Richard Chonak: October 2004 Archives

Artist James Langley of Steubenville has painted an interesting study for a mural bearing the title Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah.

It's a curious image that seems to play off some of the most familiar Christian images we know. This holy family of the First Covenant receives a visit from a dove, who comes to rest on Sarah's hand. A book seems to be in her lap -- and don't mind the anachronism; it's OK. The dove bows low, perhaps in polite respect to humanity, perhaps to gaze upon the 'word' resting on her lap. Perhaps she is already in some way a Seat of Wisdom.

"My local post office leaves the front door open all the time now so that people can buy stamps through a vending machine in the lobby.

"I put a bulky envelope on the scale, punched in the zip code, slipped in a credit card, and got back a label to stick on the piece. Then the machine asked, 'Do you want to buy stamps?', and I figured, 'Don't mind if I do.'

"I pressed the button for 'yes' and got a packet of eighteen first-class stamps, at a price of -- uh, 18 times 37 cents, that's... $6.66. My soul shuddered.

"Later, the stamps squealed lightly as I burned them."

Mark Shea is on his rock-star tour of Australia, itinerantly teaching about the Faith and spending time with some dear Auzzies. He's speaking at an Anglican conference this weekend, and got to meet Anglican bishop Ross Davies, who affirms the Catholic faith, rejects heresies, and wants, together with his priests, to be in full communion with Rome. It looks like contacts with CDF are in the works. More from Mark here.

(Thanks to Jeff)..

An anonymous commenter at Barbara Nicolosi's blog summed the movie up well:

I saw the film and it's OK. The last half hour is excellent and I applaud them for taking this risk.

The last half hour has some wonderful moving moments, which make the flaws elsewhere in the film puzzling. The actors are at their best when they're conveying their characters' emotions, but at the beginning they're too understated. For that part of the movie, the girls seem less like living children rather than sedate figures from a series of tableaux, speaking Victorianese.

The film begins with the death of mother Zélie, so that we don't get to see what role she played in Therese's formation. It's a pity, since she's a Blessed along with her husband, and presumably a wonderful person, but the audience is left knowing virtually nothing about her. From then on, grief and sorrow take all their breath away, and only as the action starts to shift toward the Carmel of Lisieux does the movie come to life for the first time.

The best performance in the movie is that of Linda Hayden, whose Pauline provides the Marian, motherly, steadying complement to Lindsay Younce's Therese, as the saint is conformed to Jesus in her own 'Passion'.

Not in 96 minutes, and perhaps not in any one movie, can the story of St. Therese be told as it deserves. This film is however, a good companion to the 1986 Therese, which is the place to look for a better representation of Therese's thought and spirituality, but tells little about her early life. (Caution: it's not suitable for kids.)

For those of you blessed with worldly curiosity, figures on the box-office gross are on-line. The showing I attended Monday evening had about 12 viewers.

The long-awaited movie Thérèse opened at a few more theaters Friday, and will start at others next weekend.

Going by film critic Steven Greydanus' review, it sounds as if the filmmakers are still on the learning curve, as Barbara Nicolosi worried a few weeks ago.

You can check locations and showing times on-line. I'll be seeing it Saturday.

This weekend's fuss about the "pro-choice = heresy" letter was three yards and a cloud of dust, but the dust is beginning to settle.

Canonist Marc Balestrieri reports that his version of events and Fr. Gus DiNoia's version are in agreement on an important point: that Fr. Basil Cole wrote his "excellent and solid" account of the relevant doctrines at DiNoia's request. Get the details in Marc B.'s press release (October 20).

(Via Dom.)

Kudos to Ray Flynn: he's appealed to Gov. Schwarzenegger to reconsider his support for abortion and for research which destroys human embryos.

(Thanks, Amy.)

At least a few laughs:

From the director of "Airplane!": "Indecision"
The new JibJab cartoon "Good to Be in D.C."
Bohemian Political Rhapsody

Prof. Ed Peters gives his analysis of recent developments, including a statement from Fr. Cole about his letter to Marc Balestrieri on advocacy of legal abortion as heresy.

The refrain of "For the beauty of the earth" is: "Lord of all, to Thee we raise / This our hymn of grateful praise." It goes along with the tune "Dix", a very stately little number. You can see that text in, for example, the Worship II book.

(And, by the way, while you're looking around, get a load of the composer.)

The editors at Oregon Catholic Press, however, have it: "Lord of all, to you we raise / this our gift of grateful praise." What gives?

Of course, there are two changes in that line, and I can understand one of them: some people want to replace "thee" with "you". I don't think it does any good, but at least there is a rationale behind it. So what's the rationale behind changing "hymn" to "gift"?

I'll tell you my suspicion: once the OCP staff got into the habit of removing references to "He" and "Him", they didn't know where to stop!

Anyway, the OCP publications are really shameless in their editing of classic hymns: they don't even bother to admit it when they do it. Most publishers mark an altered text with the notation "alt." next to the author's name. Not this lot. They expect us to believe that the PC stuff they stick into hymns is original: the perjurers.

So the Eames Commission Report is out: a panel of Anglican prelates has solemnly tut-tutted that their American member church ordained an unrepentant gay as a bishop. Their statement called for an expression of regret, and PECUSA promptly stepped up to issue one. More or less, it says: "we deeply regret that you people got your knickers in a twist about this."

It's [un]official!

CDF's undersecretary Fr. Augustine DiNoia, OP, asked a fellow Dominican to respond unofficially to some dubia canonist Marc Balestrieri submitted in August. Fr. Basil Cole, an associate professor at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington answered Marc's questions as follows (I'll translate and summarize):

1. Is the doctrine that 'directly procured abortion is a grave sin' a dogma of divine and Catholic faith, in the sense that the opposing error is to be considered a heresy?
Answer: Affirmative.

2. Is the doctrine that 'a law for directly procured abortion is gravely illicit' at least implicitly or even directly among the dogmas of divine and Catholic faith, in the sense that the opposing error is to be considered a heresy?
Answer: Affirmative.

He concludes:

if a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the Church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Can. 751 of the Code.

And unless that Catholic proves himself to have been ignorant of the Church's teaching or the penalty, or otherwise not to be held responsible:

one is automatically excommunicated according to Can. 1364.

All this is marvelously clear, and just the sort of statement pro-life Catholics here in Massachusetts and elsewhere have hoped for in their efforts to fight the moral errors spread by some Catholics.

However, it's not an official statement of CDF. Does anyone know whether it is customary for a questioner to CDF to receive an unofficial reply from an expert rather than one from the Congregation? Would one expect it to be followed by an official response? Perhaps a response about such a weighty matter of public importance would have to go through the Congregation's procedures for review and approval. I hope that this letter hasn't been sent in place of an official response.

Update: CWN's weighed in on the story (two days later, not that there's any competition going on), adding an explanation about the form the response took: it's apparently standard procedure for CDF to refer laymen's questions to its consultors. But there is some dispute on the net about whether Fr. Cole is a consultor.

Postscript: Of all things! John Kerry, a dissenter on abortion legislation, may have a case in his favor, if Marc B.'s heresy complaint against him ever leads to a trial. Ignorance of the penalty can be a mitigating factor, and Kerry can credibly argue that he didn't know that support for abortion qualifies as a heresy. After all, the bishops don't seem to speak of it in those terms.

When Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., was interviewed by the NYT, his staff recorded the conversation for the sake of accuracy. It's a good thing they did, since the published Times story left nearly all of it on the cutting-room floor. A transcript of his remarks is online.

(A PDF copy is also available.)

An amusing item from sacredcowburgers.com.

If Disney moves to end their association with Miramax Films, it might help to restore their image as makers of family entertainment.

A rich crippled guy wanted a cure, to be obtained -- in his dream -- by killing numberless thousands of living human embryos. That sounds like the sort of comic-book villain that Superman used to fight. It is understandable and pitiable that Christopher Reeve became that man.

May the Lord have mercy on him.

Update: Fr. Carr proposes a novena.

It's time to make up a new background image for the blog. I've realized that color gradients are overused and not as interesting as they used to be. Here's a sample with some more, um, structure to it.

Update: A more muted version is on the sample page now. Thanks for all the great comments, and feel free to participate again.

Normally, I think music directors stop singing most hymns after two verses out of laziness and haste, but let's go along this time, and sing just two verses of Fr. Faber:

Faith of our fathers, living still,
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword;
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene'er we hear that glorious Word!
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free:
And truly blest would be our fate,
If we, like them, should die for thee!
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

At my parish we have a very good reason to stop there. The third verse in the Seasonal Missalette runs as follows:

Our mothers, too, oppressed and wronged,
still lived their faith in dignity;
Their brave example gives us strength
To work for justice ceaselessly....

As you probably know, that was not written by Fr. Faber, and it doesn't take a da Vinci to decrypt it as a bunch of feminist code-speak. Just count how many of those 23 words come loaded with whiny left-wing resonances, and you'll get the point.

Ideology was obviously the primary concern in producing that text, because nobody interested in beauty would have written it: just try to wrap your mouth around that word "wronged" and sing it attractively. You can't.

"Welcome to Saint Humbert's Parish. The entrance hymn is number three-hundred-and-one, 'Faith of Our Fathers'. We will sing verses one, two, and four, because verse three is some crock o's--- they put in there to please the feminazis. Please rise and greet our celebrant."

CWN reports about Bp. Krenn's resignation:

The Vatican's announcement on October 7 indicated that Bishop Krenn's resignation was "accepted in accordance with Canon 401, para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law ." That canon allows for the replacement of a bishop who can no longer fulfill his duties "because of illness or some other grave reason." In his own September 30 announcement, Bishop Krenn indicated his resignation was not required by reasons of health, but requested by Pope John Paul.

Now, this is contrary to earlier newspaper rumors that the Vatican was going to claim that the resignation was due to illness and not some "other grave reason". Will Diogenes who in effect called the Pope a liar now eat his words? Rod Dreher has already set the record straight on that point.

I believe this one was less well known, but it was sung to stringed instruments with a loping country rhythm on the chor-- I mean, antiphon.

XXV. Si Deus Pro Nobis

Antiphona:
Si Deus pro nobis
contra potest quis?
Liberavit nos Dei spiritus.
(idem)

Versus:
Scio in mundo posse nil
nos separare ab Deo.

Capere potest ab amore
nil nos effuso in Jesu.

Nec mortem scio nec ac vitam
amore Dei capturum.

While getting rid of some computer junk at home yesterday, I found a couple of antique floppy diskettes: they were from 1993. One of them contained the image of a document written in Rome, a collection of primitive hymns and antiphons, all in Latin of course.

It bears the title Gloria Lausque, which in English is rendered "Glory and Praise". Just imagine what these hymns must have sounded like in the catacombs! (Each of the hymns is marked with a numeral for some reason.)

I. Abba! Pater!

Antiphona:
Abba, abba Pater,
tu es nos figulus
Argilla sumus
et opus tuum.

Versus:
Forma, forma et finge nos
in tui imaginem
filii Jesu, filii Jesu.

Versus ultimus:
Gloria, gloria lausque
tibi in saecula
saeculorum Amen
saeculorum Amen.

Abba!

I posted another work attributed to the same author on this site last year.

The Supreme Court of the U.S. today refused to hear an appeal from the Sacramento diocese's Catholic Charities organization, which is under a state mandate to include coverage for immoral contraceptives in its employee health insurance program.

According to CNN, California's Supreme Court had already declared that the law was not an infringement of freedom of religion because "[t]he charity could avoid any conflict with its religious values by not offering its employees any prescription drug coverage at all." Speaking for myself, I fail to see how that would serve the public interest, but then maybe the public interest will have to come second to the imperial will of the legislative majority.

It'll be interesting to see how the diocese proceeds from here: Catholic Charities could

1. acquiesce under duress
2. enter into some brinksmanship with the legislature by announcing a plan to dissolve
3. reconstitute itself as a more closely controlled agency of the Church with a clearer religious mission
4. drop drug coverage from its health insurance but offer employees some other health benefit (e.g., medical savings accounts combined with high-deductible insurance)

Since the pastors of the Church tend to finesse conflicts, postpone problems, and avoid confrontations where possible, I suppose they'll aim for the last option or something like it. I'd like to see a little more #2 and #3, though.