Waynesboro VA is supposed to get a foot of snow today. Please pray for safe travel for everyone on their way to Fritz's funeral Mass.
John Schultz: February 2005 Archives
Teresa's father passed away this morning at the age of 94. He had 93 healthy, happy years and was recently suffering from pneumonia. Teresa and her sister Rose were at his bedside when he died.
Fritz came to this country from Germany in the 1920's. His family settled in Waynesboro, VA and continued the family business of making custom cabinets. Fritz maintained a workshop until he was in his 80's.
Fritz married Bernice Jacobs and had four children: Fred, William, Rose and Teresa. Fritz spent some time in the Navy during WWII (stationed in the Pacific since he was originally from Germany) and worked for DuPont as an engineer for over three decades.
Fritz was active at St. John the Evangelist in Waynesboro, and helped make arrangements for the parish to acquire a crucifix from Oberammergau, Germany. The crucifix is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.
Please pray for him and all the souls of the faithful departed.
Fritz with his kids on his 93rd birthday.
"Bush administration has been secretly monitoring Iranian airspace for nearly a year for signs of nuclear weapons... according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort."
One official was quoted as saying, "When I promised to not divulge US military secrets, I had my fingers crossed. The cat was out of the bag anyway..."
Charles has an interesting point in the comments below this post.
It emphasizes the unfortunate fact that people like cheese.
Cheese being those tunes that are old-timey sentimental or broadway ballads turned to songs like "Jesus: Buddy, Friend, Pal!" They like being swept away emotionally, not thinking too much about the words and just having a nice time.
It's taken years for me to move my choir from a sizable amount of cheese to bite-sized portions. Every now and then we throw in "We Are Called" at the end of Mass and people in the congregation who aren't half-way to the donut shop sing with some gusto. That's probably the only thing that keeps me from throwing it into the proverbial trashbin like I did "I Believe."
For those of you not familiar with "I Believe" - take some extra time to today thank God. My ears still bleed from this juxtaposition of the Gounod "Ave Maria" and a doofy counter-melody. It turns into a screamfest at the end with half the choir singing at the very top of their range.
While we warmed up for Mass last night, a choir member asked me why we weren't doing that pretty song that's perfect for Ash Wednesday. She sang a few notes, "You know - ashes, ashes, la, la."
And my organist said, "Yes - that one is nice."
And I said, "Well - too bad it's theologically dubious!" and went on with the rehearsal.
Funny how that works. "Pretty" means you hear the "la-la" part but don't think about how absurd the phrase "We create ourselves anew" is...
In other news, there's a marriage prep discussion over here. Teresa and I are involved in Pre-cana at our parish. I'll post some thoughts on that in the next few days.
The chicken said, "Eat beef!"
"I concur - beef is the tastiest form of protein!" said the fish.
And the pig said, "Beef does a body good! Just don't wrap it in bacon!"
And that's what having James Carroll review John Cornwell's book "The Pontiff in Winter" is like.
Who wants to take the Post to task on this? Perhaps we could do a group letter from St. Blogs and rattle the Book World cages over at WashPost central?
Someone would need to volunteer to draft a response, we could pass it around for edits and then do the virtual signature... Who's up for it?
