Stupak Steps Down

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."
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Sacred Language and the Sacred Liturgy

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.)

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

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!

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

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

Interview with Joseph Bottum from Joe Carter on Vimeo.

Benedict Approves a Document on the Reform of the Reform

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

Rejoice and be glad!

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

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