September 2002 Archives

Do be do be do

Fr. Bob Carr ruminates about why the slogan "What Would Jesus Do?", a currently popular theme in Evangelical Protestant youth culture, never really sat quite right with him. He offers a story to illustrate why we need not just the question, but also the answer. He starts here and gives a followup.

For what it's worth, here's another angle: "WWJD?" by itself is a question about morality, and while moral guidance is good, it's not everything. Sometimes we get the guidance and we still fail to live up to the way of Jesus. Another question comes to help us out: "What did Jesus do?" He became an inexhaustible fountain of forgiveness for us. We listen to the answers from Jesus the Preacher, but we also need Jesus the Priest.

Why is this man smiling?

It's hard to understand considering that some tanks driven by a few of God's Chosen People just turned his compound into moonscape. They must be serving chocolate pudding tonight at the Rest Home for Washed-Up Middle Eastern Terrorists and Demagogues. Or perhaps the "V" is for "Vanilla." Heaven help the nurse who has to put his bib on!

I just put down the latest printed copy of National Review which contains a piece by William F. Buckey that skewers the "Reflections" document issued by one of the committees of the US Bishops Conference. And it dawned in me, in my current cranky state, that there's been at least one other document that escaped review by the entire Bishop's conference but still made it to prime time: Environment and Art in Catholic Worship. Luckily that's been replaced with Built on Living Stones. By "Prime Time" I mean out there for all to see and misunderstand as something authoritative.

Adoremus in aeternum Sacratissimum Sacramentum.

Fr. Jim's perspective on the kneeling/genuflecting controversy.

Matt. 18: 1-10

Today's gospel reading, according to the 1962 Roman Missal, was for the feast of St. Michael the Archangel.

1: At that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"
2: And Jesus called a little child to him, set him in their midst,
3: and said, "Amen I say to you, unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
4: Whoever, therefore, humbles himself as this little child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5: "And whoever receives one such little child for my sake, receives me.
6: But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it were better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

7: "Woe to the world because of scandals! For it must needs be that scandals come, but woe to the man through whom scandal does come!
8: And if thy hand or thy foot is an occasion of sin to thee, cut it off and cast it from thee! It is better for thee to enter life maimed or lame, than, having two hands or two feet, to be thrown into the everlasting fire.
9: And if thy eye is an occasion of sin to thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee! It is better for thee to enter life with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.

10: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you, their angels in heaven always behold the face of my Father in heaven."

(text from the 1941 Confraternity Version)

This gospel returns to us with painful relevance this year, and in it, the Lord Jesus speaks a warning with the utmost seriousness: lead no one else to sin, and let nothing lead you to sin.

There is also a word of consolation in verse 10, a word that speaks to all those who were as little ones "despised" or scandalized -- now we might say: who were disrespected, shocked, wounded, led to stumble. Jesus says you were not alone, you were not lost: your angel in heaven always beheld the face of my Father.

One of the men in the choir works for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Today I asked him about Cardinal Keeler's list. "He really raised the bar for the other Bishops," he said. "Why would he post the names of priests who were dead?" I asked. "I guess to be totally transparent," he replied. I wish we'd had more time to talk but we were in the middle of our rehearsal before Mass.

Raised the bar? What bar? I just can't see the justification of posting a list of names of priests and religious who were only accused, some of whom were deceased. I won't defend the indefensible - I'm sure there were perpetrators on the list. But to be accused and no fault proven or admitted? To be accused and be dead? What was the point?

A reprint from the New Oxford Review via the CRFC website. (CRFC = Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club)

"With few exceptions, the results of Catholic catechesis over the past forty years have been dismal. We Catholics, both laity and clergy, are all too often abysmally ignorant of our own Tradition. For more than two generations now, we have been robbed of the fullness of Catholicism, which is our birthright. With a few thankful exceptions, our collective acquaintance with Scripture is piecemeal, our knowledge of Tradition is pathetic, our hymns are embarrassing, our religious art is ugly, our churches look like U.N. meditation chapels, our ethics are slipshod, and our aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities are so far from being sublime that they almost look ridiculous."

- Dr. Blosser, The Kasper-Ratzinger Debate and the State of the Church
New Oxford Review (April 2002)

That sums it up quite succintly. What can we do about it? First and foremost we should pray. The Holy Spirit will guide the Church through this trial. Second, guided by the spirit we should determine what we might do in our own parishes to foster better knowledge of and appreciation for the fullness of Catholicism. Catechesis is the key, both for children and adults. I'm pitifully ignorant of what is out there besides Catholic study Bibles and the CCC. Obviously Church history and the Church Fathers should be studied as well. I'm going to make it a point to look into what is offered at my parish and determine if I can participate. Can I be so bold as to suggest our readers do the same?

I have been on a few benders in my day, but nothing like this one.

"An attitude of prudent reserve is customary"

On Thursday, after Cardinal Keeler declared blogger Gerard Serafin Bugge to be a (former) priest accused of "sexual abuse" - a charge Gerard denies - writer Mark Sullivan posted this cautionary tale to remind us that you never really can know somebody from his media image alone, and that applies to people we meet through the Internet.

Sullivan's example is the true story of Tommy Speers, in real life a con man who allegedly was friendly with the Mob, but on the air a truly funny guy whose take on sports stars gave him plenty of fans among New England radio listeners. No harm done there - at least to the listeners.

Some readers reacted to Mark's cautionary tale as if he were accusing Gerard of being a monster or a mobster; of course he wasn't. Mark was simply right: meeting someone through the Internet or through a broadcast just isn't quite real life, and it only makes sense to maintain an attitude of prudent reserve: "trust but verify".

On the Internet, I've met a few secret and even shady identities too. I run a mailing-list server with Catholic-themed e-mail discussion groups, and I've seen people taken in by phonies pretending to be priests. Some are clergy from small sects who call themselves Catholic but don't let on that they're not in the same Church as we're in; they peddle their doctrines and try to lure people into involvement with their heretical groups. Maybe they hope for donations.

The last time this issue came up, a priest in some fringe sect asked to subscribe to a mailing list I operate. He claimed to be a Benedictine abbot, and I checked him out: the web revealed that he had a history of name changes, bad checks, and tricks like changing his address while remaining in the same building (a fund-raising scam, maybe?). And in the past he had run some 'gay'-oriented religious group. Yuck.

This sort of thing gives me good reason to encourage an approach of prudent reserve.

My favorite case was that of "fr. Bob Roberts, i.n.d.c.", a guy who, in the mid-'90s, used to post on several Internet forums claiming to be a Catholic monk in Montreal. There were signs that not everything was on the level.

For Catholic lists, he sent in flowery spiritual meditations -- though the spelling of his "meditations" was much better than that of his ordinary writing. He invited people to send him their e-mail addresses and sign up for his daily messages.

On FELINE-L, he wrote about how he and his "Notre-Dame de la Confiance" monastery were (get ready for this!) training domestic cats to be assistants for abused senior citizens. Not just regular seniors, but abused seniors -- get the violins out, please!

On a cancer patients' mailing list, he wrote about his own hard struggle with the disease and the grueling treatment he was undergoing. (How low can you go?)

And while some people smelled a rat, some believed him: there are plenty of too-trusting people out there. They liked the saccharine articles, which I presume he was copying from some source. People wrote to him asking for prayers, and he assured everyone of his prayers during his daily Mass; he also encouraged people to write and tell him about whatever was on their hearts. He would write back, oozing sympathy and calling everyone "my son" or "my daughter".

To tie it all together, he posted a web site about the "Fathers' Cattery" where the charitable pet-training all went on, and about his monastic life; he even included a couple of photos of "fr. Bob" wearing some '60s-style polyester chasuble. But alas, the monastery was "under renovations", so you couldn't visit. Some mailing-list moderators banned "fr. Bob" from their groups, 'cause they didn't believe him.

Eventually he even got his 15 minutes of minor fame: some innocent soul out in the Mountain time zone suggested to CBC Radio that they interview this interesting monk, and the CBC fell for him too, talking with him on the air for about ten minutes one day. But that's as far as he got.

Not too long after that, an e-mail appeared from "fr. Bob's" account, supposedly written by his personal attendant, telling that "Father" was out of action with a heart attack, and wouldn't be heard from for a while.

Some skeptical folks on the FELINE-L mailing list eventually posted the story of his exposure: according to them, an ex-priest on the staff of the CBC had heard the radio interview and started checking. The Archdiocese of Montreal denied knowledge of any such priest or any such monastery - though they had been getting inquiries about him for some time. The staffer went to Roberts' paper-mail address in Montreal and found no monastery or church; just an apartment building, and a paunchy creepy middle-aged guy sitting in an apartment in his shorts with a computer and a couple of cats. So the CBC aired a retraction.

The fans of "fr. Bob", this confidence man from "Our Lady of Confidence Monastery", found it all to be, well, a learning experience.

Catholic Light is now recommended by the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club!

I bought one of these groovy mugs - that might have helped!

You Know It Makes Sense

It's the political season again, so here's a word from the British group ideally suited for our times, the Official (mind you) Monster Raving Loony Party. To start with, they'll refuse to join the Euro, but instead offer to let everyone else join the Pound.

We'll continue to trade with Europe, but we'll keep our British way of life. We will Close the Channel Tunnel, Recall all our Euro MPs, reinstate the Gallon and dispose of the Kilogram. We like our Loony weights which aren't divisible by ten. If the Europeans can't cope with anything other than decimal, then let them stay in Europe. In keeping with the European position on everyone carrying Identity cards, it's proposed that a law be introduced compelling everyone to carry very small mirrors so that when asked they can look in the mirror and identify themselves.

Why can't we have something this sensible on our side of the Atlantic? I could count the Canadian Rhinos, devoted to "putting the Party back in Political Party", though I think they're more about drinking and throwing up than the Loonies are.

Here in Massachusetts, we already have many unofficial loony politicians, of course.

J'accuse!

The Hall of Infamy reveals what John Schultz is up to when not blogging or rehearsing: a crime spree with Furious George. His score: 5853 points from 61 offenses in 11 states. And that doesn't even include his Anti-Globalization Anarchist Crime Points.

[I'm not going to post more than once per day very often, I promise.]

1. There's a big difference between blocking traffic and civil disobedience. The anarcho-globo-poverty protestors in Washington today are breaking perfectly just laws, not unjust laws. The civil rights protestors were willing to go to jail for breaking laws that should not have existed in the first place. They were not challenging the idea of the rule of law (that every citizen is subject to the civil authority). They just wanted some laws to be changed. So they sat at whites-only lunch counters and allowed themselves to be arrested, in order to call attention to the injustice. They wanted everybody to know that they were otherwise law-abiding citizens who would not obey human laws that were grossly and scandalously at odds with natural law.

By contrast, the globos are breaking laws that apply to everybody and benefit society at large. They aren't agitating for the abolition of traffic obstruction laws. I'd say that many of them are protesting the idea of the law itself: and if you look at a lot of their writings, you'll see the contempt they have for the very idea of "the law" -- they sneer at it because to them, the law is just a tool of oppression. They're fascists in natural fibers, and if they ever gained power anywhere, they'd be a lot scarier. (Want to see a society where there's no rule of law? There are plenty of them: Cuba, Iraq, Sudan, and Russia, to name a few.) If I were black, I'd be deeply insulted at the comparison between the two groups. On second thought, I might just think it was really funny.

2.This is hardly an original insight, but these protestors should actually visit the Third World. Not as part of some politicized tour group, but just traveling around and talking to regular people. Hopefully, they'd go someplace that reflected their utopia: burning non-fossil fuels, consuming very little animal meat, and not a McDonalds in sight. I spent a couple of weeks in just such a place earlier this year, and everything I saw convinced me that what they needed (economically, at least) was more capitalism, not less.

The average wage there is about $2.50 a day. That's not a typo -- workers could buy a Happy Meal for an entire day's work. If Nike or the Gap sets up a factory there and pays the workers $10 a day, they're "exploiting" the workers to the tune of a 300% pay raise. (I wish somebody would exploit me like that!) With rising wages, communities can afford to pay for better education, which means workers can work more efficiently. More efficiency means the companies can afford to pay them more, because they're more productive. Think that's wishful thinking? It's how America became the leading industrial power in the 19th century. You can look it up.

One of my major complaints about Catholic social teaching is not what's there, it's what isn't there. As one Catholic intellectual put it, "The Church has much to say about how goods should be distributed, and not much to say about how the goods are created in the first place." (I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember who said it.) There has been a lot of great work in the last two decades on economic matters, especially by Michael Novak and Fr. Neuhaus (and let's not forget the Holy Father), but more needs to be said. On one side, you have throngs of Catholics who buy into the consumerist mentality that we are defined not by our status as children of God, but by what we purchase; on the other, you have Catholics for whom faith is merely a means to achieve social justice, and are more interested in confiscating and redistributing wealth than figuring out how wealth gets created in the first place. We need to hear more from people who see that capitalism, with all of the evils to which it is prone, is currently the best way to feed, clothe, and house the greatest number of people.

Personally, I think I can live with consumerism as a temptation if I don't need to worry about where my family's next meal is coming from. All these globos seem to think they know what's best for the poor and oppressed of the world -- why don't they ask actual poor people what they think? I'm betting that given the choice, the poor would prefer to grapple with consumerism than starvation.

And don't get me started with the people who want to keep the Third World poor because wealth would disturb their quaint little cultures....

"A" is for accused. Apparently that's all it takes to ruin a priest's life, even if the accusation was from decades ago. Even if the accusation was false. The priests in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the religious orders that have served in it are understandably hurt and dismayed. This betrayal of trust is so great I don't know how they can recover. I think this will have another effect of discouraging vocations in the Archdiocese for quite some time. Who would want to serve under a Cardinal who would do this?

The fact is a priest serves Christ. I pray that their faith will carry them through this ordeal.

My Mom Writes Poems, Too!

Here is a nice offering from my Mother, the unsinkable Sandra Molnar!

SISTER NOUVEAU MARY ADDRESSES THE STATUE OF THE BLESSED MOTHER

Quoth Sister Nouveau Mary to the statue, "I must say,
We get precious little help from you, no matter how we pray.
At the rising of the moon, in the clearing in the wood,
We have danced all in a circle, but as yet it's done no good.
And we've said the Mater Noster, meditated till we've dropped,
But still the persecution of our order hasn't stopped.
Aggravation from all corners, even places close to home,
From That Nun in Alabama to You Know Who in Rome."
(The statue stood there silent, as is a statue's way,
And just as well, for Sister had plenty more to say.)
"Why don't you send us novices? We cannot even keep
The few we get. I'm so stressed out I cannot eat or sleep.
Why, if I turn on the TV, I surf around and there
That Nun is, busy shearing off another head of hair."
(The statue stood and smiled at her. What else now would it do?)
Said Sister, "Oh, why bother to tell all this to you?
You never stood up for yourself, you followed Another's plan.
You didn't even write your tale, the job went to some man!
But don't you see? All that is changed, and now has come our hour.
Don't you get tired of second place? Why don't you use your power?
Those men can't stop us anymore. No Way! Just look at me:
I run a school, I wrote a book, I have a Ph.D.
What do you say to that?" The answer came in accents mild:
"That I'm the Queen of Heaven, daughter, and you're a foolish child."
The statue spoke and vanished. Dear God, had she gone blind?
And Sister Nouveau Mary wondered if she'd lost her mind.
Was it a demon? Her subconscious? A guardian angel's joke?
"Now what on earth...?" she sputtered, when another voice spoke.
It was Sister Athanasius, of the habit and the beads,
Who had flat refused to accommodate the order's Changing Needs,
Who had clung to her name in religion, if you please,
And still came to say Hail Marys upon her bony knees.
So there she stayed among them, the lone dissenting voice,
And, of course, the others let her, for We All Must Have Our Choice.
"What's happened to Our Lady? She watches as I pray."
"The statue's gone. We needed to update it anyway."
"What poor soul would steal a statue? Now that really is too bad!"
"Not stolen. I ...just got rid of it."
Ah, well, perhaps she had.

What were you two thinking???

Hello, all --

This is my initial posting on Catholic Light, and I thank Mr. Sal for inviting me, even though every time I see him, I start singing, "I got a mule his name is Sal...."

I thought I'd begin with a brief personal note. My kids are 3 (the boy), 2 (the girl), and -5 months (sex unknown, due in February.) Charlie and Anna are twelve months, seventeen days apart. Let me list a few of the questions and comments we got when Anna was in utero:

• Was the baby an accident?
• Man! Give that woman a break!
• You know, they have things to keep that from happening these days! [a very frequent comment, usually delivered with a wink.]
• Well, I guess you're Catholic. [eye roll]

This time, we've gotten two repeatedly:

• Have you considered how much money kids cost?
• Man! Give that woman a break!

Now, I am hardly a wealthy man, but I do make a decent salary, and we don't spend money above our means. I don't know why someone would presume that we couldn't afford to support three kids. I know that college is expensive, but if you start saving when they're little, it's not that bad; the immediate expense of a baby is fairly small. Except for baby food (maybe $20-30 a week) and diapers ($10 or so), they're pretty cheap. We've already got boy and girl clothes, and my wife is friends with a group of mothers who circulate children's clothing among themselves as the need arises.

As for "giving her a break," why on earth would someone assume that Paige wouldn't want another baby? We talked about it beforehand, and decided that whenever God decided to bless us with another child, we would accept it. I'm quite pleased that we're having another baby, and so is Paige. Lord help us when we have #4.

Doubtless, there are a myriad of explanations as to why someone would say something rude upon the news of a pregnancy. (I should also say that most of my friends and co-workers have been completely happy that we're having another one.) I think there are two reasons for this. First is the culture of selfishness: children are seen as restrictions on the parents' freedom, and freedom is defined as doing whatever you want, whenever you want -- not the ability to choose the good, which is what Jesus and the Founding Fathers meant by freedom. Second is the culture of death: the procreation of a human beings isn't the introduction of a beautiful new creature into the world, it's the incarnation of a consuming little succubus that will drain money and time from the parents, and resources from the Earth.

That's why whenever someone says they're expecting, I use the only socially gracious response: "Congratulations!"

So I just remembered something I've been meaning to blog about. My wife and I don't watch much TV. It's news in the morning and whatever happens to be on around bed time on a handful of channels: Food Network, History Channel, Home & Garden Channel, etc. I find myself going back to the Food network alot because there's never been a show about Hitler on the Food Network and normally someone isn't building their very own paper mill on the Food Network. That said, there's a few things I love and a few things I can't stand

I love Alton Brown and Good Eats. It's a smart show that's well done and entertaining. Even if I won't ever smoke my own bacon, he still manages to both educate and entertain me.

I like Mario Batali because he's real. He's the big jolly guy who lives down the street that you wouldn't mind having a beer with. So what if I'll never cook Risotto turned black with some ink from an octopus? There's a lot of stuff he cooks that I will try and he doesn't have any of the super-chef annoying qualities that I find in...

...Emeril Legasse. Holy crap I'm beginning to hate his show. We all love garlic, but do you have to cheer wildly when 4 times the normal amount is thrown in to the sautee pan? Does everything need Emeril's essence? He was making Wiener Schnitzel one night and I thought "Cool - some authentic German food." He pounded it, put salt and pepper on it and covered it with his "essence." So much for authentic German food. I was also amazed one night that the audience cheered as Emeril chopped up some parsley. It's chopping, folks. The man is chopping. It's not even as impressive as the Ginsu Knife commercials of the 1980s but people were wild with glee.

Sarah Pinkney of Food Finds drives me nuts. I call it Fake Finds since she acts like everything she pops into her mouth is just the most amazing thing she's ever had. And she has the kindergarten teacher tone going on that drives me nuts.

Jaime Oliver, the Naked Chef, makes me want to shoot the TV out with a sawed-off shotgun. I can't understand a single word of his, and his show is full of stupid British TV Tricks: odd angles, zooms, fast forwarding while Jaime drives his stupid scooter to the bakery. If I wanted some British TV I'd be watching Dr. Who. Just cook some food in a way I can understand and stop talking about your mates.

$40 A Day is another show I'm not crazy about. I don't remember the name of the hostess but she's supposed to travel around the US with only $40 a day to spend on food. Make it $400 a day and it would be much more interesting.

Iron Chef is mildly entertaining for the first 5 minutes (when you find out what the theme ingredient is) and the last 5 minutes when you find out who won. There is one judge on there that sort of funny be virtue of her work: she's a fortune teller. I'm waiting for her to taste something and say "You will not win this time, my friend."

Why did I think of this? I just went to weather.com and Emeril was featured in a pop-up ad for some new series he's doing. And it wasn't just a pop-up ad - it had sound. He was saying "We're going to kick-it-up notches unknown on blah blah blah" I closed the window pretty fast and started typing this post.

John, clearly a priest who refuses the sacrament to someone who genuflects and then calls him a "conservative idiot" has a problem with charity! I'm not sure we've all lost our focus on charity. What's the problem with devotion, especially when it involves the Eucharist?

Reading about the communion mayhem below, I can't help but thinking that people on both sides of the divisive issues of the day have lost their focus on Jesus and on living a life of charity.

I'm preaching to myself with this statement, of course. So many times I fail to live out charity in favor of selfishness and pride. I think the lack of focus on charity lets angst around these issues build into inappropriate expressions of indignation and a real lack of perspective on what's important. Comments?

Those Wacky Anglicans

Good heavens, Archdeacon Grantly! Did you know your new Archbishop of Canterbury is a druid? The London Times reported on July 19:"As the sun rises over a circle of Pembrokshire bluestones, the Archbishop of Wales, the Most Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams will don a long white cloak while druids chant a prayer to the ancient god and goddess of the land".

Those Wacky Liberal Catholic Bishops

This, of course, is worse: Adoremus Bulletin reports that an unpublished version of the ICEL Missal/Sacramentary was auctioned off on eBay in the beginning of September. The text by the seller:

This set comes from the private collection of a bishop who, wearying of the long wait for the Roman confirmatio and growing daily more disgusted over Curial politics and the manipulation of the Vatican by certain well-funded right-wing American Catholics, had several sets printed and bound. One set is used in his private chapel (and sometimes even in the Cathedral - shhhh!). The remainder are still boxed, awaiting His Excellency’s final disposition. But, as he approaches retirement, he offers this set now – exclusively on Ebay – to those who would like to have these rare and beautiful texts for their own personal study and edification (now don't go studying them at the altar, with the candles lit and a couple of hundred people present!). While his own episcopal motto is Nova et Vetera (from our Lord’s words in praise of the scribe learned in the kingdom of God who, like the wise householder, can bring forth the New and the Old), our bishop friend in this auction invokes the phrase stamped in the back of every liturgical book published in the NON-ROMAN usage of Milan, the Ambrosian Rite: Ubi fides, ibi libertas: Where the faith is, there is liberty!

The auction listing (which is available for a limited time, so don't wait to check it out!) also assures us that the new, never-to-be published 2 volume set has translations that are more faithful to the original Latin text, while at the same time being more sensitive with regards to inclusive language.

That is like McDonald's announcing healthful new menu choices, all served with a generous side order of Crisco, or Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Market changing the recipie of their 'Vegan Mousse' to include the delicious taste of pork.

of St. Blog's Official Pinheaded Grammarian

5:07am My dream about being the Editor of the Concord Monitor interrupted by the scratching of my 4 Siamese Cats.
5:09am I rise from bed to spoon heaping helpings of Fancy Feast out into individual cermanic food bowls.
5:17am Proceed to the laundry room to quickly remove cat elimination from the litter boxes.
5:56am Tolstoi, the youngest cat, is the last cat to arrive for his morning evacuation.
5:58am Litter boxes clean, I proceed to my study boot up my computer.
5:59am Morning Earl Grey tea is brewed extra strong.
6:10am I step out into the cool NH air and witness a neighbor allowing their dog to tramp through the yard
6:10:23am I yell "Get off my lawn!" at the neighbor while shaking a clentched fist
6:12am Proceed back to the computer to begin important work
8:10am No typos found yet. Apparently the St. Blog's parishoners are getting more careful under my watchful eye. But I'm sure they can't keep this up very long.
8:33am Found a typo! Huzzah! Hurray for me and my multiple graduate degrees from prestigious Ivy League universities!
9:55am My gloating complete, I log in to blogger to tell the whole world what I have found.
10:01am I complete my snarky post about a misplaced apostrophe and click on the link. Zounds! The typo has been corrected!!
10:03am I decide not to leave the post up since the typo was correctly prior to my submission of correction.
10:20am I have a terrible headache, and realize that in my zeal to proofread Blogs, I have forgotten my tea.
10:21 The tea is extra strong, but cold. I pour it, return to my desk and place the cup on my Brookstone individual cup warmer that I won at a church raffle.
12:23pm No more typos as yet. Must keep looking... this is very important work.
12:47pm Lunch break. I eat a small cucumber sandwich standing alone in my kitchen.
12:59pm Phone rings. It's the head librarian asking if I can come in today since Mildred is out sick. I pretend to be ill since I need to finish my quest.
2:48pm Thought I came across a typo, but realized that "slap-happy" is not a real English word. No time for speculation - must find real meat!
3:00pm Afternoon break to watch Dr. Phil.
3:20pm During a commercial break, I eat 2.5 (two point five) servings of All-Bran in soy milk.
3:51pm Dr. Phil is talking about negotiating with your spouse... I spend a few moments wondering if I can apply his wisdom to my 4 Siamese cats.
3:59pm Dr. Phil ends, I proceed back to my office to continue my important work.
4:32pm Dry well today. Slow day. Perhaps I should start another blog under another name and start writing about the wondrous love of the Son of God.
4:33pm I decide that my work is too important to spend time on another blog.
5:15pm No more finds. I shut down the PC in order to run some errands.
5:27pm Arrive at the Stop-N-Go to get Glamour Kitty Klumping Krystals with Extra Krystals, some heavy cream, one can of tuna and a new toothbrush.
5:46pm Arrive at the Exxon station to get 2.3 gallons of Premium gasoline.
6:05pm Arrive at home. Feed the cats who are circling around my legs in a way reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels.
6:09pm Prepare a light meal of tuna and spinach, with a spoon full of Bran Clusters as a garnish.
6:24pm Proceed to the litter boxes for the evening evacuation.
6:25pm Tolstoi is first this time, followed by Hawthorne, Rosetti and Dante.
6:30pm I watch Jeopardy. Alex Trebek runs a tight ship on that show.
6:33pm I throw my sensible shoe at the TV because Margie from North Dakota didn't get the question right to "This 20th Century Literary Figure Wrote 'Hop on Pop'" I realize that I am just as disappointed in the question as I am in Margie.
7:01pm Back to the computer for more important review.
9:32pm Been to every Catholic Blog under creation, including some just launched today like St. Rhonda's All-Nite Blog and BLAUGDAMUS. They seem to be good candidates for typos, but I find none.
10:11pm Almost time to retire. Perhaps I should just go with the "slap-happy" reference from earlier...
10:15pm A zero day. Too bad. I retire to bed and begin to wind down with my first edition copy of the Chicago Manual of Style.
10:17pm The cats arrive and position themselves next to me on the bed. Tolstoi purrs which I scratch his head. "There's always tomorrow, Tolstoi..."

Latin Vespers this weekend

Saturday, September 28 at 4:00 PM
St. Michael's Church in Silver Spring [Wayne Ave., between Cedar & Fenton Streets,
one block from Georgia Avenue]
First Vespers of the Patronal feast of St. Michael & All Angels:
- Service entirely sung in Latin
- Roman/Monastic-Cistercian Rite [1978 Revision]
- Gregorian/Monastic Chant
- Polyphony: Magnificat V.toni and Antiphon Ave regina caelorum by Guillaume Dufay (1398-1474).

I thought so!

I received this just last night. It's a letter from Joe Strada of Fairfax to Bishop Loverde of the Arlington (VA) Diocese concerning an incident in which a member of the Virginia House of Delegates was refused Communion because he genuflected -- in St. Thomas More Cathedral in Arlington. I'm not sure what is more disconcerting - Black being asked to stand to receive or the priest asailing him after Mass. Is this a joke? I wish!

The Most Reverend Paul S. Loverde
Diocese of Arlington
200 North Glebe Road, Suite 704
Arlington, VA 22203

Your Excellency,

I am writing to most strongly protest the despicable treatment of the
Honorable Richard Black, member of the Virginia House of Delegates, by your
Cathedral's Rector, Fr. Dominic Irace, at the 9:30 Mass on Sunday, 22
September. During Delegate Black's first visit to the Cathedral for Mass,
he dropped to one knee to receive Holy Communion, as he regularly does in
his home parish and elsewhere; Fr. Irace, however, told him that he must
stand to receive. Delegate Black chose, instead, to move on, since Fr.
Irace would only administer the Sacred Host under his (Irace's) "terms."

This affront to Delegate Black, and his family, is doubly shameful because
Delegate Black is, without question, the most courageous defender of the
innocent unborn on the floor of the House of Delegates in Richmond. One has
to wonder if Fr. Irace would have been so bold as to refuse Holy Communion
to Senator Ted Kennedy or other militantly pro-abortion "Catholic"
politicians who regularly attend Mass in Arlington churches.

To further compound this outrageous insult to the Black family, Fr. Irace
verbally assaulted Delegate Black, shouting insults to him as exited the
Cathedral. When Delegate Black tried to avoid Fr. Irace, pointing out that
he had refused him Holy Communion, Fr. Irace shouted "you liar!" several
times. As Delegate Black left the Cathedral, Fr. Irace loudly called him a
"conservative idiot," before many witnesses (from whom you will no doubt
hear). Are these "pastoral skills" fit for a Rector? (One doubts, for
example, that Irace would have called Ted Kennedy a "liberal idiot.") The
irascible Irace's tongue-lashings and rude outbursts are, unfortunately,
well known to many, but this time he has crossed all bounds of civil
behavior, especially as the Cathedral Rector.

I most strongly recommend that you or your Chancellor take the following
actions to remedy this shameful situation:

* Instruct Fr. Irace on the contents of the letter from Jorge Cardinal
Medina Estevez (Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments), which includes this admonition to the
American bishops: ". . . protect those faithful who will inevitably be led
by their own sensibilities to kneel, from imprudent action by priests,
deacons, or lay ministers in particular, or from being refused Holy
Communion for such a reason. . ." (25 October 2001, italics mine).

* Enroll Fr. Irace in a course (or two) in pastoral skills and/or
anger management;

* Personally contact Delegate Black and apologize to him and his
family on behalf of the diocese, assuring him that, in accordance with
Vatican direction, he will not be refused Holy Communion for kneeling in any
diocesan church.

I look forward to hearing from you on this most important matter, which
certainly would not pass the "Washington Post test."

Respectfully in Christ,

Joseph A. Strada

Copy to: Rev. Irace, Rev. Rippy, Hon.& Mrs. Richard Black, Most Rev. Montalvo

VOTF wants "democracy", except when it doesn't

Greg spotted this one over at HMS: the vote at a Worcester, Mass., meeting proposing a new VOTF chapter fell short of the required two-thirds majority. Under the rules, the proposal did not pass. So the supporters said: to H--- with the vote, and started their chapter anyway. Sure, give us power; trust us.

No doubt most of our readers found out about this before I did. Please, all of you, pray for Gerard.

Over being Catholic. It's raining here and I made some crack about the Catholic kid who asks his Catholic Dad why it's raining. The Dad says, "It's because God is crying!"
"Why is God crying, Dad?" the kid asks.
"I don't know but it's probably something you did."
Laughter all around. Jeers about Catholics and guilt being the first emotion their teach their kids. Two people said they used to be Catholic. "I used to be Catholic but I'm recovering," one of them said. She's not practicing anything. The other former Catholic is an Evangelical. I said, "Well I'm Catholic and I'm happy about it!" Silence. Averted eyes. Smiles turn to Protestant poker faces. I was expecting someone to ask if I had been saved. Maybe tomorrow. I'll keep you all posted at their conversion attempts.

I've just been around to several places and read with disgust the postings about Keeler's list. There's no healing here. There's no closure in viewing "the list." There's no protection for the children. Even the intent of the list is lost in the madness of it all.

Cardinal - would it be a good time to ask what Jesus would do?

This blog is getting a lot of hits from places like Google for all sorts of random things... if you have a question about Catholicism you can drop me a line anytime. I'm writing this because there's been a high degree of randomness to the posts lately..

Study finds youth holding more "conservative" views than parents'

The survey says: the moral compass of young adults and teenagers is turning a little differently than their parents' did. Sometimes it's more in a pro-life and pro-religion direction:

Political science professors Merrill Shanks and Henry Brady of the University of California, Berkeley, found the generation gap was most pronounced on issues such as school prayer - on which 69 percent of teenagers surveyed said it should be allowed, compared to 59 percent of adults 27 to 59.

When it came to federal funding of faith-based charities, 59 percent of college-aged adults supported it along with 67 percent of younger teenagers. That compares to 40 percent of adults in the older age bracket.

On the issue of abortion, 44 percent of those 15 to 22 supported restrictions while 34 percent of adults over 26 shared that feeling.

Livin' on the Fringe

Internet culture: 20 years of "emoticons"

It figures: the typed smiley face ":-)" was invented by a developer in LISP, the language heavy in parentheses. Has the Internet affected your use of language? Occasionally I catch myself writing the ";-)" by hand.

- Columbia's marching band drives Ted Kennedy from the stands.

Quick turnaround in Worcester

A relief for abuse survivors: Worcester Bishop Daniel Reilly tells the lawyers to call off their sweeping subpoena for information from SNAP's files.

The Sept. 9 subpoena instructed SNAP to disclose all information it had in the case of five women who alleged the church didn't protect them from the Rev. Robert E. Kelley, who was convicted of rape and has admitted molesting 50 to 100 girls at St. Cecilia's in Leominster 20 years ago.

It also demanded "names of all persons" who ever alleged to SNAP that a priest in the Worcester diocese abused them.

...Reilly said in a statement the diocese's insurance company made the request without his knowledge, and he was "dismayed" to learn about it in Sunday's newspapers.

"The Diocese of Worcester is committed to the care and support of those who have been victims of child sexual abuse by clergy and I stand unequivocally by that commitment," Reilly said.

[SNAP regional leader Philip] Saviano questioned why Reilly didn't know about the subpoena, given that lawyers for the insurance company and the diocese itself were informed when the subpoena was issued.

"If the bishop wasn't in the loop, I think that's a whole other problem," he said.

Does this demonstrate that the lawyers were heartless about threatening the confidentiality of a support group, or clueless about the bad publicity? Take your pick.

Job opening: any journalists out there?

The Boston archdiocesan newspaper is seeking a full-time news reporter. BA in communications/journalism and experience required. Be Catholic. By post: Managing Editor, The Pilot, 141 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02111-1200; by e-mail: resumes@bostonpilot.org. Good luck.

How not to promote reconciliation

The Diocese of Worcester is giving itself a hotfoot of bad publicity by demanding information from the files of an abuse-survivors group. Although it doesn't seem to have any legal confidentiality privilege, SNAP says it's going to fight..

Anyone out there know if the Church has a position on accupuncture? Anyone? Anyone?

That's how I get greeted on weather.com since I changed my nickname to sinner.
Try it sometime - it's a great way to remind yourself of what's important.

A prayer for spouses to the Spirit of unity

A young lady in .fr saw the prayers on my web site by theologian Fr. Jean Galot, SJ and sent me one more to try translating. She plans to give it to English-speaking friends at her wedding. Here's a first draft.

Holy Spirit, you who unite,
guard our unity by guiding our love,
by inspiring in us daily gestures
where it can express itself, and by prescribing rules to us
that we must keep in every circumstance:

That we not dramatize the clash of opinions,
the jostle of wills; but each make efforts
to be accommodating, according to the other
the best response to his aspirations;

Not to drag out, not to rehash
the conflicts of a moment, but quickly seek
whatever makes the wounds received be soon forgotten,
the silence or the words that bring back peace;

And never to break off, when everything explodes,
not make an absolute pronouncement,
nor carry out a gesture that cannot be withdrawn,
but keep an open heart and welcoming spirit;

To not accuse the other, indicting him for wrongs,
but take up with humility
the burden of dissensions, knowing how to recognize
mistakes and clumsinesses, errors or impatiences;

And not to give up hope at keeping union,
but calling on you, Spirit, that we take up courage
in our hardships, climbing on with hope,
ardor, stubbornness, up the road of love.

Jean Galot, SJ

Amy Welborn linked to this story about the San Francisco Opera's production of the opera by Messiaen. I have heard a lot of his organ and piano music, as well as the "Quartet for the End of Time" which I believe he wrote during WWII as a prisoner of the Germans. His music is as profound as it is inaccessible. It is wonderful but hard on the ears of most people. He had, for lack of a better term, the charism of synthesia. People with synthesia not only hear music, it causes other sensations or responses in the listener like seeing colors in their mind, smells, even physical sensations.

When I learned this about Messiaen I realized I would never experience his music the same way he did. I was disappointed but I knew it's the same for all music - we never totally share in the composer's experience. I feel a bit cheated when listening to Messiaen though - I can only imagine what his music did to him. He was a devout Catholic and wrote many pieces expressing his faith.

I'm Sal Ravilla, a friend of John's from St. Mark Parish in Vienna, VA. I sing in his choir. He's graciously invited me to join him on Catholic Light. I look forward to sharing my thoughts, whether insightful or inane. He's told me there are a number of others who will be joining as well. This is going to be fun!

We almost had a train wreck today when the cantor sang the wrong tune on the chanted Gloria. Good thing the tune she picked ended on the note we needed to start on...

I'm going to be inviting some friends to share the blog. I think it will reinforce the Catholic Light theme and also give the dedicated readers of this blog more things to read.

One of the things I loved about working with the Youth Apostles was the common sense way they approached getting high schoolers to live a life of faith. One of the most effective programs they run are Catholic Life Communities (CLCs) for high schoolers. At parishes that they work, there's separate boys and girls CLCs. They even meet on separate nights. There's no co-ed retreats. This solves the hormone problem very effectively, but unfortunately raises some eyebrows among people who consider single-sex groups to be old-fashioned, rigid, pre-Vatican II, etc.

Please keep youth ministers in your prayers.

Bishop Sean O'Malley will be the next bishop of Palm Beach. He's one of the few bishops outside the DC area I've met personally when I did youth ministry with the Youth Apostles. He celebrated the Mass at which I made my first commitment to that group and visited the community when he was in town for Bishop's Conference meetings.

He's a holy, personable man and I think it's safe to describe him as "squeaky clean" - something that Palm Beach needs pretty badly.

Regarding downsizing at the chancery office in LA.

The [Los Angeles] archdiocese opened a $200 million cathedral Sept. 2 and to-date has paid out more than $3.6 million in sex abuse settlements, but officials said neither of those circumstances had anything to do with the layoffs. They blamed the budget shortfall on the drop in the stock market.

Let me get this straight: gains on equity investments contribute substantially to the operating budget of the LA Archdiocese? Irresponsible!

We had an interesting music directors meeting at my parish where we discussed the use of the sound system for amplifying cantors and instruments. I tend to think that sound systems are necessary evils and that are often badly configured.

Some people seem to think that microphones and speakers exist so that everything can be loud. It's the idea that a speaker or singer should "fill the church." That way, you can be sure people hear everything, every word, syllable, breath and inflection. If a guitar or (heaven forbid) gaggle of guitars are all amplified, along with the singers, then this attitude tends to translate into BIG LOUD CAMPFIRE SING-A-LONG, where the roof in nearly blown off the church. The same thing can happen when the organist pull out all the stops (no pun intended.) I remember seeing a scrawled letter next to a fund-raising notice on a choir room bulletin board. The notice was for new pipes for the organ. The letter was from a very sensitive person who wrote "Don't you think the organ is loud enough? And you want more pipes? Not a dime from me!!!!"

I like my amplification to bring the sound to a level where an attentive person can hear what's going on. Just loud enough that the person still needs to concentrate and focus on what is being said or sung. Any louder and bad sounds become horrendous, and normal sounds are screams. It becomes very easy to tune out such an assault on the ears, and literally stop listening. Or course, there's still some additional help for people with hearing problems. But overall - sound systems should encourage active listening.

General Magic calls its quits
The formerly hot Silicon Valley company once enjoyed investments from Apple and Microsoft and let rabbits wander free around its offices to inspire creativity.

I think that any company that lets rabbits wander free around their offices deserves to be out of business. The big question is: which creditor gets the rabbits at liquidation? What is the fair market value of said rabbits? What account do you close the Office Rabbit Assets to?

Work is crazy this week - we have several big projects going on and lots of business development activity. So I am blogging a bit less.

Teresa, Steve and I had dinner with a priest on Sunday night and I realized something I hadn't before: many priests are anxious about the current happens enough to be changing how the minister. This priest told us he was no longer hearing confessions face to face. "It's the priests perogative to determine the manner the confession is heard." His concern is that any accusation would come down to his word vs. another word so he needs to have guidelines to try to minimize any problems.

It's not an easy decision to make, I'm sure - but certainly indicative of the climate. I'm sure there's men who walk around in their clerical garb wondering if the look they're getting means that someone's wondering if he is a child molester, an embezzler or has a large stock-pile of porn back at the rectory. It's a tough time to be a priest, and a tough time to be a Catholic.

Point is, priests need our prayers very much.

Rod Dreher on bloggers and libel, along with some characters we're all familiar with.

They're delicious!

From Fr. Jim over at Dappled Things

The Church's external ceremonial, the quality of the material things we dedicate to divine worship, the reverence with which we approach the sacred rites, the suitability of the music, the preparation we make, the quality of the proclamation and preaching -- all these things are important, not because God needs them, but because we do.

How Bishop Loverde Handles Allegations Against Priests

"Well enough about me. What do you think of me?"

We are singing the Durufle "Ubi Caritas" today at Mass. The text is perfect for the day, and the piece is basically an impressionist adaption of gregorian chant. The style is very different from most other choral music - it's harmonic color decorating a chant melody, and because of that it's difficult for most amateur choirs.

Steve will be helping on the tenor part and he's also the cantor today.

We take our mutt Eva to the dog park every now and then. I call it the land of 1,000 smells - she spends part of her time just walking around the park sniffing the ground. She growled at another dog yesterday - probably because the owner had put that dog on a leash inside the park - a big no-no in dog park land. After that dog left it was back to normal.

James Akin would post more to his blog.

One of the first things taught in a comparative religion class is the idea of the sacred. The contrast is the mundane, the everyday, the worldly things that don't speak directly of or lead our souls to a "higher being." The sacred is other-worldy, set aside apart and above the normal things of the world. Eating, sleeping and drinking are mundane. Worship, praise, prayer and mediation are all human actions to reach beyond and transcend our mundane lives. A further contrast is the profane - the antithesis of the sacred, that which shows contempt and irreverence for things considered to be sacred. Profanity besides the standard things can include a disregard or lack of respect for the sacred.

The contrast between scared and mundane is sometimes difficult to nail down. In Catholic liturgies, the line has been blurred: a priest is cold and distant (according to some) if he begins Mass with "In the name of the Father... the Lord be with you" instead of "Good morning, Everyone!" Obviously, one is a sacred statement, the other a mundane statement in the context of the sacred.

I was thinking about these things because we have a new associate pastor (Parochial Vicar in the Arlington "Orthodox = Us!" Diocese) and I'm surprised to hear the comments. Fr. X was educated in Rome (eyes roll). Fr. X does things "by the book" (eyes roll again). Fr. X is young (heaven forbid a celebate man who has had 6 years of graduate studies in theology, scripture and Catholic spirituality is only 30 years old! Maybe he'll "mellow" as he gets older and start saying "Good morning!")

What do we need besides Jesus in the Eucharist? It's an interesting question because there's more to the eucharist than the eucharistic prayers and the consecration.

I'll leave that where it is today and come back to it another time. How about some comments, people?

Steve is not blogging anymore and has decided to found a support group for former Bloggers.

Poem by George Herbert, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. I heard this hymn at the Offertory during a Mass on Saturday at the National Shrine. I can't think of anything more appropriate to sing before the Eucharist. Here's a MP3 of a solo version of the song with orchestra.

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life :
Such a Way, as gives us breath :
Such a Truth, as ends all strife :
And such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength :
Such a Light, as shows a feast :
Such a Feast, as mends in length :
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart :
Such a Joy, as none can move :
Such a Love, as none can part :
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.

God's Spirit calls us to glorify Him in the celebration of the Eucharist. He gives us the grace to sing a hymn like this and understand the great grace we receive in Communion. We call on Him because His call to us is unceasing and unwavering. It is His love that none can part, and that is the hope of every Christian.

This is going to be my last post on this blog. John will still be here posting on music, liturgy, faith, life and whatever else comes up. Keep reading and keep the faith. All you readers whose names I know, be assured that you are in prayers. Pray for me! Thanks so very much for reading, commenting, emailing and linking to us.

I posted earlier requesting comments on certain devotional practices (particularly in the Mass and surrounding the Eucharist) falling by the wayside. I appreciate the comments. I was about to unload on this topic based on things I've heard from friends around the country. In the interest of charity I'm going to stay silent!

How do you pray? Does your prayer transcend your daily experiences and your emotions, or do you find yourself praying in the context of the mayhem of your own life and heart?

I'm sure for many people it's both. It's a gift of God's grace against our own will to be at peace in our meditation and contemplation.

The transcendent quality of chant and polyphony is what draws many to it. There's nothing overly emotional or chaotic about chant and polyphony. It's sacred by both virtue of its text and the transcendent style. Contrast a chant to the bombastic "I Am the Bread of Life" and you get the idea. One's a screamer in the first person, the other a simple melody with it's only context being it's been sung in Catholic liturgies for centuries.

I hesitate to describe it as "divine providence" because gambling isn't on God's a-list of virtuous human activity.

From CNN - New York lottery winning numbers: 9-1-1

Apollo astronaut says he hit man in self defense

...the 72-year-old Aldrin "was forced to protect himself" from independent Nashville filmmaker Bart Sibrel, a much younger and bigger man, who was stopping the astronaut and his daughter from leaving.

Sibrel, 37, has admitted to ambushing Aldrin at the hotel and shoving a Bible at him so that he could swear he really made the second walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.

The filmmaker has made television documentaries and films debunking the Apollo 11 voyage, saying it never left earth -- a conspiracy theory that some critics maintain gives conspiracy theory a bad name.

This article from the Washington Times caught my eye today. No time for the mawkish by Jennifer Harper. Regarding December 7, 1942, she writes:

The front pages of the nation's newspapers were stuffed with news of war: a battle raging in Tunisia, the launch of the USS New Jersey at Philadelphia, and, on the front page of the old Evening Star, a single photographic reminder of the destroyed harbor at Honolulu. On an inside page, Pvt. Joe Lockhard, who had first spotted the incoming Japanese planes at a radar station above Honolulu, was the subject of a small item headlined: "Hero of Navy prefers to forget Pearl Harbor."
"We have to give our time to what's happening now," he said, "and wait for history to catch up with it, when the war is won."

Our society is very different now. At present the media and our modern notions of the need closure are causing us to be much more introspective than, as it has been called, "the greatest generation." They were focused on the task and hand. To be fair the enemy was visible with perfect clarity - not the "jihadistan" we face today. President Bush also has to make his case for an attack on Iraq to this country and to the world. He has yet to do so. I pray that we have the resolve to win this war. It is very different from the second great war in some many ways. Read The imperial era begins by Tony Blankley to get an interesting opinion on the current war and what it means for America's future. It's a brave, new world.

St. Mark's in Vienna, VA - 7pm

Here's the music program (we use Ritual Song published by GIA)

SEPT. 11, 2002 - Memorial Mass
GATHERING Lord of All Hopefulness, RS 713
PSALM The Lord is My Light and My Salvation, RS 57
ALLELUIA RS 402
PREPARATION Shepherd Me O God, RS 756
EUCH PRAYER ACCLS RS 310, 311, 313
LAMB OF GOD Mass of Remembrance, RS 352
COMMUNION 1 Now We Remain, RS 813
COMMUNION 2 These Are They Which Follow The Lamb, Goss
SENDING FORTH There's A Wideness in God's Mercy, RS 742

I just realized that I've been listening to the Verdi Requiem for the last half hour... the Libera Me soprano solo. I've been clicking the repeat button on my MP3 player.

I thought it was obvious.

Church Attendance Back to Normal
The emotional pain and search for answers after Sept. 11 had many flocking to religious services like never before. But, like many of the initial post-attack phenomenon, church attendance has since returned to normal.

It's too bad it takes disaster for people to reach out to God. And even worse, when the smoke clears it's back to the normal business of sleeping in on Sundays.

As time allows we will post links to sites, articles, and such. John and I expect to spend most of the day doing our part to keep the economy chugging along in our jobs before we go to Mass tonight. Links and thoughts are all welcome via email or the comments. Pray for the souls of those who died last year, their familes, our nation and for a lasting peace!

The White House
"On Hallowed Ground" by Dave Barry
Ad Orientem, Mark Sullivan's blog, has two great posts here and here.
Peggy Noonan's "A Heart, a Cross, a Flag"
A Mighty Fortress is our God link via JB O at Kairos

I've come up with a name for all our liturgical ramblings - GIRM warfare! Keep reading - John has some good stuff below.

...provided that they correspond with the spirit of the liturgical action and that they foster the participation of all the faithful."

Participation can be both external and internal. Active listening is just as important as singing. So I don't want to hear any crying about how you can't participate if the choir does a latin motet...

Liturgists and musicians are focusing in on the recent Revision of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani or General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM).

Here's a nice nugget for you, taken from a summary on the USCCB site.

A re-emphasis on the privileged place of Gregorian chant as "more proper to the Roman liturgy" is included, though "other kinds of sacred music, polyphony in particular, are not in any way to be excluded, provided that they correspond with the spirit of the liturgical action and that they foster the participation of all the faithful." (41)

Polyphony discussion is today.

Why Sacred Polyphony?
Why is the Michelangelo "Pieta" a masterpiece? Because it represents a pinnacle in sacred art. It's inherently sacred art because of the subject. It's inarguably beautiful. The same is to be said for sacred polyphony, generally music written in the 1500's and 1600's that has a sacred text, is modal and has a melody in each one of the voice parts.

"Modal" refers to the musical scale used in the piece. Most music today is written in a major or minor mode. Sacred Polyphony uses related scales that have a different sound quality than the major mode. In fact, sacred music was normally not written in the major mode - that was called the "Lascivious Mode" since many secular pieces were written in that mode.
A melody in each part is exactly the opposite of today's hymn (homophonic music): melody on top with other voices singing accompaniment parts. With each choral voice having its own melody, there's a flow that goes from start to finish that is not found in homophonic music.

I'm really boiling down the concepts here, but the bottom line is sacred polyphony is sacred because of the text and because the musical style is not found in secular music. It's completely set apart of pop-tunes, folksy music, broadway, dance music of the Renaissance, etc. It was written for the Church, and continues to be relevant to the Church in the same way as the Sistine Chapel.

Why isn't polyphony done more?
It's hard. You need to really train an amateur choir or have a professional choir. Many of today's music directors don't have a formal education in choral singing or in sacred polyphony so they won't touch it.
It's in Latin. Lots of folks are still sour on Latin.
It doesn't fit with the current style of liturgical music/worship - you can't do Rory Cooney to start and throw in some Palestrina after communion. The parishes that are set on Cooney have a huge cultural gap to bridge in order to get to chant and polyphony.
It's poo-pooed by people who think participation means every possible thing that can be sung needs to be sung by the entire assembly, no questions asked.

More another time on polyphony and chant.

posts about a radio blurb about Gregorian Chant. Neat stuff. I might comment later - got work to do!

"Hey - don't paint over my dinner!"

Since the Mass is Heaven on Earth, when we dress for Mass we should dress like we're going to Heaven.

I guess I don't have anything else to call this. A very pregnant woman (about to pop) stopped me after Mass. Her baby will be Baptized in two weeks at the 10 am Mass. She was requesting that we do an Ave Maria after Communion. I told her that I would mention it to John and then I said something like "You're not wasting any time getting the child Baptized!" She said, "I want to get the horns removed as soon as possible!"

From the artist: This piece was drawn for an article (written by somebody else) right after the Twin Towers collapsed. It had to do with how surreal it was to watch the tragic fall. Almost as if it was like watching a Hollywood movie with all those special effects. It's difficult to behold those images of the building collapsing, even to this day, and I saw it happen from my very own window and roof.

Dean and I collaborated on a comic strip for Web Hosting Magazine for a couple of years. He's a resident of NYC.

Now it looks as though Haloscan dumped all the comments from today and restored the previously deleted comments from yesterday. Sorry people. Please keep reading anyway - John is back!

Prayer to Our Lady of Brezje
Mary, Help of Christians, you show us how to be
Christian, how to "hear the word of God and keep
it" (Luke 11:28). Help us to respond to God as you
did, that His power work in us, that the Spirit
form Christ in us, and that His mind, His heart,
His will be ours. We ask this through Christ, Our
Lord. Amen.

15 promises of Mary to those who pray the Rosary:

To all those who shall pray my Rosary devoutly, I promise my special protection and great graces.

Those who shall persevere in the recitation of my Rosary will receive some special grace.

The Rosary will be a very powerful armor against hell; it will destroy vice, deliver from sin and dispel heresy.

The rosary will make virtue and good works flourish, and will obtain for souls the most abundant divine mercies. It will draw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.

Those who trust themselves to me through the Rosary will not perish.

Whoever recites my Rosary devoutly reflecting on the mysteries, shall never be overwhelmed by misfortune. He will not experience the anger of God nor will he perish by an unprovided death. The sinner will be converted; the just will persevere in grace and merit eternal life.

Those truly devoted to my Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.

Those who are faithful to recite my Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces and will share in the merits of the blessed.

I will deliver promptly from purgatory souls devoted to my Rosary.

True children of my Rosary will enjoy great glory in heaven.

What you shall ask through my Rosary you shall obtain.

To those who propagate my Rosary I promise aid in all their necessities.

I have obtained from my Son that all the members of the Rosary Confraternity shall have as their intercessors, in life and in death, the entire celestial court.

Those who recite my Rosary faithfully are my beloved children, the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

Devotion to my Rosary is a special sign of predestination.

and dumped some of the most recent comments. Maybe they had to restore from an old backup. Regardless, I apologize the vox populi has been the victim of this glitch. I guess it's true that you get what you pay for!

Teresa and I went on a 6 day cruise along the coast of Maine. My parents came along as well.

Good things:
Location - Maine is beautiful this time of year. I love the ocean. Only one day of fog/rain.
Quality time with my beloved spouse.
Drinks didn't cost extra on this cruise. (I'd say "free booze!" but that just doesn't sound right.)
40 passengers total.
Did you know Maine has many, many lobsters?

Bad things:
Lobster served only 1 night on the boat. (Are you kidding me??? You were in MAINE in the height of lobster season!!!!)
All the fresh-faced, energetic college kids who were on the service staff went back to school and were replaced by college drop-outs and 18-year-old slackers.
Room wasn't clean when we boarded.
Dining was always at a table for six, so every meal included socializing with other passengers (I was fine for a couple of days, then couldn't take the superficial chatter with strangers. I started meals by saying "Vienna, Virginia - married 3 years - no kids yet - 2 cats, 1 dog - software company")
Two words: Galley Fire. Ruined the beef for the night, we ate Haddock instead. Haddock is a fish for those of you who are unfamiliar with non-Salmon or non-Tuna fish types. It doesn't have the tasty qualities of salmon or tuna.
Sous chef - fired after 3 days. Turned out he liked the free booze too much. Had caused the gallery fire and started to ruin breakfast the next day.
Boat was shaped like a house boat - so ocean travel was a little rough. I like rough, but there were several hip-replacements waiting to happen so one harbor visit needed to be cancelled due to high seas.

I heard two Sunday homilies this weekend, with a striking difference. One was written in advance and delivered with gusto, the other was a complete tirade delivered off the cuff. One was well organized and directed in terms of delivering the message, the other rambled from point to point. One used precise language, the other was delivered in an extremely casual fashion.

Guess what homily mentioned Jesus? The one that was planned and calculated.

I'd like to propose some guidelines for any priest that might be listening.

1. Plan your homily. Write it down even, and read it with fervor. You will say what you mean and mean what you say. Words mean things. If you don't plan out your homily down to the last word, you risk miscommunicating and miscontruing your message.

2. Talk about Jesus. Your homily is not about you or how you feel. With a less educated and less holy crowd, you need to get to the heart of the message: God on Earth, Jesus Christ in flesh and blood among us. Every discussion of theology and morality needs to be rooted in Jesus Christ.

3. Don't get angry without planning to be angry during your homily. The tirade I heard on Saturday evening was truly depressing. The priest was bitterly talking about abortion votes of Virginia politicians, about how the Church has been dragged through the mud in the media - all in the context of the fraternal correction passages of this week. It was very ineffective simply because there was no context for the anger - it wasn't righteous indignation, it was a bully pulpit. Righteous indignation is just fine and can be effective in getting people to change their ways. But if you just sound bitter and angry without a sacred context then you are doing a great disservice.

That's all for now... time to walk the doggie.

No more stupid Cox Communications commercials! ("We know some of our customers have been having problems - we're working hard to complete our upgrades by 2017!" or "We've decided not to raise our rates this week! Check back next week!")
No more "Mentos" commercials!
No more "reality" shows! I like living my life and not the lives of a bunch of beautiful people stuck on island, or those trying find a wife, marry a millionaire, or be the next pop star.
No more paying for television!
No more television, period! The devil can't get in my house through that damned devil Tv!

What shall I do with the money I'm saving?

Feed the poor
Clothe the naked
Give hope to those who still pay for television
Subscribe to Latin Mass Magazine

Any other suggestions?

What's up with extra-liturgical texts being used in the Mass in the place of the Mystery of Faith? There are four to choose from - why subsitute something else? Are they not mysterious enough?

"Oh, no!" you exclaim. "One of those pesky Schultz brothers is trotting out another liturgical innovation to beat with a stick!" You got it. I was standing near a person in church today who always monkeys with the words of prayers. Example from the Creed: "For us ... and for our salvation." Example from Liturgy of the Eucharist: "May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of God's name, for our good and the good of all God's Church." Now, what I still don't understand about this is why they object to saying something like "us men and our salvation" and "His name" or "His Church" and they don't seem to care, or notice, that the Holy Spirit is given a gender. I never hear this person changing the words in the Creed about the Holy Spirit: "With the Father and the Son He is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets." Why not? If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (male) and the Son (male) then what do you get? Anyhow, I just think gender-neutral and "inclusive" language is silly. "Us men and our salvation" is inclusive, unless you don't understand the English language.

Regarding this post below, that was what Teresa and I had on our first day in Portland... not just dinner...

We had a great, relaxing time. I'll blog on details once I'm thru the 600+ emails I have...

come over and watch as I read Peggy Noonan's A Heart, a Cross, a Flag reflections on the anniversary of September 11.

I thought he was coming back on Sunday but he is returning today. I'm not sure if he'll do any blogging today but tomorrow when I am gone he is sure to jump right back into the fray with such topics as liturgical dance, church music, liturgical dance, church music, heretics, church music and liturgical dance.

- this is not to be missed.

No, not the blogging kind, the musical kind. I'm speaking of an interesting piece by John Adams, minimalist and pulse-phase composer of our time. I'm not aware of his personal religious beliefs, but Christian Zeal and Activity is worth a listen if you have a fast connection to the net. It's linked here and it's about 10 MB - if you don't have a fast connection be prepared for a long download. The piece is for orchestra and tape. The tape portion was from a sermon but a Protestant preacher and is added in parts with some repetition of his phrases and barely perceptible layering of the tape portion. You can hear the preacher clearly about the strings, but you can also hear layers of the speaking part beneath. Normally taped speech and music is repugnant, but Adams has crafted a very effective and evocative piece. This is the original recording. I found a CD with a newer version but it was complete garbage - same string parts with a speaker trying to do the same thing Adams did with tape in the original. It was moronic for them to even attempt, much less record and sell. Have a listen to this version and let me know what you think.

Lots of cyber-ink has been spent on the topic of Iraq and whether or not a full court press by the U.S. would be considered a just war. I have two things to say.

1. The war on Iraq didn't end in 1991, it only should have. I mean G.H.W. Bush should have removed Saddam from power when he had the chance. Saddam was laughing then, laughed when Bush had polyps removed after he left office, and was laughing all the way up to the time we began to get serious about another full-scale invasion. We've been at war with Iraq for more than a decade, covertly and overtly. Surely the covert actions have escalated in recent months. We've been enforcing the no-fly zone since I was in college - more than a decade. I mention the length of time here to give the debate a relevant historical perspective rather than making references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We're not talking about a new war, we're talking about ending a war that has been going on for quite a while. Then comes the occupation, the new government with our government's seal of approval, and some thing else for former super powers (like Russia) and future super powers (like China) to be bitter about.

2. The campaign against Iraq is part of a larger war. We're fighting a war against terrorism, which I equate with violent and destablizing political and religious elements in the Middle East. A campaign against Iraq is not separate from this war, it is part of it. How do we judge the whole war? Should Iraq be a target? Is Iraq the most obvious target? I personally think there are other enemies we can easily indentify as a more dangerous threat - those countries funding terrorism directly.

Jonah Goldberg posts a letter from Pat Buchanan to the editors of The New Rupublic. I find his caustic writing to be kind of entertaining. I agree with him on some points, I don't buy his we're-all-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket ideas. Mentioning Buchanan has the same effect at a party as lighting a cigar. Everyone will stare at you for minute and slowly move away until you are left all alone.

There are posts on the Michael Rose/Fr. Johansen fracas, the anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. and lots of other interesting tidbits.

Other bloggers are now writing posts for my blog - I love it! In all seriousness, Mark's is one of my favorite blogs. I sincerely appreciate him taking the time to write.

More on liturgical dance: I found on the Net a paper
by an Australian teacher on the history of dance in
Christian worship. Here's the link:

http://www.pastornet.net.au/renewal/journal6/coleman.html

Her conclusion:

"Dance within the Christian context, having sprung
from the Jewish tradition, was embraced by the early
church as an integral part of celebrations and of
worship. During the Middle Ages various influences
affected the development of Christian dance and
despite increasing proscriptions concerning its value
and use, it survived as a sacred dance form. However,
with the commencement of the Reformation, the dance
was forced out of its place in the liturgical
celebrations of the Christian church, and with few
exceptions flourished instead in the secular realm.

"Gradually, with the renewal of the church in the
twentieth century, including liturgical renewal, dance
has begun to find increasing acceptance in the worship
life of the church once again..."

Here is an interesting excerpt on prevailing Christian
views toward sacred dance after the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation:

"Similarly, in the Catholic Church during the meetings
of the Council of Trent, the intention was less on the
abolition of sacred dance, than on seeking unity in
liturgical and theological matters. The Council's
decrees, however, stifled creativity and growth within
the church drama scene. In 1566, statues of the synod
of Lyons for example, threatened priests and other
persons with excommunication if they led dances in
churches or cemeteries.

"In general, the church insisted on liturgical unity
without the use of dance in worship. As increasing
pressure to cease all religious dance mounted, there
seemed no avenue for a possible creative revival in
dance.

"Consequently, religious dance disappeared, or
survived in only a few isolated places. Some religious
denominations cultivated specific liturgical movements
which harked back to the early church dance. Other
Christian dance movements were changed into folk
expressions, to be seen at weddings or funerals, or
else remained buried in the structured movement of the
Catholic Mass.

"The events of the period eventually led to the
eradication of liturgical dance, processions, and most
visual arts, leaving only the arts of painting,
preaching and music unscathed.

"In the post Reformation period both the Protestant
and Catholic Church 'firmly attempted to close the
door on creative expression of dance in the liturgy'
(Gagne 1984:59). The Catholics' increasing
proscriptions against dance, coupled with an
increasing sense of mistrust of dance on the part of
Protestants, forced dance back into the secular realm.
'Dance was given back totally to society, with few
exceptions remaining of church-related Christian
dance' (Gagne 1984: 59)."

If you think about it, the Catholic worship introduced
and nurtured by missionaries across the world between
the Counter-Reformation and the mid-20th century -- by
Spaniards in California and Mexico and Latin America,
by the French in North America and Africa and the
South Seas, by the Belgians in the Congo -- would have
been of the Tridentine variety.

The blackrobe Jesuits were noted for adapting to local
cultures, but it is far more likely they were teaching
the Hurons to sing Gregorian chant than adapting the
native harvest dance to Catholic "liturgies."

This move to make worship more "relevant" by
incorporating "multicultural" aspects is a creature of
the post-Vatican II generation. I can't imagine that
Latin American Catholics or Vietnamese Catholics or
various other ethnic Catholics have a deep-seated
hankering for a tribal promenade at Mass, since this
has not been part of formal Catholic worship in their
countries over the centuries. At the folk festival
maybe; at Mass, no.

Catholic means universal, and there was a time that if
you went to Mass in Paris or Pago Pago, you could
follow along, because it was the same Latin rite
wherever it was offered. Have we more unity in the
current day of botched vernacular translations and
Jules Feiffer-style Dances to Spring at the Offertory?

Short answer - no. Other opinions and musings welcome via comments or email.

Link via Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli, a much more thoughtful blog than this one.

At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scattred bodies goe,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom warre, dearth, sage, agues, tyrannies,
Despaire, law chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe.
But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space,
For, if above all these, my sinnes abound,
'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,
When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

Steven calls this "nearly miraculous" - I couldn't agree more. John's choir sings a modern setting of the text during Lent by Williametta Spencer. It's very moving but she mishandled the text here:

'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,
When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent;

She treated "When wee are there" as part of the phrase that begins with "here on this lowly ground." It's an effective piece, but that error is grievous - almost unforgiveable. Here's an MP3 file of the setting performed by the Kansas City Chorale. It's about 2 MB so anyone should be able to download it. They take some sections too fast but overall it has a wonderful shape. The ending is particularly powerful.

I got this postcard from John today! Click on the images to see them magically enlarge. He even used a Madonna and Child stamp. Notice John thoughtfully included what they had for dinner, including drinks. In case you are wondering, I had half a can of Diet Coke^TM and a handful of Pez^TM. I need to go to the grocery store...

For what it's worth, since this is the same bunch that just declared kneeling for Communion illicit, the 1982 April/May Newsletter of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy says (in part) the following:
"FROM THESE DIRECTIVES, from the NATIONAL CONFERENCE of CATHOLIC BISHOPS, all dancing, (ballet, children's gesture as dancing, the clown liturgy) are not permitted to be 'introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever.'"
Also, although it seems like they can't quite figure out what they're trying to say, the Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship said this in Notitiae 11 (1975) 202-205.

I don't think it's _typical_, but it's not unknown. My home parish
tried it once, as a homily supplement. Didn't work and got dropped.
However, the University of Dayton does it all the time in their
Sunday masses. There's a small corps of students (about two per Mass)
who wear white dresses and dance in the processions in and out. I
think they occasionally bring up the gifts if they're short for help.
You only see the whole group at once when there's a big Mass in the
fieldhouse during holidays, homecoming or parents' weekend.

It's sort of a ballet-ish, modern dance-ish thing. Slow, graceful, and
looks angelic. Very nice, IMHO. Particularly nice during those big
fieldhouse Masses when the processions take forever -- you can at
least watch the dancers stand at the foot of the altar dais and wave
their hands around in meaningful ways.

Since I'm not male, I can't speak as to their sexual quality with full
authority, but in general I'd say this is not the intended purpose and
it isn't taken as such. Which isn't surprising. Intent is everything.
Otherwise, when I sang at Mass (and good singing utilizes the entire
body just as much as dance -- just because the audience doesn't see it
doesn't mean it's not there), people'd be rushing the piano when I
sang the Holy, Holy. :)

If someone really dislikes dance, I suggest he/she stops sitting,
standing and kneeling in near unison with the rest of the
congregation, and certainly there should be no folding of hands in
prayer. Much too dancy for decency. :)

We already worship with our bodies. (Not much else to do it with!)
The question is how to do it tastefully, and in tune with the worship
style of the parish. If dance works, I'm fine with it.

You haven't changed my opinion but I appreciate you sharing your opinion!

We're in the middle of this Steve-only week on Catholic Light. John said I'd never make it solo! So far, so good! Traffic is up after a slow holiday weekend. Yesterday we had about 180 visitors. That means we now have 10 loyal readers who stopped by 18 times. I'd love to give each and every one of you a big hug. Good thing the internet is non-tactile medium. I have a surprise for everyone - I got a postcard from John today and I am scanning it right now. I'll post it in a few minutes. It's pretty funny!

Just got this email via the inTARnet:

At our annual "Haitian" mass in support of our sister parishes in Haiti we have dancers from a local parish with a Haitian priest and many
Haitian members (really, all they do is sway on their way up to the altar to present the gifts), and everyone I've talked to swears that dancing
is part and parcel of all kinds of communal celebrations in Haiti. Not only do I not identify dancing with the sacred, I most definitely
consider it to be part of the decidedly secular, if not outright profane. In fact, I consider dancing to be integrally related to courtship and
coupling, which is not the direction I want my mind to be wandering in during the Eucharistic celebration. So the dancing drives me crazy. I
won't look at it. But I do acknowledge that in other cultures (perhaps African based) dancing might serve a more ritual and communal purpose.

By the way, the Haitian priest delivers homilies that are orthodox, profound and inspiring, in the midst of the kind of music that would drive
the average blogger up the tree (never mind the dance). And I am assured that confession is very organized in our sister parishes, where the
priests every so often (like monthly) set up a chair at the end of mass and everyone stops by on the way out the door. So they may not be up to
our standards liturgically, but they run a tight ship. Our quest for perfection is depressing and regrettable.

Again I ask our readers for some help - is liturgical dancing a post-Vatican II activity in the liturgy? I know there are a ton of people out there reading this blog who are more learned than I am. Well, I've got email from two of you today so that leaves three other readers who might know.

Amy Welborn posted part of this story from the LA Times on the new Cathedral. Many thanks to Amy for posting this - it is truly inspiring. I think Gerard Serafin posted a picture of the Crucifix. Of all the bad things that has been said about this Cathedral, I think the accessibility of the Crucifix is wonderful. The image of our suffering Savior is the most powerful reminder of Christ's sorrowful passion. Contrast that Crucifix with the one in the Cathedral in Milwaukee - what a difference. I'll dig up pictures and post them later. If anyone wants to put links to pictures in the comments please do so!

I don't want to have a conniption over liturgical dancing, but I want you to take notice of the comments in the "When the wood is dry" post below. Mark Sullivan is my hero. I fully expect the crankiest of professors to give us more support on liturgical dancing being a modern liturgical innovation. Does anyone know where liturgical dancing might have an older tradition in other cultures? What about other rites? I'm looking for facts here in the interest of having a discussion. I'm trying to repress my urge to unload on all of you about how I loathe the practice of humans worshipping humans rather than worshipping God. Oops. Looks like I just unloaded.

Another interesting question for anyone who might have been at the dedication - what music did they sing? Anyone reading who was there or who has a program? Let us know!

on a letter from a reader

Pete Vere posts his take on legal recourse for those who wish to worship with the Tridentine Rite. Interesting stuff. And though I just cancelled cable, I would consider paying for TV again if he had his own TV show. "Next week on Pete Vere, Canon Lawyer - the Curia puts a world of hurt on some dancing nuns! Stay tuned for When Good Faith Goes Bad only on Fox!"

I was going to comment at length on the new Cathedral in L.A. but I think these bloggers and pundits have it covered. I do have a few original thoughts, though. Please, gentle readers, have a gander at this whole post before you go bonkers with these links.

Mark Sullivan makes it very clear what he thinks. The photos are not to be missed. Cue dancing nuns - activate smoke, err, incense machine. . .

Amy Welborn

What strikes one from the pictures is the starkness of the place, which is, of course, part and parcel of the modern sensibility. Why? Because we are, even as Church, deeply uncertain about everything and reluctant to hang our hat on the hook called "Truth." This fear ties our hands. We are afraid to impose, afraid to offend, afraid to ascertain anything as true and worth communicating to others, present and future. So we are left with starkness, broken only by artwork that expresses our ethnic and cultural diversity. We don't know who God is, and even if we do, we are afraid to tell the world anything interesting or compelling about Him, so we build a Church that expresses exactly that.

How profound and true! Jesus said, "For if they do these things when the wood is
green, what is going to happen when it's dry?" This is what we do when the wood is dry. Don't miss the comments on Amy's site.

George Neumayr from The American Prowler. Ouch. Here's a snippet but do read the whole thing.

Eli Broad, a non-Catholic developer and Democratic Party godfather who helped finance the cathedral , calls it "architecture for the ages." Many Catholics, when they look up at the tapestries on the walls depicting people in sneakers and birkenstocks, will wonder if it can last even a generation as a Catholic building.

Tapestries with people wearing sneakers and birkenstocks? How transcendant! So new it's old!

Dom Bettinelli has several posts including this one that says the inside of the Cathedral looks like something out of the movie Stargate.

Gerard Serafin has tons of pictures here and here.

I will add only one thing - since the dedication Our Lord is residing there in body, blood, soul and divinity. Let's not forget that.

Does anyone know where the tabernacle is in the Cardinal's new digs?

Our comments are broken so Michael Tinker sends email instead.

I much prefer registering my cranky presence in
public! that way other people know without checking
your traffic meter that I am one of the caring,
concerned 5!

5 readers he means. See "full disclosure" post below.

What I would have asked in re: your niece being yanked
out of your alma mater is "was your niece turning out
to be too much like her uncles?"

Now if you had read the part how she thinks all cops do is eat donuts you would know the answer to that one is "yes!"

- another somewhat interesting piece from the Washington Times. Interesting in that it contains some grave factual errors and says idiotic things like "transitional pope." No time to comment on it now. Perhaps I will later.

Feel free to tell them what you think via email - letters@washingtontimes.com

- Irritating . . . but not culpable from the Washington Times.

At 1:43 p.m. on Dec. 27, Mr. Waksal's secretary took this message from Miss Stewart: "Something is going on with ImClone, and she wants to know what." That appears to be the closest thing congressional investigators have to a "smoking gun." At some point that afternoon, Miss Stewart tired of waiting for a return call, so she sold 3,928 shares of ImClone.
At 3:13 p.m. — 90 minutes after Martha Stewart's message — Bloomberg News noted that, "ImClone Systems Inc. shares fell as much as 9.7 percent on concern about whether the Food and Drug Administration will approve the company's Erbitux cancer drug, financial news network CNBC reported." That story appeared even earlier on CNBC. But nobody even had to watch TV to notice "something is going on" with a stock that suddenly dropped 9.7 percent.
By the close of business Dec. 27, ImClone was down 8.4 percent — far too huge a drop to blame on a few family insiders, much less on Martha's puny stake. Martha appears no guiltier than thousands of other investors, including mutual fund managers, who obviously participated in the big sell-off that day.

For the record I am not a fan of Martha Stewart. I admire her business acumen but couldn't give a hoot about home decorating and making Christmas more magical with mistletoe toilet seats. It seems that in the wake of other corporate travesties she is being painted in the media as a greedy fiend. What she made on the sale of ImClone stock seems like big cash to us but she probably has a few purses worth just as much. The aftermath for her was much worse - it was reported she lost about $200 million when investors bailed out of their stock in her company. I'm not crying any tears for her, it seems like a ridiculous amount of money to lose over rumor and innuendo.

She's at St. Louis School in Alexandria - Fr. Jim Tucker is one of the Parochial Vicars of the parish. She likes it a lot. She even likes wearing the uniform. I can see how an eight year old would get excited about that. If she was any older she might fuss. She was previously attending the elementary school where we went as kids. Unfortunately the environment was not conducive to her learning anything other than how to talk back, cop an attitude, interrupt people when they were talking, blame other people when she made mistakes, and other things that kids learn from other kids who don't have a good home life. St. Louis will be good for her. I'll wait for a few years before I tell her about the Poor Clare Monastery just down the road from the school.

I just got off the phone with my sister, my niece's mom. She said a cop was parked across the street from their house for a while this morning. My sister looked out the window and said, "I wonder what he's doing there." My niece said, "Probably eating donuts!"

I was joking earlier this week how Mattel could promote vocations with "Carmelite Barbie." It seems someone as already beat me to this joke - click on the picture to see the page.

During the week we get about 130 visits to our blog. Weekends are usually slower. I am flattered and honored that people would take the time to visit. I had famed Alexandra of Oremus and her husband Bryan over last night. As we were discussing blogs and blogging I realized that we most certainly don't have 130 unique visitors to the site each day, but rather 10 people who come 13 times per day. Based on the people who frequently post comments we might have 5 people who visit 26 times per day. God bless you, one and all!