Song For A Contemporary Nativity Set

Have yourself a minimalist Christmas
with a set of blocks
each a single color and an oblong box

Have yourself a geometric Christmas
It’s a tidy plan
As if they were painted like a Mondrian

Bet you knew
that our Lady’s blue
while Saint Joseph’s all in brown
Deeper shades from the Orient
tell you Magi are in town.

Soon it will be copied by IKEA
Yuletide can be blah:
Angels without mouths can’t sing a Gloria.
But have yourself a minimalist Christmas, brah.

On that night
Was our Savior white?
Was the shepherd grubby gray?
In that box
there’s no lamb or ox
but the Pope says that’s okay

If your kids see this on Christmas morning
sure they’re gonna cry
look at you in tears and ask you, Daddy, why?

So let’s just kiss this minimalist Christmas ‘bye


(A hat tip to Fr. Bryce Sibley for letting me know about this.)

Website for classic devotional hymns

My friend Peter Meggison has an interesting project going: he’s helping to keep old-fashioned Catholic devotional hymns alive by commissioning choral performances and recordings of these sentimental favorites. I’m putting together a web site for him at http://www.catholicdevotionalhymns.com/, so drop by and enjoy some of these charming old songs!

Parish Book of Psalms

Composer Arlene Oost-Zinner has been distributing her a cappella psalm settings for a few years through the Chabanel Psalms project, and this summer she has brought out a complete set of responsorial psalms for Sundays and solemnities, published by the Church Music Association of America.
View the Parish Book of Psalms at Scribd
By way of disclosure, I contributed to the book by doing some custom chant typesetting so I’m pleased with how the music looks. (The Scribd display above is not exactly what the page looks like, but it’s close.)
It’ll be available from Amazon shortly:

In CMAA’s spirit of sharing, free downloads of individual psalms are available online at http://musicasacra.com/pbp/.

What? We don’t do that… um, stuff

Somebody thought this was a good idea, but they should have checked it out more.
D’you ever hear of this? There’s some movement of people, starting in Japan, that wants to promote world peace, so they go around to promote putting up little posts in public places with a multi-lingual peace message.
In this case, a parish a couple of towns over erected a “peace pole” on its property, at the suggestion of a teenager who needed a place to carry out his Eagle Scout project.
The event took place a few years back, in ’09; I just happened to stumble on an Internet video of the installation today:

Whether the kid knew it or not, it’s sort of a “new-age” movement. At least it appears that way because the movement promoting these well-intentioned monuments has talk like this on its website:

The Power of Thought
Thought forms create an energetic field strong enough to empower the course of planetary destiny.
The Power of Words
Words carry vibrations strong enough to inspire, heal and transform the human heart as well as the Kingdom of plants, animals and all creation.

Uh… no.
We Catholics don’t believe in talk like that: about imaginary energy fields and immaterial vibrations. In fact, we would classify that as “superstition”. A belief about such things may be part of some Eastern religion, or it may show up in “new-thought” religions in America, but we Catholics don’t do that stuff.
Well, I will have to visit that parish and see if their little peace pole is still there reminding people to send out the vibrations or transmit the energy field. I’ll bring my wi-fi detector and see if it picks up any signal.
You want peace? Don’t just wish for it. Don’t just formulate wishes directed to no one in particular. Instead, pray for peace. Prayers, unlike wishes, are directed to someone other than yourself. For one, God is there; He’s happy to hear us turning to Him and asking for what the world needs. And the Blessed Virgin Mary is happy to join in with our prayers when we ask her, especially since her message at Fatima calls on us to pray the Rosary for peace.
What would be a good replacement for these not-Catholic peace poles installed in Catholic churchyards — and, by the way, this isn’t the first case I’ve seen.

Published
Categorized as The Fringe

“I cannot; I must not; I will not!”

At the religious freedom rally in San Francisco on Friday, Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, C.PP.S., spoke as follows:

In every age Christians have been challenged to stand up for what they believe. I would like to share with you the story of a little-known Saint. His name is Gaspar del Bufalo. It was 1810. He was only 24 years old, and had been ordained a priest just a short time. But now he was under arrest. Napoleon had conquered Rome and had imprisoned the pope. His intention was to close the churches and to force all the priests to swear allegiance to him.
So there Gaspar stood in front of the prefect. The prefect was a kind old gentleman, who did everything to minimize the event, downplaying it and reducing everything to a mere formality. It was just a harmless bureaucratic exercise.
The important thing was that Gaspar be put at ease, that he should not realize the seriousness of the choice to which he was being called. After all, many priests had already acquiesced and signed the oath of allegiance.
But Gaspar was not listening to the prefect, he was thinking of the blood which Napoleon had already caused to be shed. He was thinking of the imprisonment of the Holy Father, and he was thinking of the violation of liberty and the suppression of independence for the church.
So his response to the prefect was clear and decisive:
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
Just 200 years later, It is a different country and it is a different government. This time it is an American President. He has taken it upon himself to determine what is and is not religious. He has taken it upon himself to determine how I should live my faith in this time and in this place. Should I acquiesce to his demands?
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
The world health organization classifies oral contraceptives as a class one carcinogen right up there with tobacco. And the government wants me to provide this free with healthcare.
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
Women who use oral contraceptives for four years prior to their first full-term pregnancy have a 52% increased risk of developing breast cancer. And the government calls this health care and wants me to provide this for free, well…
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
Oral contraceptives do horrific damage to a woman’s body, and should we call this health-care? Abortion destroys human life and is it reasonable or intelligent for us to call that healthcare?
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
The president proposed a compromise that would allow insurance companies to pay for the contraceptives rather than the church institution. My question, what if I belong to a church institution that is self-insured? I would then be required to pay for this.
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
What if I’m a Catholic business person who is required by my government to provide insurance that violates my conscience?
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
What will it be next and who will it be next? The New Mexico Court of Appeals has ruled that it is illegal for a photography business owned by Christians to refuse to photograph a same-sex wedding ceremony even though New Mexico law does not permit same-sex marriage. What will they say next? Will they say that it is illegal for me to refuse to do a same-sex marriage. Would we as Catholics allow the state to change one of our sacraments.
I cannot, I must not, I will not!
Saint Gaspar del Bufalo spent four years in prison for his profession of faith. We must pray too, that we have the strength to be firm in our faith.
We are not imposing our values on anyone. The government has dictated that employees at Catholic institutions are provided with free contraception, and that is the imposition on our faith and on our conscience. The government doesn’t want so much to advance the cause of women’s health, but rather, they seek to demonize a faith group that has the “audacity of hope,” that they might live their faith free from government interference and intrusion.
I know it is just a mere formality, just a harmless bureaucratic exercise. I know that the important thing is that we should not realize the seriousness of the choice to which we are being called. After all everybody else is doing it. But let me be perfectly clear:
I cannot, I must not, I will not!