A ditty for St. Nicholas’ day

The other day, “Curt Jester” Jeff Miller read Taylor Marshall’s account of how Saint Nicholas of Myra confronted the heretic Arius at the Council of Nicaea (and rearranged his dental work). Well, Jeff wished that there were a Christmas song about the event, so I obliged him:

I saw Santa punching Arius,
in Nicaea where the council met last night;
the bishops were aghast, and the bruise is gonna last:
he seized him with his left hand and then slapped him with the right;
Now the Emperor’s pursuing Nicholas,
and wants to put him in a prison cell;
Probably neither will repent ’til their wrath is fully spent
and the heresy’s condemned to hell.

Published
Categorized as Amusements

A new priest blog

Fr. David Barnes, the fine pastor of St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Beverly, MA, has launched a blog under the title A Shepherd’s Post, and I recommend it to you. I sang in his parish choir for the past few years, and appreciated his preaching and his encouragement of sacred music in the parish. Fr. Barnes is an active participant in the movement “Communion and Liberation” and serves as a spiritual director for seminarians at St. John Seminary in Boston.
Welcome to the Catholic “blogosphere”, Father!

Te Deum laudamus!

It’s the last day of the Church year, so it’s the perfect time to sing the Te Deum laudamus.
Here’s a recording of the Schola Cantorum of Milan. It comes with a display of the Gregorian score as found in the Graduale Romanum book (simple tone), so you can sing along:

But why stop there? Here’s an enormous force presenting the setting by Berlioz:

And the bold 1936 setting by Zoltan Kodály, written to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the liberation of Budapest from the Ottoman Turks:

Here, the choir of Notre Dame de Paris sings one of the Gregorian settings in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI. Notice a Notre Dame tradition at work: during some phrases, the choir is silent, letting the organ “sing”. As it happened, some members of the congregation, probably not familiar with the tradition, sang those phrases anyway. (And that’s OK: it’s a good thing that the congregation knew the Te Deum well enough to sing along!)

There are several Gregorian melodies for the Te Deum: simple and solemn Roman melodies, and simple and solemn monastic (Benedictine) melodies, so don’t be surprised if a particular chant performance doesn’t match a score in front of you. Do the Dominicans have their own melody, or the Cistercians? What about the Carthusians? Maybe some more versions will turn up!

A resource: talks by Fr. John Hardon, SJ

Fr_Hardon.jpgFor those not familiar with Fr. John Anthony Hardon, SJ, he was a wonderful teacher of the faith who lived in Detroit. He trained catechists and wrote an adult catechism which helped me on the way into the Church; he gave retreats, and spoke to many audiences. He’s also noted for making converts: quite a few Catholics found or returned to the faith through an encounter with him.
Supporters of his cause for beatification are building a website presenting many of his talks in text form and as mp3s.
(A prayer for his intercession is posted on the home page of that web site.)

A skeptical look at the population control movement

Professor Matthew Connelly (Columbia University) recently presented a radio documentary about the population control movement, “Controlling People”, on the BBC, in three episodes.
The story of a radical social-engineering campaign that began with high-sounding ideals and why it didn’t work.
Part One: The “religion” of Malthusian ideology: The self-interested Western desire to keep down rising populations in the Third World: population-control ideology spread by men in wealthy countries.
Part Two: The Indian Emergency: Mass sterilization camps in India in the 1970s operated on eight million people, induced by payments and imposed with government pressure and, later, force. Social scientist Steven Mosher, then a supporter of population control, tells about the methods of the one-child policy in China: government lock-up and coerced abortion. But the rise of working women led to delayed marriage and reduced fertility on its own.
Part Three: Continuing Incomprehension. Fertility rates are falling, but the population-control ideology of the 1970s remains, targeting the poor with sterilization. A surrogacy program in India exploits the needs of the poor to satisfy the wishes of Western couples. “The disappearing female child” targeted by sex-selection abortion and infanticide. The continuing conflict among pop-controllers between advocates of sterilization and contraception.
I should note that there are some biases in the presentation: Professor Connelly frames the conflict as merely one between somewhat arrogant proponents of sterilization and more liberal supporters of voluntary contraception, and he treats voices of opposition to abortion and contraception as a “fanatical” religious element. Still, the presentation of the history and the issues is worthwhile.