Category: Uncategorized

Spreading the Church’s teaching on sacred music has to start with the people who run music programs, and for evidence that this work is needed, see this ad from craigslist:

Singers needed at church in Downtown Crossing (Boston)
Reply to: music@stanthonyshrine.org
Date: 2008-08-22, 9:38AM EDT
Contemporary Catholic music ministry in Downtown Crossing needs cantors!
Looking for trained, professional singers familiar with the Catholic Mass who can sing in a variety of styles – especially theatre/gospel/pop.
Must be able to sight-read and have great rhythm. Ability to play a solo instrument (sax, horn, guitar, piano, etc.) is a huge plus.
Also seeking subs for piano, drums, bass, guitar and trumpet.
Contact music@stanthonyshrine.org to set up an audition. Thanks!

Let’s see how many deviations from proper ideals of sacred music there are in this one ad. Secular styles such as theatre and pop certainly don’t belong in the sacred liturgy. The ad doesn’t mention music for the organ, the one instrument the Church prefers above all others except the human voice. It seeks players for solo instruments: are we to imagine that the music at St. Anthony’s Shrine will include solo riffs, as if the Mass were a jam session?

Assumption Day, the day on which we observe our Lady’s entrance, body and soul, into Heaven, is a day of celebrating the victory that God, the faithful one above all others, gives to humanity redeemed in Christ.
The victory that God has given to us in Christ Jesus is unlike any liberation conceived by the great Eastern religions, for in Mary’s assumption we see that the individual human person is not an illusion to be transcended; and the body is not a mere vehicle for a passage from birth to death. The human person, each human person, is willed into existence by God, is unique and unrepeatable, and will live forever; and is destined to live forever as both body and soul.
1950, the year of the Marian dogma, was the midpoint of a harsh century. Mankind was reeling from the great slaughters of 1914-1919 and 1939-1945; and was despairing in the face of the mass killings of the Nazi regime; the crimes of Communism were far from over, and the tragedy of mass abortion was nowhere in sight. The twentieth century’s offenses against divine hope were many, and its crimes against the human body were many.
How necessary it was — what a gift to humanity it was — that Pope Pius XII of blessed memory solemnly and definitively affirmed the Assumption in 1950! It was St. Peter strengthening his brethren with a word of divine hope and faithfulness, a word of the God who loves mankind.

Last Sunday morning, while the chant group was practicing in the Cathedral lower church, a parishioner approached us and asked for help in finding the Spanish Mass.
We fumbled with our Spanish and told him the Mass was already underway in the upper church, so he headed on up to find it. But I should have said: well, we are la comunidad latinissima, if that’s what you’re looking for… :-)

One more reason to beware of the Pill: apparently it makes women feel attracted to men who are immunologically similar to them. According to a piece on LiveScience.com, that’s not a good idea, because complementarity in your immune system genes is good for your kids — and somehow, for the stability of the marriage!

Thanks to United Church of Christ minister David Runnion-Bareford!
Mr. Runnion-Bareford leads a movement of evangelical and conservative Christians working for Biblical renewal within the UCC, and he recently sent a kind message to Boston Catholics and to our archbishop, Cardinal O’Malley.
In his letter to the Cardinal, Mr. Runnion-Bareford expressed his sorrow at UCC involvement in a recent schismatic attempt to ordain some women heretics as priests, and in a separate message, he challenged the UCC minister who hosted the would-be ordination ceremony about her actions.
Personally, I think repairing the UCC is a lost cause, but it’s good to know some members and ministers of that denomination want to maintain their commitment to the saving Gospel of Christ as they once received it.