Sebelius is a professed Catholic whose views and actions on abortion among other issues are very pro-death. In addition to her legislative and administrative record, her association with Dr. George Tiller is notorious. He is one of the few late term abortionists in the country. His evil work occurs virtually within walking and certainly within easy praying distance of where we live. A jury has just voted to acquit Tiller of 19 counts of violating the state's abortion laws, but is now under investigation by the state medical board. He was one of the largest contributors to Sebelius's campaign and she in turn gave him the use of the Governor's mansion to host a fundraiser for his pro abortion organization.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, Bishop of Kansas City, Kansas, is her bishop. He has privately counseled her on the threat to her soul of actively promoting abortion. He has admonished her privately not to present herself for communion and offered her counseling. She spurned his pastoral efforts. He then repeated his injunction publicly. Archbishop Naumann appears to be of that solid central European stock whose hard work tamed the Kansas plains.

President Obama has nominated Sebelius to head Health and Human Services. Naturally enough, if her pastor in Kansas has admonished her not to present herself for communion at home, the same advice applies in Washington, her new base of operations. If A, then B, as John Chamberlain used to say.

Does B follow A in cannon law? Yes it does according to Archbishop L. Burke, formerly archbishop of St. Louis, bishop of La Cross and now Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the cannon law equivalent to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now candidate Obama got some cover on the abortion from the formation of some "pro abortion Catholic" (an oxymoron?) organizations such as Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance. They remind me of the popular front strategies of the old Communists. In these front groups they could always find "useful idiots" as Lenin described them.

Ruse tells us the Obama administration has commissioned a former Republican office holder to work behind the scenes to shut Burke up. More than one Catholic Blogger has used his blog to put Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" into the President's mouth.

And the call the Mexico City policy a gag rule!

Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Reform of the Liturgy

2009-03-23T15:01:00.002-05:00

The University of Scranton Press has published Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Reform of the Liturgy: Proceedings from the 29th Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Kansas City, Missouri September 22-24, 2006, Kenneth D. Whitehead, Editor.

Is Our Lady Weeping?

2009-03-23T14:15:00.004-05:00

Notre Dame, for many America's flagship Catholic University, announced, "President Barack Obama will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree at the University of Notre Dame’s 164th University Commencement Ceremony at 2 p.m. May 17 (Sunday) in the Joyce Center on campus." As Senator Obama and presidential candidate, Notre Dame's commencement speaker had the most extreme pro abortion position in the Democratic Party which has become the party of abortion in America. As President he has already rescinded the Mexico City policy. The church has been quite clear that Catholic universities should not give public honors to those who are aiding and abetting the slaughter of the innocents. Maybe Father John Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, does not consider Notre Dame to be a Catholic university. He did also allow the Vagina Monologues, albeit in a classroom setting.

The University will confer degrees on approximately 2,000 undergraduates, 420 MBA students and 200 Notre Dame Law School students. When President Obama speaks at the commencement, wouldn't it be grand if those grads catechised the speaker? What if vast majority of the grads in the audience had on their mortar boards a picture of a baby with a caption "Do I get a choice?"

THE CHANTS OF THE VATICAN GRADUAL by Dom Dominic Johner

2009-03-17T15:13:00.004-05:00

THE CHANTS OF THE
VATICAN GRADUAL
By Dom Dominic Johner

Dom Johner's work on the Vatican Graduale is probably the best work available to understand the church's go-to liturgical music (too infrequently gone to these days.) It was translated from the German by the monks at Collegeville in the good old days. It is one of the great fruits of the original Liturgical Movement.

The Church Music Association of America has made it generally available. It is in the form of a 510 page pdf file. If the above link does not work for you, cut and paste this into your browser:

http://www.musicasacra.com/pdf/chants_johner.pdf

From the "Translator's Forward:"

In response to many requests for a book descriptive and explanatory
of the Gregorian Mass chants, the monks of St. John's Abbey, Collegeville,
Minn., undertook the translation from the German of Dom Johner's work: Die Sonn- und Festtagslieder des Vatikanischen Graduate, under the above title. In the foreword the author indicates the scope of his work. He writes: "The present work is intended chiefly to serve as
an aid to the prayerful rendition of the variable chanted parts of the
Mass. At the same time it aims to be a guide for the worthy and artistic
rendition of those chants which have been handed down to us from an
age of strong faith and noble taste." Chant is essentially a form of worship
offered by the faithful and as such is an integral part of the liturgy.
It is intimately connected with the very source of all Liturgy, the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, and attempts to interpret and express in music the
sentiments which the text expresses in words.
Individual consideration is given to the texts of the Introit, Gradual,
Alleluia-verse, Tract, Sequence, Offertory, and Communion. These texts
are given in Latin and in English, and are arranged in parallel columns.
They are studied in their historical and liturgical setting, and their sentiments
of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, gratitude and penance, are
pointed out and developed. In this sense also the intimate relationship
existing between these various texts is indicated; all are integrated into
a unified whole and referred to the life of Christ and His Church. Following
this short meditation, the author analyzes the musical score accompanying
the text, and attempts to show how Gregorian Chant interprets
these various sentiments and gives adequate expression to them—
in short, how Gregorian Chant is the prefect yet simple medium of translating
religious emotion into the language of music.

An indispensable condition for the intelligent use of this book as a
guide for interpretation is the simultaneous use of the Vatican Gradual,
since musical notation has not been included in the present work. However,
only a minimum and very elementary knowledge of Gregorian
Chant is necessary for the fruitful use and understanding of the book.
Further knowledge is given in a very significant Introduction, which
describes the structure and expressiveness of the variable Mass Chants.
The original German, as also the English manuscript, have been made
the basis for a very successful summer school course in the study of Gregorian
Chant. The book might adequately be described as "a study in
the appreciation of Gregorian Chant."

My thanks to Dallas Gambrell for the link!

Mosaics!

2009-03-17T08:25:00.002-05:00

Shawn Tribe at the New Liturgical Movement found a neat site with ancient mosaics.

From Revenna (yes my favorite!): is this St. George?

What Is the Difference Between a Bikini Top and Underwear? The Right to Shop.

2009-02-15T07:14:00.009-06:00

Casuarina Square is the largest shopping center in Australia's Northern Territory. Australia is a country in which the temperature can get hot and clothes can get scarce. This apparently led to a bit of a misunderstanding.

Barbara Rilatt, a nurse, and her husband Neil, both 28, went shopping. She was wearing a bikini top (see Exhibit A to the right), he a tank top. A lady security guard asked if they had a T-shirt to cover up Ms. Rilatt's upper body otherwise she should leave.

It's not that bikini tops are banned in Casuarina Square, but the security guard thought Ms. Rilatt was in her bra. The shopping center manager, a Mr. Ben Gill, explains, "If someone was wearing underwear, then we would ask them to cover up...If she was wearing a bikini, we have made an error."

I guess you have to draw a line somewhere.

Ms. Rilatt was upset. "How could you offend someone by being comfortable?" she said. "It is fine to wear your jeans down your crack, but not to wear a bikini top?"

The lady has a point there.

Still I am sympathy for the security guard. With styles' demolishing the distinction between underwear and outerwear, decorum is becoming a tricky concept. Decollage is in (or should I say out?) Pop starlets wear outfits they are mostly out of and even the TV newscasters and the lady with the recipes on cable wear necklines plunging toward their belly buttons.

I would hate to be the one charged with writing the rule leaving bikini tops in and bras out. And what do I do about those tops that look like negligees?

Now if Mr. Rilatt had shown up in the kind of spandex swimming trunks I see men wearing on Aussie beaches, I might have asked him to cover them up with some boxing shorts!

The second picture is of the stalwarts of the Bondi Life Saving Club. I choose these young men to model the style over some other pictures unsuitable for a respectable web site.

Did Benedict Expect Praise?

2009-02-03T11:48:00.004-06:00

Did the Pope err in allowing four "traditionalist" bishops back into communion with the Catholic Church? Mary Sanchez thinks so when she writes in today's (2/3/09) Wichita Eagle, that "Healing a schism is one thing, but readmitting right-wing nuts like Williamson is of dubious value to the church."

With Ms.Sanchez I deplore Bishop Williamson's foolish and prejudiced views on the Holocaust and politics as does the Vatican and Bishop Williamson's own Society of St. Pius X. Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Society, has forcefully rejected "The position of Bishop Williamson [which] is clearly not the position of our Society. Antisemitism has no place in our ranks. We follow fully God's commandments on justice and charity and the constant teaching of the Church. Antisemitism has been condemned by the Church. So do we condemn it."

Christ gave his church the mission to save sinners and fools as well as those who are more enlightened. Benedict's decision, far from an endorsement of such views, is a courageous attempt to heal a division in the Body of Christ that never should have happened. In too many places the reforms after Vatican II were implemented with great insensitivity toward ordinary traditional Catholics. It is heartbreaking to read the accounts of Catholic intellectuals like J.R.R Tolkien and Evelyn Waugh who suffered through much callousness and sacrilege in the 1970s. Treating those so abused as pariahs led to schism and, tragically, drove some few off into the weird fringes.

Benedict seeks to heal the break by being inclusive. Let us pray he succeeds.

Carnage and Culture provides a set of Obituaries and Tributes to Fr. Neuhaus

2009-01-27T09:23:00.002-06:00

Carnage and Culture provides a set of Obituaries and Tributes to Fr. Neuhaus:

DAVID BROOKS

1) David Brooks;
2) The New York Times;
3) Joseph Bottum;
4) Joseph Bottum in the The Weekly Standard;

Father Newhaus More

2009-01-27T08:42:00.004-06:00

On his blog, Strange Herring, Anthony Sacramone, a young Lutheran who was managing editor of First Things for two years, writes "Woody Allen said that 90% of life is just showing up. Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Whether it was at the civil-rights marches in the 1960s or the pro-life campaigns of the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus showed up." The blog is highly recommended.

Fr. Neuhaus's last contribution published by the Wall Street Journal Online is "The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s." Damon Linker also has some conflicted reflections on Father Neuhaus.

And then There are First Things.

2009-01-25T20:46:00.003-06:00

Some of us all but "lust" after the arrival of First Things. There are more than one of us:

The March For Life Is Today

2009-01-22T00:36:00.002-06:00

Pray for the quarter million Americans marching in Washington today for the rights of babies in the womb.

Jennifer Harper tells us in the Washington Times that Nellie Gray "pines for some meaningful attention from the press." She a group of bloggers and others are meeting to develop new strategies for getting the word out. Our own Sam Brownback, (a Kansas Republican Senator) will be a featured speaker.

Father Newhaus: "The God Solution:" His Columbia Homilies

2009-01-19T10:48:00.003-06:00

Andrew Flynn reports in the Columbia Blue and White, "When it comes to religion in the public sphere, Columbia's Father knows best."

He writes, "Richard John Neuhaus is Columbia's intellectual superstar you've never heard of. You've never written a paper for him, you've never checked his CULPA reviews [student ratings?], and you've certainly never shown up late to one of his classes. This is because Neuhaus's lectures are delivered not from a Hamilton Hall lectern, but from the pulpit in St. Paul's Chapel. Every Sunday for the past four spring semesters, Father Neuhaus has made his way uptown from his parish on 14^th Street to say the 5 PM Mass at Columbia. "

As a special bonus you can hear Fr. Neuhaus' Spring Semester homilies from the last three springs at Columbia online.

I got the link from Andrew Flynn's article in the Blue and White.

The Liturgy As Teacher

2009-01-14T02:00:00.003-06:00

"Human nature is such that it can not easily rise to the meditation of divine things without external aids"

How do we learn? Particularly, how do we learn the work of adoring the Triune God? Do we listen to lectures, jotting down each word? Do we read the Monarch Notes? Do we take an on-line course?

Consider a passage in an interview in Italian language Zenit with Don Mauro Gagliardi, a Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome and a recently appointed Consultor for the Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. Don Gagliardi discussed a book published by Don Nicola Bux on the topic of the liturgy and the debates surrounding it following the Council: La riforma di Benedetto XVI: La liturgia tra innovazione e tradizione.

Don Gagliardi said, "I want to take a clear stand with the author: I am convinced that the [academic] liturgical formation of the people of God - while necessary and recommended at least by the Council of Trent onwards - is not alone sufficient to foster the true liturgical spirit and proper form of adoration [to be characterized] in Christian worship. The Council of Trent taught that 'human nature is such that it can not easily rise to the meditation of divine things without external aids, and for this reason the Church as a loving mother has established certain rituals [...] to make more evident the majesty of a sacrifice so great and bring the minds of the faithful, with these visible signs of religion and piety, to the sublime contemplation of reality' (DS 1746). This means that the mind rises to God not only through formation, but also and above all through the sacred and the visible signs of divine worship, which are set by the Church. Don Bux may therefore welcome the fact that 'a new liturgical movement is emerging which watches the liturgies of Benedict XVI; the instructions prepared by experts are not enough, exemplary liturgies are that which bring us to God' (p. 123)."

The translation is by The New Liturgical Movement.

Ad Orientem

2009-01-11T11:17:00.003-06:00

Benedict has been a consistent advocate of having the priest's facing east (ad orientem) as a theologian (Josef Ratzinger) before becoming pope. Michael Kowalewski has put together a set of his quotations on the topic which are posted on the New Liturgical Movement.

Father Jerry Wooten Was the Homalist

2009-01-11T09:24:00.010-06:00

The New Liturgical Movement reports on a beautiful mass said on the Feast of the Epiphany (old calendar, i.e., January, 6th, 2009.) This was said according to the Missal of John XXIII or the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (i.e, the Traditional Latin Mass.)

The New Liturgical Movement was "told that several local seminarians from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, and the seminary of St. Charles Borromeo, as well as diocesan priests, who served or sang at the Mass.

The celebrant was Father Gregory Thompson, assistant pastor of All Saints church in Manassas, Va. The deacon was Father Kevin Beres, assistant pastor of Saint Michael's church in Annandale, Va. The subdeacon was Abbe Michael Stein of the Institute of Christ the King. The homilist was Father Jerry Wooten, assistant pastor of the church that hosted the Mass, Holy Trinity in Gainesville, Va.

"The schola consisted of three seminarians (two FSSP and one diocesan deacon) as well as three men from Saint Mary's in D.C. The acolytes consisted of two or three FSSP seminarians as well as men and boys from the parish and surrounding area."

Father Wooten is an excellent priest. Like quite a few in the Arlington diocese he is ex-military. He is a priest most worthy of your prayers. The the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) and the Institute of Christ the King are two new orders created to celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

This is significant for two reasons. You have diocesan priests and seminarians joining together with the two priestly orders. This is cross-fertilization at the personal level. This is a great event for Arlington which we left just three years ago. I had not perceived Bishop Loverde as being the sort of bishop who might be caught reading the New Liturgical Movement. Still Arlington is a diocese whose priests gradually remold their boss in their own image. It has a great bunch of priests who will find a way to do the right thing.

Wow a new Church that is pretty!

Father Wooten has found himself a very fine church to be assistant pastor in.

Note the prominence of the tabernacle and the Latin above it and the altar: "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him" (from today's gospel , the Feast of the Baptism of Christ.)

The altar allows them to go around it and celebrate ad orientem and they have used the "Benedictine" candle arrangement. What is ad orientem, you ask? The priest and other celbrants are facing the same direction toward the East or at least toward the liturgical east. If that is not enough of an explaination read on in my litugical postings. (Sorry no continuing ed credits given.)

Father Wooten's parish's has a website which gives its mission statement:

"The Mission of Holy Trinity Church is to lead all parishioners to Heaven and the Beatific Vision of the Holy Trinity."

How's that for getting back to basics?

I might have to think twice about my visceral rejection of parish's having mission statements.

A Beautiful Mass in Beautiful (New!) Church in Father Wooten's Parish

2009-01-10T23:45:00.001-06:00

Doubt

2009-01-01T08:50:00.003-06:00

The film "Doubt" will have you thinking, talking , and debating. I have not experienced such good acting as we got from Meryl Streep (Sister Aloysius), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Father Flynn), Amy Adams (Sister James), and Viola Davis (the boy's mother) last night. The setting was perfect. The East Bronx of 1964 was filmed to a "T." St. Nicholas (actually St. Aloysius of Shanley's youth) was complete with unturned around altar. One anachronism was the use of the Taize chant version of "Ubi Charitas Ibi Est" at the end. I also wonder if there should not have been a lectern on the espistle side.

Mark Moring interviews John Patrick Shanley in Christianity Today. Lauren A.E. Schuker interviews Philip Seymour Hoffman in the Wall Street Journal.

Two initial comments. Fr. Flynn did not seem all that "charismatic" to me. The Principal I remember from my Catholic school was a bit more human than Shanley would like us to believe that type was.

People Look East

2008-12-30T23:34:00.004-06:00

This is an ancient depiction of Christ as the pagan god Helios. The Greeks explained the rising and setting of the sun as the riding of Helios with his fiery chariot from east to west. Christians, pagans, and Jews prayed facing east, to the rising sun. Father Johansen gives an excellent account of this and its implication for Christian worship on his blog meditation on the hymn, "People Look East."

Susan Moore

2008-12-30T07:36:00.004-06:00

Portico Books has just published The Living Word by Susan Reibel Moore. This is a strong introduction for young adults and not so young adults to the faith of Christ.

Susan is an Aussie (transplanted from America) who is an expert on children's literature. You can read her recently reprinted "Fantasy and the Occult in Children’s Literature" in Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

Worshiping the Daystar

2008-12-30T06:33:00.006-06:00

We Christians worship the Divine Son who is the Sun who enlightens our fallen world. One of my favorite images from the early church is also the earliest known attempt to picture Christ. He, the Light who enlightens everyman, is shown as Helios the Pagan sun god.

Father Rob Johansen has an excellent posting, "People Look East," in which he talks about the beautiful hymn by that name. He then relates the ancient practice of Christians to pray facing the rising sun, symbol of the Risen Son. He uses this to explain the practice, now largely disused, of praying ad orientem: of congregation and priest facing the same way.

What Is Gregorian Chant And What Role Does It Play In The Liturgy?

2008-12-27T13:11:00.004-06:00

What Is Gregorian Chant And What Role Does It Play In The Liturgy?

“Chant” or “plain chant” is a way to sing prayers. The human voices are not accompanied by musical instruments and all the singers sing the same notes. This was the normal method for praying the mass through most of the first fifteen centuries. Nowadays we hear a melody like “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” jazzed up with instrumentation and embellishments, but the bare melody is a ninth century chant. The chant used in the Catholic Church is typically called “Gregorian chant,” because, according to tradition, church music was reformed or at least compiled by Pope St. Gregory the Great (c. 540-604 A.D.) Gregory held that the music of the mass hearkens back to the church’s Jewish roots. Although scholars today contest that it grew out of the synagogue chants of Jesus’ day, one recent study ties the Roman Rite to the ancient Jewish temple rites. Thus chant reunites us with Hebrew praying going back three thousand or more years: the prayers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the prayers of Annas, Hillel, and Jesus. The first five books of the Acts of the Apostles describe the apostles as constantly praying in temple at Jerusalem. This temple worship came to an abrupt end when, forty years after Jesus rose from the dead, Titus sacked Jerusalem, killed or enslaved the inhabitants, destroyed the temple, and built a pagan city on Zion. Thus as the chants of the priests and Levites were silenced on God’s sacred mountain, the church founded by Peter on the seven hills of Rome was chanting the Christian liturgy first in Greek and, after another hundred years, in Latin. (The Greek Kyrie Eleison is a throwback to the first century mass sung in Greek.)

Gregorian Chant and Vatican II

Perhaps you could begin with: “Gregorian chant makes one think of ancient Catholic worship, or perhaps monks in dark cowls, solemnly singing the prayers of the Mass. While this is at least partly true, the Second Vatican Council specifically requested greater inclusion of chant into the modern liturgy. Our own Latin Rite grew in feasts and song gradually. The biblical building blocks of the mass and the diversity of the liturgical calendar are reflected in Gregorian chant, which is the special musical language of the mass. The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this musical aptness: “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman Liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium: the Council’s constitution on the liturgy, ¶116. ) Having the right music for the liturgy is important if it is to achieve its end: “the purpose of sacred music … is the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, ¶112) One of the reasons the Council Fathers wanted to reform the church’s music is to restore the simple style of chanting that enables the congregation to sing its own parts of the mass. In a real and special way, the Council determined that the congregation has an important part to play in public liturgy, and they should actively sing the Ordinary of the Mass: the Kyrie (Lord have mercy), Gloria, Credo (I believe), Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy) and the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God). In a similar manner, the landmark principle of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy called for the actual or active participation (in the Latin of the document: “actuosa participatio”) of the congregation: “To promote [actual/active] participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, ¶30) This principle grew out of papal support of the liturgical movement. Pope Pius X mandated the reintroduction of Gregorian chant in 1903 and encouraged congregations to sing the Ordinary (the Kyrie, the Gloria, etc.) using Gregorian chant. He used a peculiar phrase in Latin: “actuosa participatio”, a phrase that never appears in classical or Medieval Latin. A careful analysis of its history shows that this, the very phrase the Council used, only occurs before 1963 in certain church documents dealing with Gregorian chant. Thus the phrase is a phrase with a history, a history that ties the Council’s core principle to the century long movement to restore chant to liturgy.

But Why Latin?

Chants exist in English as well as Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and virtually any language human beings have used to adore God. Many people are “enchanted” with plainsong, the chants of the English Book of Common Prayer. Yet Gregorian chant itself is intricately tied to the Latin language, the tongue of prayer for the West these past two thousand years. There is a symbiotic relationship between the language and the music. This relationship grew from the melodies’ slow development interacting with the scriptures of the liturgical calendar over fifteen centuries. Orally, Latin is specially suited for sacred music. The purity and frequency of the vowels are especially apt for musical expression. Composers, mostly anonymous, over centuries marshaled Latin’s sounds and cadences to bring out the beauty of the scriptures and rites of the liturgy. The simplicity and purity of the sounds lend a special solemnity to the liturgy that is difficult to reproduce in English or many other languages.

Why No Instruments?

Today, when we a popular song on the radio or a CD, it is the industrial product of a small army of technicians and instrumentalists. Chant is produced by the unaided human voice. It is preindustrial music.

Chant helps us gain a new perspective on what the mass is. Some liturgists focus on the mass as a supper and a communal get together. Another meaning of the liturgy is suggested by the word’s etymology. “Liturgy” is based on a Greek word that meant a “public work.” In a very real sense the mass is a type of work, the hard work of worshiping the King of Glory.

Work has changed so much we have forgotten how human beings worked together before the age of machinery. We have forgotten the existential reality of millennia of sweat and exertion. Work is highly industrialized in our world. We either do our specialized tasks to the clang of a machine or we work in silence in paper factories. Admittedly some of our paper factories produce only "virtual paper" as the work is done in the silent isolation of a cubicle.

The norm in our more human past was to sing as we worked. Work was physical and power was muscle power. This dependence on people rather than machines puts a premium on teamwork. Getting team members to literally pull together requires physical coordination: power in line was more than one person pulling together.

Why sing? The melody made men move together. True folk songs are predominantly work songs. In times past, songs unified men in work. This is how gangs of men build the rhythm needed to work in unison. Think of sea shanties. When crewmen were hoisting a topsail, they might sing “Blow the Man Down.” The song coordinated their work. When they sang, “Way, hey, Blow the man down!” each crewmember pulled on the beats, “Way” and “ Hey.”

In the liturgy, the role of chant is to join us in the rhythm of prayer: the common work of praising the transcendent God. The Holy Father chose the name of Benedict of Nursia whose motto was "Pray and Work" (Ora et Labora.) When St. Benedict’s monks sung the mass and the office, they were working just as much as when they tilled the fields with a song in their lungs and hoes in their hands. The divine work in the oratory produced fruit no less than the human work in the fields.

When we chant, the chanting unites the priest, the congregation, and the heavenly martyrs, angels, and saints as they do this divine work, a work that bears eternal fruit.

Are the Suburbs the Archetype of All That is Wrong in America

2008-12-27T12:49:00.003-06:00

Lee Siegel dissects the American cultural elite's hatred of thee suburbs in today's Wall Street Journal: "Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs? America's long artistic tradition of claiming spiritual death by station wagon." I have long believed that the suburbs are a bad place to raise children. My dislike of the suburbs was confirmed by my eleven year exile in Washington's suburbs.

Still if my enemy hates them, perhaps I should think twice. My favorite sentence is this gem that Siegel ends the piece with: "But, then, Hollywood is the most illusion-soaked, soul-hardened and materialistic suburb in the world."

What are You Doing This Advent? Here's a Suggestion.

2008-12-16T20:24:00.003-06:00

Enconiums to the Late Avery Dulles

2008-12-16T19:41:00.002-06:00

Joseph Bottum writes on the First Things blog, "Avery Cardinal Dulles was one of the greatest thinkers in the modern Roman Catholic church and perhaps its most distinguished representative in the United States. The first American to be named a cardinal soley for his theological work, and for his last two decades a professor at Fordham University, he was acknowledged to be the dean of American Catholic thought.

"His influence, however, extended far beyond the United States."

Thaddeus M. Baklinski writes at LifeSiteNews.com "Cardinal Avery Dulles ... loss is mourned by pro-life and pro-family advocates in the U.S. and around in the world, who found in the Cardinal a staunch supporter and a strong voice against the incursions of the culture of death."

James Mary Evans includes a video of his ordination on his blog tribute.

The New York Times on Avery Cardinal Dulles Who Died December 12th, 2008

2008-12-16T19:25:00.003-06:00

Robert D. McFadden writes in the New York Times:

Cardinal Avery Dulles, a scion of diplomats and Presbyterians who converted to Roman Catholicism, rose to pre-eminence in Catholic theology and became the only American theologian ever appointed to the College of Cardinals, died today died Friday morning [12/12/2008] at Fordham University in the Bronx. He was 90. His death, at the Jesuit infirmary at the university, was confirmed by the New York Province of the Society of Jesus in Manhattan.

Cardinal Dulles, a professor of religion at Fordham University for the last 20 years, was a prolific author and lecturer and an elder statesman of Catholic theology in America. He was also the son of John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the nephew of Allen Dulles, who guided European espionage during World War II and later directed the Central Intelligence Agency.

A conservative theologian in an era of liturgical reforms and rising secularism, Cardinal Dulles wrote 27 books and 800 articles, mostly on theology; advised the Vatican and America’s bishops, and staunchly defended the pope and his church against demands for change on abortion, artificial birth control, priestly celibacy, the ordination of women and other issues.

His task as a theologian, the Cardinal often said, was to honor diversity and dissent but ultimately to articulate the traditions of the church and to preserve Catholic unity.

When Pope John Paul II designated dozens of new cardinals in early 2001, there were three from the United States. Archbishops Edward M. Egan of New York and Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington were unsurprising choices; it is common for heads of archdioceses to be given red hats. But the selection of Father Dulles was extraordinary. Although his was an influential voice in American Catholicism, he was not even a bishop, let alone an archbishop.

The appointment was widely seen as a reward for his loyalty to the pope, but also an acknowledgment of his work in keeping lines of communication open between the Vatican and Catholic dissenters in America. Cardinal Dulles considered it an honorary appointment. He was 82, two years past the age of voting with other cardinals in electing a new pope.

His investiture with 43 other scarlet-robed cardinals in Rome on Feb. 21, 2001, almost came unstuck. The last to step up to the pope’s golden throne to receive his biretta, the red silk hat of office, Cardinal Dulles approached with his cane, knelt and was accoutered. But as he embraced the pope, his biretta fell to the ground: a humbling at the great moment, he recalled wryly.

He carried the cane because of a recurrence of polio contracted while serving in the Navy in World War II. The polio had left him unable to walk for a time, but the symptoms had disappeared. They reappeared about a decade ago, affecting his leg muscles, and became progressively worse. About a year ago, his arms and throat were affected, leaving him unable to speak. Thus, his farewell address at Fordham last April was delivered by the university’s former president, the Rev. Joseph O’Hare.

Cardinal Dulles was typically self-deprecating, and soft-spoken, a bit awkward: a lanky, 6-foot 2-inch beanpole with a high forehead, a shock of dark hair going gray and a gaunt face with sharp features. Abraham Lincoln without the beard came to mind.

His spiritual passage to Catholicism was like a fable. A young scholar with a searching mind, he stirred from his establishment Presbyterian family to face questions of faith and dogma. By the time he entered Harvard in 1936, he was an agnostic.

In his second book, “A Testimonial to Grace,” a 1946 account of his conversion, Cardinal Dulles said his doubts about God on entering Harvard were not diminished by his studies of medieval art, philosophy and theology. But on a gray February day in 1939, strolling along the Charles River in Cambridge, he saw a tree in bud and experienced a profound moment.

“The thought came to me suddenly, with all the strength and novelty of a revelation, that these little buds in their innocence and meekness followed a rule, a law of which I as yet knew nothing,” he wrote. “That night, for the first time in years, I prayed.”

His conversion in 1940, the year he graduated from Harvard, shocked his family and friends, he said, but he called it the best and most important decision of his life.

He joined the Jesuits and went on to a career as a major Catholic thinker that spanned five decades.

His tenure coincided with broad shifts in theological ideas as well as sweeping changes brought on by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. These provided new understandings of how the church, after centuries of isolation from modern thought and even hostility to it, should relate to other faiths and to religious liberty in an age when the church was gaining millions of new followers in diverse cultures.

Cardinal Dulles devoted much of his scholarship to interpretations of the Vatican Council’s changes, which he said had been mistaken by some theologians as a license to push in democratic directions. The church, he counseled, should guard its sacred teachings against secularism and modernization.

“Christianity,” he said in a 1994 speech, “would dissolve itself if it allowed its revealed content, handed down in tradition, to be replaced by contemporary theories.”

Theological and academic colleagues, including many who disagreed with him, said Cardinal Dulles had set high standards of intellectual integrity, fairness in judgments and lucidity in lectures, essays and books. They said his was often a voice of mediation between the church and American Catholics who challenged church teachings.

In “The Reshaping of Catholicism” (Harper & Row, 1988), he wrote that the Vatican Council had acknowledged the possibility that the church could fall into serious error and might require reform, that the laity had a right to an active role and that the church needed to respect regional and local differences. But he also emphasized that “a measure of conservatism is inseparable from authentic Christianity.”

Avery Robert Dulles was born in Auburn, N.Y., on Aug. 24, 1918, the son of John Foster and Janet Pomeroy Avery Dulles. His family was steeped in public service. Besides his father, who was secretary of state from 1953 to 1959, and uncle, who directed the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961, his great-grandfather, John Watson Foster, was secretary of state under President Benjamin Harrison, and a great-uncle, Robert Lansing, held the post under President Woodrow Wilson. Avery’s grandfather, Allen Macy Dulles, was a Presbyterian theologian and co-founder of the American Theological Society.

Avery Dulles attended primary schools in New York City and private secondary schools in Switzerland and New England, but had no strict Presbyterian upbringing.

He attended Harvard Law School for a year and a half before joining the Naval Reserve as a World War II intelligence officer. In 1946, he joined the Society of Jesus, began training for the priesthood and was ordained in 1956 by Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York.

He took a doctorate in theology at the Gregorian University in Rome in 1960, taught at Woodstock College in Maryland from 1960 to 1974 and at the Catholic University of America in Washington from 1974 to 1988, then joined the faculty at Fordham as the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society.

Cardinal Dulles served as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1975-76 and of the American Theological Society in 1978-79. His books include “Models of the Church,” (Doubleday, 1974), a theological best-seller that appeared in many languages; “A Church to Believe In: Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom,” (Crossroad, 1982) on American Catholic theological concerns, and “The Splendor of Faith: The Theological vision of Pope John Paul II,” (Crossroads, 1999).

The cardinal is survived by eight nieces and nephews. His brother, John Watson Foster Dulles, an author and professor, died in San Antonio on June 23, and a sister, Lillias Pomeroy Dulles Hinshaw, died in 1987. Cardinal Dulles remained an active voice in the church into the new century, responding when the church confronted sexual abuse scandals involving hundreds of priests in the United States. After the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a national policy barring from ministerial duties any priest who had ever sexually abused a minor, Cardinal Dulles said the policy ignored priests’ rights of due process.

“In their effort to protect children, to restore public confidence in the church as an institution and to protect the church from liability suits, the bishops opted for an extreme response,” he said. He noted that the policy imposed a “one-size-fits-all” punishment, even if an offense was decades old and had not been repeated. “Such action seems to reflect an attitude of vindictiveness to which the church should not yield.”

James Francis Cardinal Stafford on Life Under Obama

2008-11-24T11:16:00.002-06:00

In a talk given on the fortieth anniversary, James Francis Cardinal Stafford, Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, said that in the recent election an “America suffered a cultural earthquake.” Viewing the extreme abortion positions of incoming President Obama as a trial for Catholics, he warned that we will know the Garden of Gethsemane. The Catholic News Agency reproduced the text of Bishop Stafford's talk.

More Information on Josef Ratzinger's Complete Writings

2008-10-28T16:04:00.005-05:00

Herder Verlag is the publisher for Josef Ratzinger's Complete Writings. (You will find the description on Herder's web site.) The first volume costs fifty euros (45 if bought as part of a subscription to the whole series.) At current exchange rates that is a pretty penny.

The sixteen volumes will each contain Benedict's complete writing on a particular topic prior to his papacy. Herder plans to publish 2-3 volumes a year and complete the project in about six years. Herder says that the individual volumes will be about 500-700 pages.

Volume XI, the first volume published, is about the liturgy (see the next posting, "Josef Ratzinger's Complete Writings Starts with the Liturgy.") The liturgy is central to his theological thinking. The volumes will be:

Der Editionsplan

Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche. Die Dissertation und weitere Studien zu Augustinus von Hippo.
Offenbarungsverständnis und Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras. Die ungekürzte Habilitationsschrift und weitere Bonaventura-Studien
Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen Die wechselseitige Verwiesenheit von fides und ratio
Einführung in das Christentum Bekenntnis – Taufe – Nachfolge
Herkunft und Bestimmung Schöpfung – Anthropologie – Mariologie
Jesus von Nazareth Spirituelle Christologie
Zur Theologie des Konzils Texte zum II. Vatikanum
Zeichen unter den Völkern Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene
Offenbarung – Schrift – Tradition. Hermeneutik und Theologische Prinzipienlehre
Auferstehung und Ewiges Leben Beiträge zur Eschatologie
Theologie der Liturgie Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz
[erscheint als erster Band]
Künder des Wortes und Diener eurer Freude. Zur Theologie und Spiritualität des Ordo
Im Gespräch mit der Zeit Interviews – Stellungnahmen – Einsprüche
Predigten zum Kirchenjahr sowie Meditationen, Gebete, Betrachtungen
Aus meinem Leben Autobiographische Texte
Bibliographie und Gesamt-Register

Josef Ratzinger's Complete Writings Starts with the Liturgy

2008-10-26T07:01:00.003-05:00

Herder Verlag has begone publishing Josef Ratzinger's Complete Writings. Zenit reports (in German; in English N.B.: the two articles have different information) that the first volume published treats the liturgy. Oddly enough the first volume published is Volume XI . The liturgy is central to our relationship to God so it is fitting that it be revealed first to the public (dignum et justum est.)

The bulk of the first is Ratzinger's book The Spirit of the Liturgy: An Introduction. (Der Geist Der Litugie: ein Einfuehrung.) The title comes from Romano Guardini's little classic, Vom Geist Der Liturgie.

Shawn Tribe has an excellent discusssion of the issue of liturgical orientation (Should the priest face east?) in Benedict's thought and practice. He writes in the New Liturgical Movement.

James Bond Flix: Immoral Trash or High Camp?

2008-10-16T13:54:00.006-05:00

The Times of London has a marvey timeline of James Bond. Great fun!

Are the movies simply high camp or immoral trash?

Some members would vote for the latter. That casts aspersions on their parents' probity. Personally I am ambivalent: it is hard to take these babes and gadgets formula films seriously. Maybe I am just a big hypocrite.

Now, when is the next one out?

Reicipe for Pumpkin Soup

2008-10-01T18:28:00.002-05:00

From Bob Boewe's The Spice Merchant:

Maggie's Autumn Pumpkin Soup

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 - 14 oz. cans pumpkin purée
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon thyme leaf

black pepper and salt to taste
sour cream
crushed amaretti cookies or candied ginger for garnish

In a large saucepan, melt butter, then sauté onion until translucent. Sprinkle sugar over onion, continue to sauté until they caramelize. Stir in pumpkin and stock, bring to a boil. Add allspice, coriander, and thyme, stir. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until thick - about 30 minutes. Add pepper &/or salt to taste. Serve into bowls, then add a dollop of sour cream in the center of each. Garnish with crushed amaretti cookies or candied ginger.

Brideshead Revisited: Forget the Movie!

2008-09-28T18:17:00.003-05:00

Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is one of those overwhelming novels that has a point but does not hit you over the head with it. We are indeed sinners and yet God's grace can pierce our armor and cature our falty will.

It is a powerful novel and the language is beautiful. The BBC's miniseris adaptation of it for "the telley" drew widespread praise. Two of my favorite reviewers condemned the new movie version.

Barbara Nicolosi makes it sound like the San Francisco version of the book:

"How dare they.

"No, I mean really, how DARE they?! Imagine if someone did a new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and it ended up savagely racist? That's what they've done here. A profoundly Catholic novel, in this'adaptation', Brideshead Revisited is viciously anti-Catholic. They turned a movie about God and the soul, into a lurid love triangle between a homosexual, his sister and a hapless hunk. It's lame. It's bad."

Steven D. Greydanus writes a long and thoughtful review (originally for the National Catholic Register.) He ends his analysis: "Waugh wrote that Brideshead 'deals with what is theologically termed "the operation of Grace", that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself.' Grace may not be totally missing from the film version — the ending isn’t wholly betrayed — but however real it may be for the characters, there’s no sense that it feels real to the filmmakers, or the audience. It’s as if Waugh’s story has been filtered through the spiritual blindness of young Charles. The movie sees, but it doesn’t understand."

How do you say "Cross Fertilization" in French?

2008-09-20T14:42:00.004-05:00

From Paris and Lourdes, the Lesson of the "Liturgist" Pope

On his trip to France, Benedict XVI did not only defend the ancient rite of the Mass. He also explained and demonstrated repeatedly what he believes to be the authentic meaning of the Catholic liturgy of today and always. And, about sacred music, he said...

by Sandro Magister
ROMA, September 16, 2008 – In the three Masses celebrated during his trip to Paris and Lourdes, Benedict XVI followed the post-conciliar rite. But he intentionally enriched it with elements characteristic of the old rite: the cross at the center of the altar, communion given to the faithful on the tongue, while kneeling, the sacredness of the whole.

The reciprocal "enrichment" between the two rites is the main objective that impelled Benedict XVI to promulgate, in 2007, the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum," which liberalized the use of the ancient rite of the Mass, according to the Roman missal of 1962.

Sandro Magister's analysis is always very valuable. It was just over a year ago, that Benedict freed the old version of the Roman Rite. He chose that aniverary to preach liturgical tolerance to a hierarchy short in that pastoral virtue. Moreover, Benedict used this "teaching moment" to show how the old and new can cross fertilize each other.

Hallelujah!

The Surge Succeeded. Who gets Credit?

2008-09-15T01:13:00.001-05:00

Bush's Lonely Decision
Wall Street Journal: September 15, 2008; Page A22

Now that even Barack Obama has acknowledged that President Bush's surge in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," maybe it's time the Democratic nominee gives some thought to how that success actually came about -- not just in Ramadi and Baghdad, but in the bureaucratic Beltway infighting out of which the decision to surge emerged.

That's one reason to welcome "The War Within," the fourth installment in Bob Woodward's account of the Bush Presidency. As is often the case with the Washington Post stalwart, the reporting is better than the analysis, which reflects the Beltway conventional wisdom of a dogmatic and incurious President. But even as a (very) rough draft of history, we read Mr. Woodward's book as an instructive profile in Presidential decision-making.

Consider what confronted Mr. Bush in 2006. Following a February attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq's sectarian violence began a steep upward spiral. The U.S. helped engineer the ouster of one Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, in favor of Nouri al-Maliki, an untested leader about whom the U.S. knew next to nothing. The "Sunni Awakening" of tribal sheiks against al Qaeda was nowhere in sight. An attempt at a minisurge of U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad failed dismally. George Casey, the American commander in Iraq, believed the only way the U.S. could "win" was to "draw down" -- a view shared up the chain of command, including Centcom Commander John Abizaid and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Politically, the war had become deeply unpopular in an election year that would wipe out Republican majorities in Congress. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, run by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, was gearing up to offer the President the option of a politically graceful defeat, dressed up as a regional "diplomatic offensive." Democrats united in their demands for immediate withdrawal, while skittish Republicans who had initially supported the war, including Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon, abandoned the Administration.

From the State Department, Condoleezza Rice opposed the surge, arguing, according to Mr. Woodward, that "the U.S. should minimize its role in punishing sectarian violence." Senior brass at the Pentagon were also against it, on the theory that it was more important to ease the stress on the military and be prepared for any conceivable military contingency than to win the war they were fighting.

Handed this menu of defeat, Mr. Bush played opposite to stereotype by firing Mr. Rumsfeld and seeking advice from a wider cast of advisers, particularly retired Army General Jack Keane and scholar Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. The President also pressed the fundamental question of how the war could actually be won, a consideration that seemed to elude most senior members of his government. "God, what is he talking about?" Mr. Woodward quotes a (typically anonymous) senior aide to Ms. Rice as wondering when Mr. Bush raised the question at one meeting of foreign service officers. "Was the President out of touch?"

No less remarkably, the surge continued to face entrenched Pentagon opposition even after the President had decided on it. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went out of his way to prevent General Keane from visiting Iraq in order to limit his influence with the White House.

The Pentagon also sought to hamstring General David Petraeus in ways both petty and large, even as it became increasingly apparent that the surge was working. Following the general's first report to Congress last September, Mr. Bush dictated a personal message to assure General Petraeus of his complete support: "I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded," Mr. Woodward reports the President as saying. In this respect, Mr. Bush would have been better advised to dictate that message directly to Admiral Mullen.

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better.

Then again, American history offers plenty of examples of wartime Presidents who faced similar challenges: Ulysses Grant became Lincoln's general-in-chief in 1864, barely a year before the surrender at Appomattox. What matters most is that the President had the fortitude to insist on winning. That's a test President Bush passed -- something history, if not Bob Woodward, will recognize.

A Sleeper? Jay Cost's Thoughts on McCain's Speech

2008-09-06T10:46:00.004-05:00

I typically do not engage in exegesis of candidate speeches, but given the reaction to McCain's address from many quarters, I think a dissenting view might be worth hearing. That plus the uniqueness of the speech's substance inclines me to make a more fuller comment than I otherwise would.

On the first viewing of McCain's speech, I was pretty much in line with Tom Bevan's thoughts on it: it was good enough, but far from great.

Read the whole sober analysis. I agree with him. Play the speech again yourself [below.] And you can read Mc Cain's Speech with this link.

McCain's Acceptance Speech

2008-09-05T19:51:00.000-05:00

Gov. Sarah Palin's Speech

2008-09-05T19:48:00.000-05:00