October 2006 Archives

In our house, we like to start them early.

Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was a Catholic convert, author, and priest who, among other things, helped G.K. Chesterton make his conversion to the Faith. Knox's extensive literary output ranged from apologetics and poetry to scholarship and detective fiction. As one observer suggested, his epitaph could have been "R.I.P. Ronald Knox, translator of the Holy Bible and author of
'The Viaduct Murder.'"

On January 16, 1926, he unintentionally stirred up panic across Britain with his own tongue-in-cheek BBC broadcast. He sent up the conventions of radio news by announcing that a mob in London had stormed the National Gallery, attacked the Houses of Parliament, blown up the Clock Tower, and lynched a minor government minister, all at the instigation of "Mr. Poppleberry, secretary of the National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues".

One moment, please. The British Broadcasting Company regrets that one item in the news has been inaccurately given. The correction now follows. It was stated in our news bulletin that the Minister of Traffic had been hanged from a lamp-post in the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Subsequent and more accurate reports show that it was not a lamp-post, but a tramway post, which was used for this purpose.

A look back at the spoof and its aftermath is available at the Radio 4 website, along with an audio reconstruction of the brief program based on an original transcript.

An obvious headline with a funny typo, compliments of the Western Catholic Reporter

FIFA have revealed that more than half of the players treated on the pitch during this summer's World Cup were not actually injured.

The world body's chief medical officer, Professor Jiri Dvorak, presented his findings to the FIFA referees committee today and they showed a cheating culture at the highest level of the game.

According to Professor Dvorak, there were too many players feigning injury in Germany, with tactical reasons presented as the most likely cause of their action. ...full from ESPN

New Auxiliary Bishop for Birmingham

...Bishop Kenney added: "Since I was a boy at St Philip's I have associated Newman with Birmingham rather than with Oxford. Among the first seriou music I remember listening to was The Dream of Gerontius. Whenever I hear it now, it is associated with the Town Hall in Birmingham. I sincerely hope and pray for the beatification and canonization of Cardinal Newman." ...full

If you want to hear a masterpiece of classical music that is truly Catholic listen to Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. It's the story of a soul passing from death on earth to eternity, and it's magnificent. And if you can find the live recording with Jon Vickers singing Gerontius, you'll be hearing one of the greatest oratorio recordings of all time.

U.S. lay ministers may not cleanse Communion vessels, Pope Benedict says By Nancy Frazier O'Brien 10/24/2006

Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) – At the direction of Pope Benedict XVI, extraordinary ministers of holy Communion will no longer be permitted to assist in the purification of the sacred vessels at Masses in the United States.

In an Oct. 23 letter, Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, asked his fellow bishops to inform all pastors of the change, which was prompted by a letter from Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

The U.S. bishops had asked the Vatican to extend an indult – or church permission – in effect since 2002 allowing extraordinary ministers of holy Communion to help cleanse the Communion cups and plates when there were not enough priests or deacons to do so.

Bishop Skylstad, who heads the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., said Cardinal Arinze asked Pope Benedict about the matter during a June 9 audience, "and received a response in the negative." ...full

Bishops to vote on new directory, norms for liturgical music

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- To ensure that the hymns used at Mass are "doctrinally correct" and based on Scripture and liturgical texts, the U.S. bishops will debate and vote on a new directory for music and the liturgy at their Nov. 13-16 meeting in Baltimore.

Each bishops' conference around the world was directed to draw up such a directory within five years after the 2001 Vatican instruction "Liturgiam Authenticam" ("The Authentic Liturgy"). Within another three years, the bishops' Committee on the Liturgy is to propose a common repertoire of liturgical songs for all Latin-rite Masses celebrated in the United States.

The directory is intended to serve "not so much as a list of approved and unapproved songs as a process by which bishops might regulate the quality of the text of songs composed for use in the liturgy," said Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, Pa., chairman of the bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, in an introduction to the document.

If approved by two-thirds of the bishops, the directory and norms would be sent to the Vatican for its assent.

The draft document says the U.S. church "has been greatly blessed both by a hymnody drawn from a number of great traditions and by the contributions of composers and lyricists of liturgical songs over the past 40 years of the liturgical reform."

"Composers are urged to continue to seek ways in which liturgical song can grow organically from the tradition that the voice of the church might sing the ancient hymn with new conviction in our own day and age," the directory adds.

But there have been "certain challenges" in the use of liturgical songs, the document says. "While works of poetic art should not be judged in the same way as catechetical texts, liturgical songs can benefit from certain doctrinal judgments."

A set of norms to be considered along with the directory says each diocesan bishop is responsible for approving liturgical songs in his diocese, assisted by the directory, the bishops' Secretariat for the Liturgy and a local review committee of theologians, liturgists and musicians.

Without naming any specific hymns, the directory cites several examples of "tendencies which may compromise an individual song's doctrinal integrity":

-- Any "statements about the faith which are untrue."

-- Compromising the doctrine of the Trinity by "consistent replacement of masculine pronominal references to the three divine persons."

-- Any "emphasis on the work of the members of the church" that fails to recognize "the doctrine of grace and our complete dependence on the grace of God to accomplish anything."

-- Efforts to eliminate "archaic language" that "alter the meaning and essential theological structure of a venerable liturgical song."

In addition, any repertoire of liturgical songs "should reflect a balanced approach to Catholic theological elements," the draft document says.

Citing "Liturgiam Authenticam," the directory also says that the number of songs available for use in Catholic worship "must be relatively fixed."

"The sheer number of such liturgical songs has militated against the establishment of a common repertoire," it says. "Cultural forces which prize novelty and innovation can sometimes drive a competitive commercial climate which seeks to satisfy a desire for constant change.

"While this dynamic has often benefited the church and her liturgy, it also seems desirable that a certain stable core of liturgical songs might well serve as an exemplary and stabilizing factor," the directory adds.

"People sometimes give their priests some slack when it comes to things like having a temper or drinking. What really makes them angry is if you take money from the donations they've given and spend it on gambling & carousing. People don't forgive when you spend their hard earned money, given in faith, on living the high life."

As for the story: looks like there are now two fewer bad apples in the orchard.

Remember: Religion. Of. Peace.

Islamist Holiday Video Calls for Jihad and Slaughter of "Crusaders"

This ten-minute video titled "Rise Up," was posted on Islamist websites on October 22, 2006, and was described as "a gift for 'Eid Al-Fitr." Produced by an individual identified as "Abu Osama" (whose real identity is unknown), it calls on the Muslims to wage jihad against the "Crusaders." A caption in the film explains that Abu Osama produced the film on the occasion of the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq. ...full article from MEMRI

From the WashTimes:

An Episcopal congregation in Woodbridge whose members were unhappy with liberal trends in the Episcopal Church suddenly dissolved itself last week, leaving the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia with a $420,000 bill from the property's mortgage.
The members of Christ Our Lord Episcopal Church, a mission congregation founded in 1992, has since reconstituted under the Anglican Diocese of North Kigezi in Uganda as Christ Our Lord Anglican Church. It is the third mission to leave the diocese because of the 2003 consecration of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson as the world's first openly homosexual bishop, but the first to abandon its property. ...full

It's doubtful there will be a negative financial impact since land in Northern VA is getting harder and harder to come by. The diocese could sell the land for a tidy profit if they so choose.

Too bad the congregation couldn't make the big leap back to Rome. Because - how much more of a leap would that be, when you get down to the brass tacks of Scripture & Tradition?

The story comes from Texas after all.

Baptists renounce speaking in tongues

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Trustees at a Baptist seminary have put it in writing: They will not tolerate any promotion of speaking in tongues on their campus.
The 36-1 vote Tuesday came nearly two months after the Rev. Dwight McKissic of Arlington, Texas, said during a chapel service at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that he sometimes speaks in tongues while praying.
Mr. McKissic, a new trustee at the Fort Worth school, cast the lone dissenting vote on the resolution.
It states: "Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including private prayer language. Neither will Southwestern knowingly employ professors or administrators who promote such practices." ...full

St. Joseph, in the graveyard at St. Mary's Church, Charleston, SC. St. Mary's was the first Catholic parish on the peninsula, established in 1789.

I'm sure this will be on the evening news tonite, between carjackings.

NPM (pronounced "napalm"), an organization that's done more than its share to degrade Catholic liturgy over the past 30 years, is running an online survey about what qualities in church music motivate Catholics to sing.

However, it's obviously not a professionally-designed or run survey, and the response options are skewed. The only text-related quality they list as an option is "meaningful text". For your average bad church musician, that means "text is emotionally relevant to Me," not "text expresses Catholic theological content" or "text uses reverent, dignified English" -- or even (shock) Latin.

Anyway, feel free to engage in some actual participation.

They're starting with Esther, but I'm really looking forward to a cinematic treatment of the book of Judith.

My foster baby slept from 11pm last night until 7am this morning - an unprecedented 8 hours. Needless to say Mom is happy, since she has the weeknight duty.

A biotech start-up went out of business this fall, and it's good news:

The company was launched by billionaire and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling, who had hoped to have his hunting dog, Missy, cloned — a feat that was never accomplished.

I don't mean to be unsympathetic to a fellow missing his dear old dog, but trying to manufacture life really sounds too much like the mission of a comic-book villain. There's already a stereotype that self-made billionaires are arrogant (cf. Turner, Soros; Gates sometimes); don't these people have any self-awareness?

It's not villainy in itself to clone cats and dogs, but the animal welfare people know that the effort is a cruel process:

"we're very pleased that Genetics Savings & Clone's attempt to run a cloning pet store was a spectacular flop," said Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States. "It's not just a bad business venture, but also an operation grounded on the misuse of animals."

Pacelle and other groups argue that cloning is still primitive and fails more often than it succeeds.

"For every successful clone, dozens fail and die prematurely, have physical abnormalities, and face chronic pain and suffering," Pacelle said. "Cloning is at odds with basic animal welfare considerations."

Treacherously, commercial success at cloning mammals would have given a boost to the fringe types who fantasize of cloning babies. Thank Heavens the message is getting across: even if it ended up working, the cruelty of the experiments to get there would be unimaginable.

Pope set to bring back Latin Mass that divided the Church By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent THE Pope is taking steps to revive the ancient tradition of the Latin Tridentine Mass in Catholic churches worldwide, according to sources in Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI is understood to have signed a universal indult — or permission — for priests to celebrate again the Mass used throughout the Church for nearly 1,500 years. The indult could be published in the next few weeks, sources told The Times. ...more

As some of our Canadian readers are aware, my efforts to organize a Northern Ontario bear hunt to raise money for local pro-life groups have sparked a nasty "rural & small town vs. metropolitan Toronto" debate among Canada's pro-life movement. However, the virulent anti-American mindset of the following individual who calls herself a pro-lifer is particularly disturbing.

(hat tip: FreeDominion.ca)

Armed with spears and shields, an army of Frankish foot-soldiers led by Charles "the Hammer" defeated a superior force of invading Muslim cavalry in the Battle of Tours, this day in 732.

Steuben's painting depicts a gentle Mother and a sleeping Child as the very vanguard of the defenders.

When I gave up my "Mark D. Mouth" schtick shortly after the birth of my oldest child, I swore I would never again step into the wrestling ring as anything other than a fan. Gone were my days moonlighting as a professional wrestling photo-journalist.

That changed a couple weeks ago when one a local media outlet (for which I write political commentary and report on local cultural events) arranged for me to go behind the barricades at a major card of one of Canada's most respected wrestling promotions, don the wrestling photo-journalist persona, and report from ringside once more.

Here's the story

Here's the match results and accompanying photo essay.

And yes, that little red-headed girl in the last pic with Canadian Champion Johnny Fonzerelli is my daughter Jasmine, along with my judo partner T.

UN Security Council to Investigate Page Program of the US Congress

Speaker Hastert Cancels Page Program, Triples Funding for Intern Program

Gas Prices Drop To Under $45 A Barrell On Concerns Americans Are Sitting At Home Watching Cable News For The Very Latest On Page Scandal Firestorm

Evangelicals Declare Scandal Marks The Coming of Armageddon - Begin "Duck & Cover" Drills At Homeschools

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh to Head Page Program Probe

Democrats on Secret October Surprise Committee Uncork Champagne, Dance

Prime Minister Of France Cancels US Trip Citing "The Stench of Immorality"

Yes. These are all fake. Except the one about Louis Freeh.

Update - Looks like Louis Freeh isn't going to investigate. But it was seriously talked about.

Thanks to Dom for alerting me about the following.

And thanks to the individual from inside the beltway, who wishes to remain nameless, who emailed me to let me know this would be looked after.

A reader sent in a note today with the sad news that our brother in Christ, Rod Dreher, has separated himself from the Catholic Church. To confirm it, he quoted a message he received from Fr. Joseph Fester, associate priest of St. Seraphim Cathedral, which is in Dallas. Fr. Fester wrote that "Rod is a recent convert to Orthodoxy, here at St. Seraphim's."

As I wrote in May, "Unless breaking communion with Rome has a positive value for someone, it's hard to see a way to justify the departure."

Rod's justifications for it seem tinged with a certain air of compromise: ten years ago, he wrote, he urged an Evangelical friend to opt for the Catholic Church, and the friend replied that his kids were likelier to remain Christians if he were to become Orthodox. At the time, Rod "humphed at this, and told him that if the arguments for Catholicism are true, that's all he needs to know, that the rest would sort itself out."

Now Rod is "doing it for the children" too. In May, he wrote: "It's hard to separate the intellectual from the emotional in all this, especially because I really am a Papa Bear about protecting my kids, physically and spiritually. And yet, and yet ... is Catholicism true? Is Orthodoxy true? Is Orthodoxy true enough?"

This doesn't read like the words of a man who thinks that the truth of the Catholic religion is inferior to that of the Orthodox religion: it reads like a man talking himself into a compromise: settle for an alternative that is not quite as true as the Catholic faith, and hope that it's "true enough" to accomplish one's salvation.

Perhaps he thought that being in a smaller, purer, more supportive community will be better for his kids than being in the Catholic Church. And it may turn out to be as he wishes. But ultimately the salvation of others depends on the providence of God, and sacrificing the truth, even in a small way, to accomplish some intended good, reveals a lack of steadfast faith in that providence.

Having said all that, I do pray for Rod: that if he has committed any grave fault or fallen into error, may God have mercy on him and come to aid him.

Conspiracies Abound In the Middle East Press
The MEMRI Report

By STEVEN STALINSKY
October 4, 2006

Controversies in the Middle East are surrounded by conspiracy theories that proliferate in the region's press. Recent conspiracies have involved the identity of the person behind the cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, the genocide in Darfur, and the true perpetrators of terrorist attacks worldwide.

The latest Middle East conspiracy was hatched September 12, following Pope Benedict XVI's contentious speech in Germany on Islam. Influential Middle East press and broadcast outlets and prominent figures claimed that America, Jews, Zionists, and/or Israel were really behind his comments.

... Full article

...despite the fact his teachers begged for clemency, because it appears some county prosecutor wants to make a name for himself.

Hat tip to FreeDominion.ca

Stopping by the local Giant supermarket yesterday, I saw this curious juxtaposition:

(Click to see a slightly larger view.) It's a warning about tainted spinach that has sickened hundreds and even killed at least one person. Next to it is a Halloween decoration with a pile of skulls. I don't think it was a warning or a joke. But it sure is funny, at least in a macabre kind of way.