What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

I am amused to the point of laughter tonight. I am sitting here in my loft looking out across the Piazza Navona and over toward the illuminated Basilica of San Pietro. With my internet connection nearly red hot I am following on CSPAN the US Senate confirmation hearing for Judge Alito. Right now Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) is quizzing Judge Alito about the "commerce clause" with a certain emphasis on guns and gun control. I ask you, gentle reader, did you know this? Perpend! You probably know that Sen. Feinstein, whose educational background includes (only) a good BA degree from Stanford, came to her post as Mayor of San Francisco over the prone corpse of Harvey Milk. It is therefore, perhaps, understandable that she obtained… in California a conceal and carry permit and thereafter packed heat for a while. She had the only CC permit in SF. So… Sen. Feinstein carried a concealed weapon. I will let you carry that bon mot provoking image forward on your own.

I was sent a very fine parody tune by honored guest contributor to this huble blog and acquaintance of many years, Tim Ferguson, a fine parody song smith himself. This is by an author still unknown to me but he deserves a cordial tip of my biretta for his efforts: o{]:¬)

Though it may also be on other sites by now, repetita iuvant. Thus, I present you with the…

Dies Irae for liturgical music

Day of wrath, O Day of mourning!
Earth to ashes now returning!
Gather, by the millions, burning!

Cleansed at last by cataclysm
Butchered rhyme and battered rhythm,
Neopagan narcissism!

On that day, Lord, when thou comest,
And our dreadful hymnals thumbest,
Smite the ugliest and dumbest.

Smite them, Lord, yet of thy pity
Take their songsters to thy city:
Even Haugen, Haas, and Schutte.

Spare them on the stern condition
That they feel a true contrition
for the Worship III edition.

Doom them not to loss and ruin
While the darker storm is brewing!
They knew not what they were doing.

On that day when Palestrina
Dare not touch a celestina,
What will Sister Ballerina?

With thine eyes that pierce like lances
Still her heathen silly dances
And her flirting with Saint Francis.

Purge us of the prim and prissy,
Ditties fit for Meg or Missy,
Not for Francis, but a sissy.

Cantors who thought nothing grander
Than a sheaf of propaganda
Writ like office memoranda,

Raise them to thy room to bide in
Where their hearts and ears may widen
To the strains of Bach and Haydn.

Let their hearts within them falter,
Hearing, as they near thine altar,
Seraphs sing the Scottish Psalter.

Seize those devils set to pen a
Hymnal neutered of its men, ah,
Fling ‘em all to black Gehenna!

Fling them one and all to mangle
Their pronominals, and wrangle
Lest a participle dangle!

Who held manhood in derision,
Preaching double circumcision,
Suffer now their own revision.

Though the songs of Hell are naughty,
None by Handel or Scarlatti,
At the least they’ll have castrati.

Pitch, O Lord, the bald and raucous
Slogans of a leftist caucus
Down to Sheol, or Secaucus!

Save their singers, though: restore ‘em
To a silent sweet decorum,
Saecula per saeculorem.

Various are the throngs of heaven:
Some were lump, and some were leaven,
Some as lame as six or seven.

When the demons hear thy curses,
And this world’s dense fog disperses,
Heal the hobbled, not their verses.

Hush me too, Lord, when I grumble:
In thy mercy make me humble,
Lest On Turkey’s Wings I stumble.

Though Haugen sing “Hosea” evermore,
Save me, I pray! but keep me near the door. Amen.

At long last, the English translation of Pope Benedict’s December 22 speech to the Roman Curia has been posted online. In it, His Holiness reflects on four important items from the past year. First, the passing of his predecessor, John Paul II; secondly, World Youth Day in Cologne; thirdly, the Synod on the Eucharist and lastly the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council.

Before turning my focus to the last section of the Pope’s talk, I think it’s interesting to point out that, in speaking of the conclusion of the Year of the Eucharist and the Synod, the Pope praises the proliferation of Eucharistic adoration in our day. He castigates the statement, “the Eucharistic Bread has not been given to us to be contemplated, but to be eaten,” often cited by those who espoused the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” which he takes apart in succeeding paragraphs. Benedict calls the use of such a statement or sentiment “nonsensical.” I can’t say I’ve ever seen that word used in a papal allocution. The Pope actually called a belief held by Richard McBrien nonsense.

But, to dwell on that too long would be to gloat intemperately, and Fr. McBrien is increasingly a figure to be pitied, rather than argued with.

What’s received the most attention from blogdom has been Benedict’s statements regarding Vatican II and the proper interpretation and implementation of the Council. He decries the fact that the Council has not been implemented fully nor easily in large parts of the Church, and attempts to understand why. In his exploration, he identifies two interpretations of the Council: “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” and “the hermeneutic of reform.” Spurning those who, for the past 40 years, have invoked the amorphous “Spirit of Vatican II” to justify every liturgical and theological innovation, Benedict put the full weight of papal authority behind those who see in Vatican II not a reinvention of the Church, but a call for re-energizing; not a casting off of the past, but a refocused energy on the truth. The impetus of the Council was not to turn the Church from the past and towards the modern world, but to explore new ways in which the Church could present the timeless truths of the Gospel to a world that no longer spoke the same language of the past.

Which brings us to a powerful theme of this pontificate: Truth. Truth is the bulwark against the “culture of relativism.” Benedict, who as Cardinal Ratzinger was quoted as saying “truth is not determined by majority vote,” whose very motto calls us to be cooperators of the truth, is standing firm in a truthful, honest assessment of Vatican II. There is objective truth. There is an objectively true interpretation of the most recent ecumenical Council.

This one speech is full of insight – insight into the mind of the Pope, insight into the place of Vatican II in the history of the Church, insight into the beauty, truth and goodness of God. Faithful sons and daughters of the Church could do much worse than read, reread, contemplate and integrate this speech.

“In these days of Christmas, let us go to meet him full of trust, like the shepherds, like the Wise Men of the East. Let us ask Mary to lead us to the Lord. Let us ask him himself to make his face shine upon us. Let us ask him also to defeat the violence in the world and to make us experience the power of his goodness.”