Bp. Braxton wrote a pastoral letter for Pentecost that presents an unusually frank and in some ways clarifying treatment of factionalism in the Church. I haven't finished it yet, but wanted to draw it to your attention.
Thanks to Mark Waterinckx for the tip.
There was a lecture at my parish today, with a Q&A following. As often happens at public events, the first "questioner" was a nut who didn't ask a question, but took the opportunity to inform the audience about something (very pressing, of course).
In this case, he let us all know that the "Bible Code" was predicting a nuclear attack on Jerusalem Thursday. The speaker let it all pass with a quick "no comment", and moved on to the real questions.
Sometimes I wonder if bringing back stoning as the punishment for false prophecy wouldn't provide some deterrence and keep people from wasting their time on junk like that. What's he gonna say Friday morning?
In a similar vein, I wonder how the people who put up this poster felt on Oct. 29, 1992, when their prediction of our Lord's return slipped away. In Korea, where the prediction originated (the article is halfway down the web page), the main group that spread it had the decency to disband.
Here in New England, the promoters sure bought a high-quality printing job for the posters: numerous examples of them are still stuck on light posts in New Hampshire, still colorful, clear, and readable.
Y'know, if I were expecting to be raised miraculously out of the world in a few weeks, I wouldn't bother getting the high-gloss paper with the waterproof adhesive. In fact, you should make sure the posters are biodegradable; it would be downright inconsiderate to leave permanent posters behind to taunt the people "left behind". They'd have enough trouble already.
This is a guy you really want on your side if you're serving in Ramadi, Iraq:
He was 5 when he first fired an M-16, his father holding him to brace against the recoil. At 17 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, spurred by the memory of 9/11. Now, 21-year-old Galen Wilson has 20 confirmed kills in four months in Iraq — and another 40 shots that probably killed insurgents. One afternoon the lance corporal downed a man hauling a grenade launcher five-and-a-half football fields away.
Lance Corporal Wilson keeps all this in perspective:
"It doesn't bother me. Obviously, me being a devout Catholic, it's a conflict of interest. Then again, God supported David when he killed Goliath," Wilson said. "I believe God supports what we do and I've never killed anyone who wasn't carrying a weapon."...
Insurgents "have killed good Marines I've served with. That's how I sleep at night," he says. "Though I've killed over 20 people, how many lives would those 20 people have taken?"
The marksman has it right: killing one's enemy in battle is an act of love for one's fellows. That is especially true when the enemy is comprised of men who work for an evil cause carried out by evil means. It is regrettable that these odious men abused their free will by trying to destroy the elected local government in Ramadi; it is lamentable that they threw away their lives. But it is a meritorious act to prevent them from achieving their ends, even if that means employing deadly force.
Some people like to say they're for "peace." Men like Lance Corporal Wilson help make it happen, one bullet at a time.
Just think of the great basilicas of our continent: in Mexico City, Washington, Montreal, St. Paul, Webster.
Webster?
Yeah, Webster. Some basilicas are not huge churches in great cities. One is in Webster, Mass., so I went to see it.
Remember those canadian ladies who were "ordained" on the St. Lawrence Seaway last year? Well one wasn't Canadian.
``I've always seen my role as to stay within the church and to push the boundaries," Marchant said in an interview. ``But I really came to see in the archdiocese that the change was not going to come about because we women were doing a good and worthy job, but that something more dramatic and drastic had to happen. Until we really took a very strong step and defied this very unjust law -- the canon in canon law that restricts ordination to men -- nothing was going to change."Sounds like a typical statement made by womanwhothinkspriestsshouldbewomentoobecauseshe'sheardthecall andgotsecretlyordainedontheSt.LawrenceSeaway, right?
Well this one came from the former director of healthcare ministry for the archdiocese of Boston.
Bonus #1: she's married to "a one-time Marist priest who left the priesthood for their relationship." To be fair, it's unclear whether the former priest just up and left, or went through the canonical process to leave the priesthood. Either way - it's clear this household would need to support married priests.
Bonus #2: article contains a photo of the "priestess" with a very self-satisfied look on her face.
Four words: more chancery housecleaning required.
How about a big book about how there's been a crappy response to sexual abuse within the Church over the years? Wouldn't that be edifying and useful?
The lesson to be learned is, of course, to turn away from sin and embrace the Truth. But do we need a book like this to understand that? This will probably be used by malcontents and detractors as a source of unending Church bashing.
VATICAN CITY, JULY 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave on sacred music, delivered in the Sistine Chapel on June 24, 2006, after a concert sponsored by the Domenico Bartolucci Foundation.* * *
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Presbyterate,
Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,
At the end of this concert, evocative because of the place we are in -- the Sistine Chapel -- and because of the spiritual intensity of the compositions performed, we spontaneously feel in our hearts the need to praise, to bless and to thank. This sentiment is addressed first of all to the Lord, supreme beauty and harmony, who has given men and women the ability to express themselves with the language of music and song.
"Ad Te levavi animam meam," (to you, Lord, I lift up my soul), the Offertory of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina has just said, echoing Psalm (25[24]:1).
Our souls are truly lifted up to God, and I would therefore like to express my gratitude to Maestro Domenico Bartolucci and to the foundation named after him that planned and put on this event.
Dear Maestro, you have offered to me and to all of us a precious gift, preparing the program in which you wisely situated a choice of masterpieces by the "prince" of sacred polyphonic music and some of the works that you yourself have composed.
In particular, I thank you for having wished to conduct the concert personally, and for the motet "Oremus pro Pontefice" that you composed immediately after my election to the See of Peter. I am also grateful to you for the kind words you have just addressed to me, witnessing to your love for the art of music and your passion for the good of the Church.
Next, I warmly congratulate the choir of the foundation and I extend my "thank you" to all who have collaborated in various ways.
Lastly, I address a cordial greeting to those who have honored our meeting with their presence.
All the passages we have heard -- and especially the performance as a whole in which the 16th and 20th centuries run parallel -- together confirm the conviction that sacred polyphony, particularly that of the so-called "Roman School," is a legacy to preserve with care, to keep alive and to make known, not only for the benefit of experts and lovers of it but also for the entire ecclesial community, for which it constitutes a priceless spiritual, musical and cultural heritage.
The Bartolucci Foundation aims precisely to safeguard and spread the classical and contemporary tradition of this famous polyphonic school that has always been distinguished by its form, focused on singing alone without an instrumental accompaniment. An authentic renewal of sacred music can only happen in the wake of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony.
For this reason, in the field of music as well as in the areas of other art forms, the ecclesial community has always encouraged and supported people in search of new forms of expression without denying the past, the history of the human spirit which is also a history of its dialogue with God.
Venerable Maestro, you have also always sought to make the most of sacred music as a vehicle for evangelization. Through numberless concerts performed in Italy and abroad, with the universal language of art, the Pontifical Musical Choir conducted by you has thus cooperated in the actual mission of the Pontiffs, which is to disseminate the Christian message in the world. And you still continue to carry out this task under the attentive direction of Maestro Giuseppe Liberto.
Dear brothers and sisters, after being pleasantly uplifted by this music, let us turn our gaze to the Virgin Mary, placed at Christ's right hand in Michelangelo's Last Judgment: let us especially entrust all lovers of sacred music to her motherly protection, so that always enlivened by genuine faith and sincere love of the Church, they may make their precious contribution to liturgical prayer and effectively contribute to the proclamation of the Gospel.
To Maestro Bartolucci, to the members of the foundation and to all of you who are present here, I cordially impart the apostolic blessing.
[Translation issued by the Holy See]
It's convention season for the National Pastoral Musicians Association.
I guess when you get that many priests, liturgists and musicians together you'll get a few crazy statements... like:
"Liturgy is like a musical."
And some partly sensible ones:
What's "tasteful" in church is subjective, he said. "The underlying factor is: Is this causing prayer?"
This from a Wisconsin paper: The times are a-changing for local Catholic parishes
I thought maybe the article would be about gregorian chant in Wisconsin parishes. Or maybe a communal burning of priestly vestments that have rainbows on them.
But it turns out there's going to lots of schedule changes at Parishes. Because there aren't enough priests. Because: priests can't get married and women can't be priests.
Some changes have already been felt, other changes are coming for parishes and parishioners within the Milwaukee Archdiocese, notes the Rev. Steven Amann, new pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Parish, Burlington.Thanks for the soundbite, Reverend. I'm sure since your parish will be a bastion of orthodoxy since you are so strongly committed to important church teachings.
Many of these changes are a response to the current shortage of priests, which Amann attributes to the church’s prohibitions on priestly marriage and ordination of women.
But neither of these issues is currently up for review or discussion within the church. “My guess is unless we make both of those changes, we’re going to continue to have a shortage,” Amann said.
Mother is 83 today. After listening to Raymond Arroyo's book, I have a newfound respect for her holiness, tenacity, and courage. Too bad she can't conduct Episcopal Backbone Classes for the U.S. bishops.
My only question about the update on EWTN's site: a mariachi band?
The link to EWTN's catalog goes to the large print edition of the book. Get the audio CDs if you can - Arroyo impersonates everyone from Mother Angelica to Archibishop Rembert Weakland. It's a hoot.
I guess the boy band trend survived in Europe after a fashion: here's a bunch of guys who dress up in robes and sing Gregorian-style arrangements of pop tunes. Here are some of their videos: one with Sarah Brightman and one with some waif named Desireles; and a U2 song. There are also fan-made videos with the group's renditions of "Stairway of Heaven" and a tune by "Green Day".
It seems to be a totally artificial project of some music producer, and somewhat laughable in the way of certain European pop groups, but the fact that this is popular is a good sign.
Update: LOL: Another group is doing the same thing in Polish.
Back in the years c. 1990-2000, George Will was probably the best and most effective conservative columnist around. His syndicated columns, Newsweek commentaries, and full-length books usually received respectful notices, including from liberal publications. Even within the confines of an opinion column, Will managed to pack more erudition per column inch than any other writer.
Yet there were problems for anyone who admired Will. The first sign of creeping jackassery was back in the '80s, when Will got it into his head that tax cuts were bad and that the Feds should raise taxes to cover the deficit. Not an uncommon opinion (among Democrats), and not totally indefensible. But it was the way he dissented from the conservative line that was so infuriating. If you didn't agree with him that an additional 50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, you were irresponsible and childish. He was the schoolmaster, you were the naughty little child who couldn't seem to pay attention in class.
It was this magisterial style that I appreciated when it was deployed against people who were truly childish and immature, like President Clinton. When he used it to argue against my own views, I began to understand why my left-wing friends found him so maddening. A high-church Episcopalian, Will often displays the worst tendencies associated with that tiny sect: haughtiness, snobbery, and a habitual preference for talking down one's nose at one's intellectual inferiors -- which includes just about everyone.
He will brook no dissent himself, even when he has his facts wrong. Here's a telling excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for George Will:
Will's journalistic ethics, along with those of the newspaper that syndicates his column, The Washington Post, have also been questioned by conservative critics at Accuracy in Media (AIM). In their Media Monitor, AIM revealed that in December of 2004 The Post, in an article related to the Indian Ocean tsunami, claimed that, after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Catholic priests "roamed the streets" hanging suspected heretics, whom they blamed for the quake. Such a charge appears nowhere in the historical record, and The Post was duly informed of that fact. Not only did The Post fail to retract the calumny, but its columnist, Will, quoted as fact the same charge as it appeared in the 2005 book A Crack in the Edge of the World, by the English author Simon Winchester. Though notified of the complete falsity of the charge, neither Will nor Winchester, unlike others who mistakenly made the claim, has taken any steps to correct his error.He's also showing disturbing signs of Paleocon Disease, where every fault of American foreign policy can be blamed on the "neoconservatives":
The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to the Weekly Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservatism" -- everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.
"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . ." You get the drift....Will doesn't bother to refute the Standard's premise that Iran is driving much of the murder and mayhem throughout the Middle East. It's like writing in 1983 that the actions of Nicaragua, East Germany, and North Korea had nothing to do with the Soviet Union -- or that the Soviets were largely irrelevant. Does Will think that Iran isn't bankrolling and directing Hezbollah? That they aren't allied with Syria? That's news to most people, I should think.
Will isn't quoted much in the conservative blogosphere anymore. His general opposition to most aspects of the War on Terror has something to do with it, but I suspect it's also because people have grown weary of his hectoring tone. Maybe they're tired of the hackneyed baseball references, which are supposed to show Will's "egalitarian" side:
Neoconservatives have much to learn, even from Buddy Bell, manager of the Kansas City Royals. After his team lost its 10th consecutive game in April, Bell said, "I never say it can't get worse." In their next game, the Royals extended their losing streak to 11 and in May lost 13 in a row.
Hang it up, George.
From the group Bring Our Troops Home Extremely Rapidly (BOTHER):
End the quagmire! No blood for hummus!
Really some folks are just spoiled. They went to a dangerous country, disregarding State Department warnings, and now they complain because they aren't evacuated fast enough, or their calls to the Embassy don't go through, or (God forbid) they might have to actually pay for their transportation. Were they thinking that being a US citizen entitles them to free trip-interruption coverage?
From the latest issue of Lay Witness...
Family Before Apostolate
Pro-Life Activism Begins at Home
Pete Vere and Jacqueline Rapp
From the May/June 2006 Issue of Lay Witness Magazine
Along with Jacqueline, her husband, Keith, and Fr. Phil, a priest who happened to be one of our mutual friends from canon law school, I found myself savouring the country buffet. Months had passed since the four of us had last gathered for some fun and fellowship. The conversation was not as heavy as what some might expect from three canonists and a catechist. From "The Lumberjack Games" and smoked barbeque to Belgian Trappist ale and the subtlety with which "The Wiggles" promotes a Catholic worldview, we all bantered back and forth, laughing and arguing between mouthfuls of country fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and boiled turnip greens.
Suddenly, Pachabel’s "Canon" interrupted the evening’s festivities. Recognizing the number, I grabbed my cell phone and excused myself from the conversation at our dinner table. The caller on the other end was well known in Catholic circles. Sounding distraught, "John" shared how spouse and children were rebelling against the long hours spent away from home. It seems that he spent most of this time on the circuit, promoting a pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-family Catholic apostolate among the laity.
Mark Shea is accusing Michael Ledeen of National Review Online of encouraging "murder." As many commenters point out, this is a complete misreading of Ledeen's words. Essentially, Ledeen is agreeing with a Ralph Peters article, which argues that terrorist thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq should be killed in almost all circumstances.
On Catholic Light, I've consistently argued for this position, more or less. There is nothing wrong, legally or morally, with killing illegal combatants. There should be a just mechanism for determining whether they are illegal combatants, if there is a doubt in particular cases. But they should be killed to deter others, and because justice demands it.
Morally, there is nothing wrong with killing terrorists who wield lethal force with the intent to overthrow a legtimate state. The reservations expressed about the death penalty in the Catechism are not really applicable outside the West and other settled, civilized countries. In Iraq and Afghanistan, truly there are no alternatives to killing those who would destroy any possibility of a just society.
Legally, there is absolutely no reason to respect anything other than the basic human rights of terrorists. That includes treating these thugs like adults, i.e., rational human beings capable of choosing their vocation of murder and mayhem. The Geneva Conventions have never been construed to include people who blow up marketplaces, mosques, and commuter buses. Yet we see the spectacle of well-educated, seemingly reasonable people arguing that terrorists should be treated like forger apprehended by the FBI.
The people arguing this, almost exclusively, are members of the New Class -- they will not enter military service themselves, nor will their children, nor will hardly any of their relatives. Terrorists in the Middle East and Central Asia will not threaten their upscale lives. Their sentiments are the secular equivalent of "cheap grace" -- it costs them nothing to shed tears over the fates of detainees, but it gives them that frisson of moral superiority they crave.
Yet Mark Shea is not a member of the New Class. I've given up trying to analyze his motivations when he uncorks a bottle of fresh malice and pours it out on his blog. You all are welcome to speculate as you wish. I do think it's ironic that Shea is fond of hurling wild accusations of malefaction while misrepresenting what other people say.
Do you ever click on a link and wish you hadn't?
I was reading a snarky press release that linked over to a Minneapolis, MN parish. The press release was lamenting the certain content on the site is pro-gay but the local bishop and pope won't do anything about it. (In case you're wondering why I think the press release is snarky - just read it for tone and check out the quote at the end.
Well, it turns out there's some special stuff on that site besides what is mentioned in the article:
A unique aspect of Sunday Mass at St. Joan of Arc are the challenging presentations given by guest speakers and SJA's pastors. This section of our webpage announces upcoming speakers. Please join us.The schedule needs to be copied here to be believed:
Can we make a trade? A couple of orthodox, Bible-believing Episcopal parishes for a parish that's Catholic in name only?
It's not unusual to hear a person say "I'm between jobs", having left one and seeking another.
Mark Windsor's new blog is for people who are "between churches". As it happens, he spent a long time in between, before he became a Catholic; now he's offering some company to Anglican friends who have set out to find another communion, whichever one it may turn out to be.
He calls the site Rafting the Tiber.
This part of the article is pretty straight forward.
Female Episcopal bishop could strain Catholic ties
A potentially historic speech about women that received little media fanfare was made two weeks before America's Episcopal Church elected Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as its leader in June.The speaker was Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's top liaison with non-Catholic Christians. He addressed the Church of England's bishops and certain female priests.
Catholic and Anglican officials have spent four decades working toward shared Communion.
Mincing no words, Kasper said that goal of restoring full relations "would realistically no longer exist" if Anglicanism's mother church in England were to consecrate female bishops.
And this must be quoted out of context:
The cardinal said female bishops should be elevated only after "overwhelming consensus" is reached with Catholicism and like-minded Eastern Orthodoxy.Mainly because it doesn't make sense in the context of the next quote from the Cardinal:
Anglicans cannot assume Catholicism will someday drop objections to female priests and bishops, Kasper said. "The Catholic Church is convinced that she has no right to do so."...full piece here
Remember when Nihil Obstat was driving everyone crazy?
Well - here's "A Day in the Life of N. Obstat..." from September 2002.
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
I'm holding up six fingers.
Go visit - there some great stuff over there. Especially "Free Piglet"
CL is 4 years old as of last May - an anniversary that passed us by. Might be time for some "best of" entries.
...before the articles lamenting the untimely death of Enron founder and recent convict Ken Lay appeared.
Apparently death and divine judgment wasn't good enough for him.
But now that he's died of a heart attack in the luxury of his Colorado getaway while awaiting sentencing for his crimes, none of his victims will be able to contemplate that he's locked away in a place that makes the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel look like Hawaii; that he might be spending long nights locked in a cell with a panting tattooed monster named Sumo, a man of strange and constant demands; and long days in the prison laundry or jute mill or license plate factory, gibbering with anguish as fire-eyed psychopaths stare at him for unblinking hours while they sharpen spoons into jailhouse stilettos.He will not be ground into gray jailhouse paste by listening to the eardrum-scarring symphony of 131-decibel despair that is the Muzak of penitentiaries, by gagging on the dead prison air, by choking on the deader food, by watching the blue sky taunt him with freedom over the exercise yard, and by feeling his nervous system rent by the cruel grenades of memories -- explosions of nostalgia for the days when he knew he'd be swanning forever through the comfy laps and cool lawns of luxury and infinite possibility. Sweet Gulfstreams through sweet skies, the pools, the jewels, the Maybach limousines, a life in which he didn't just pimp his ride, he pimped the entire world as he knew it.
You can read the rest of the story in the Washington Post. The author makes the point that human "savagery" makes us want to see Lay suffer in prison.
Which would be typical, if one doesn't believe in God, judgment, and the afterlife.
When I'm not here, I'm often translating articles for Wikipedia, and the latest one was painful to do: the biography of a 20th-century German bishop whose servile relationship toward the Nazis was and remains a scandal: Archbishop Conrad Gröber earned himself the nickname "Conrad the Brown" in the early years of the Reich until he turned against the authorities and became one of the "greatest enemies" of the regime.
