Margaret Mans From Goddard, Kansas makes the Washington Post Video!

Today is the March for Life in Washington. It is the thirty fourth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision allowing abortion on demand (Roe vs. Wade.) The Washington Post, the establishment newspaper in our nation's capitol, has a video on its website covering the March. On it Margaret Mans from Goddard (west of Wichita) is interviewed among others.

Clink on the link [washingtonpost.com Video by: Akira Hakuta / washingtonpost.com] to listen.

Hebrews

We are hearing readings from the "Letter" to the Hebrews in the daily mass cycle. It can be argued that it is less an epistle than it is a homily to either Jewish or Jewish Christian priests.

Scott Hahn has an excellent set of lectures that "decodes" Hebrews. He applies his extensive cross reading of the Old Testament and his liturgical insights to unlock the meaning of a text that most of us find puzzling.

Liturgy is not about me!

"Liturgy", he says, "is not entertainment, it is not self-validated. Liturgy is the experience of heaven, not something that happens to me in some sort of emotional-personal state."

For one thing, heaven may not be what we think it will be.

Catholic Homeschooling in Wichita

The Holy Family Home Educators, Catholic homeschoolers, can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HFHE-Wichita/ .

And (tip of the Akubra to the anonomous commentor) HFHE Wichita now (September, 2007) has a website at http://hfhewichita.org


They are quite active and cover all grades.

Why Icons Do Not Look Quite Real

St. John Chrysostom with liturgical Scroll: The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai; Photography by Bruce M. White, 2005

Why Are Icons Not Quite Realistic?

The answer is partly liturgical: because the artists want them to be really real! The church fathers understood the divine liturgy, what we Catholics call the “mass,” as action in which we mortals join the angels, saints, and martyrs in the work of praising God and offering the divine sacrifice.

What does this mean for art? Since our coworkers in the liturgy (those angels, saints, and martyrs) are not here on earth, they should not look like they are here on earth. Their reality is literally otherworldly. The artist must convey the difference between a being that is “really real” (to borrow a phrase from The Last Battle) rather than simply in the flesh. To achieve this, their icons consciously deviate from the use of perspective and other skills used to make a two dimensional picture look like something we see in our three dimensional world.

The ancient Greeks knew perspective. They had the technology to paint realistic paintings. Some time during the long Byzantine period, they lost the ability to portray with perspective. Why? I do not know. If I had to guess, it was because icons’ dominance crowded out painting that was “realistic” in a purely earthly way.

"Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai" at the Getty Museum

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is showing an exhibit of icons, "Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai." The Wall Street Journal’s Tom L. Freudenheim writes about this “inspired and inspiring exhibition.” He tells us it is “a singular event simply because these rare Byzantine works of art have rarely been seen away from their home at St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, and never before in such profusion.”

St. Catherine's is an Orthodox monastery built on the mountain where God spoke to Moses and gave him the law. It is the source of the Sinaiticus codex, one of the earliest and best sources for the scripture. This manuscript is now in the Vatican library.

Freudenheim continues, “The Getty's expansive exhibition catalog suggests that there is much we have yet to learn about the early Christian tradition, in which icons -- painted images of sacred subjects -- were primarily used in private worship, before they became part of Byzantine church decoration. Of the 70 awe-inspiring objects in the exhibition, ranging from the sixth to the 16th centuries, 62 are on loan from St. Catherine's, so it's surprising to learn that they were first published only in the 1950s.” Read on...

The Mass of John XXIII?

Fox News in St.Louis reports an upsurge in the traditional mass in Latin among younger Catholics. The New Liturgical Movement reports this and provides a link to the actual broadcast.

The broadcast seems to be talking about the pre-1969 Latin liturgy not the current mass (sometimes referred to as the Novus Ordo mass) celebrated in Latin. It is not always 100% clear. The broadcast is pretty good however. Anytime I have been quoted in the media and they got half of it right, I have considered it a victory. The perfunctory "balance" by Fr. Richard McBrien is predictable. Like so many aging "progressives," he is increasingly irrelevant.

That said, there is a real difficulty in nomenclature.

The current mass is based on the missal that was issued in 1969 by Pope Paul VI. It was claimed to be necessary to implement the reforms mandated by the Second Vatican Council. It is variously called the Mass of Paul VI, the Novus Ordo mass, or the mass of the Missal of 1969. Fr. Martin Fox (Bonfire of the Vanities) even suggests at one point calling it the Pauline Mass. (Read Fr. Fox's very useful discussion of the issue.)

Referring to the "Latin mass" is ambiguous. The current mass can be celebrated in Latin, in fact that is the clear intent of Vatican II. Certainly the current mass in Latin with both the people and the priest facing God together would be a vast improvement over what many people suffer through in too many parishes today.

Many people want the restoration of the so called "Tridentine mass," typically by reverting to the Missal of 1962. This mass is sometimes called the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), the Pian mass (after Pius V who issued the Missal implementing the reforms of the Council of Trent) or the Tridentine mass. The 1962 Missal was the latest (prior to Vatican II) revision of the mass in the form it took under Pius V's reforms. But do not be deceived. There was not some new rite developed after the Council of Trent. Calling it "Tridentine" is misleading. Pius V modestly and respectfully pared back to basics a 1,000+ year old rite. There was no break with the past. It developed organically from the practices of the Church in Rome in Peter and Paul's time and from the Jewish ritual that preceded it.

After the second Vatican council, a new missal was issued in 1965. One could argue that this Missal issued in 1965 (right after the Council) already met the requirements of the Council. If you hold to this position, you would argue that the very dramatic changes made in 1969, were not necessary.

Traditionalists who argue for going back to "The old Latin mass" typically call for restoring the Missal of 1962. This Missal was promulgated by Pope John XXIII. This was the mass as it was celebrated during Vatican II.

Rather than calling this the "Tridentine Mass," maybe we should refer to it as the Mass of John XXIII!

Why Is Benedict Popular?

Image from the Diocese of Penbroke (Ontario.)


My good friend Matt pointed out that our new pope does not smile as much as John Paul the Great. While my default image of Benedict has him smiling, much of the time his pictures show him quite intent, typically listening.

Yet we have on a good source, Sandro Magister, that he is even more popular that John Paul. (See Magister's post by clicking on the tittle link.)

How is that possible?

Pope Benedict XVI must be a press secretary's nightmare. Key talks he insists on writing himself and delivering unvetted. He normally speaks without notes quoting scripture and the church fathers from memory. If some American bishops use the word "pastoral" as a synonym for "a good manager and fund raiser," Benedict exemplifies a pastoral bishop in a way the early fathers would have recognized. He focuses on the person in front of him, he listens, and teaches in questions and answers. And his teaching is always rooted in Jesus and the scriptures.

He leads with his prose.

As Magister points out, he is the first theologian to become pope. Benedict told his fellow theologians, "the fundamental virtue for the theologian ... [is] the discipline of obedience to the truth." Explaining the words of his predecessor (1Pt 1:22) to his fellow theologians, he taught, "In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion, is considered to be a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul. The ‘purity’ to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the truth."

Oddly enough in this world where Pontius Pilate seems to rule ("Truth? What is that?") and where a Gresham's Law of words seems to prevail, the clarity of truth has appeal. "[F]or it is not we who speak in today's river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us."