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

At the same moment that GK sent an e-mail I was reading an article in Der Spiegel which says that the Motu Proprio will be coming out this week.  There is a comment in the context of a larger issue: China.  I suspect that this person might not have done much homework on the issue of the Motu Proprio.  I suspect this prediction is not correct.

"Die Völker neolateinischer oder romanischer Sprache", rief de Mattei aus, "sind zahlenmäßig stärker als jene in der Welt, die englisch oder arabisch sprechen." Während die Lateiner derart angeregt ins Pfingstwochenende gingen, schrieb der Papst an seiner Sonntagsansprache. Offenbar soll noch diese Woche ein "Motu proprio" (lat.: aus eigenem Beweggrund) veröffentlicht werden, eine kleine päpstliche Privatmeinung, ohne Siegel, Gegenzeichnung oder Anlass.

In this somewhat longer PODCAzT we hear from St. Pope Gregory the Great (+604) who gives us a commentary on Job’s suffering.  These days in the Office of Readings, now that it is "Ordinary Time" again… sigh… we are hearing about Job.

I have an extended digression on the new/old Compendio di liturgia pratica which instructs us about everything as it was in 1962, which leads me into what rubrics are for and about sacred music.  In the book there are interesting comments about whether or not women should be permitted to sing.

 

 07-05-28 Gregory the Great on Job; rubrics; sacred music [41:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

And on another topic, 

Alabama Boy Kills 1,051-Pound Monster Pig, Bigger Than ‘Hogzilla’

Saturday , May 26, 2007

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog that just may be the biggest pig ever found.

Jamison Stone’s father says the hog his son killed weighed a 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

...

The Anniston Star reported that the feral hog was weighed at the Clay County Farmer’s Exchange in Lineville. Workers at the co-op verified that the basic truck scales used were recently certified by the state. But no workers from the co-op were present when the hog was weighed.

Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father — http://www.monsterpig.com — that is generating Internet buzz.

...

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

...

His father said that, just to be extra safe, he and the guides had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast with 5-inch tusks decided to charge.

With the pig finally dead in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve in Delta, trees had to be cut down and a backhoe brought in to bring Jamison’s prize out of the woods.

It was hauled on a truck to the Clay County Farmers Exchange in Lineville, where Jeff Kinder said they used his scale, which was recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.

...

The hog’s head is now being mounted on an extra-large foam form by Cunningham of Jerry’s Taxidermy in Oxford. Cunningham said the animal measured 54 inches around the head, 74 inches around the shoulders and 11 inches from the eyes to the end of its snout.

Mike Stone is having sausage made from the rest of the animal. "We’ll probably get 500 to 700 pounds," he said.

...

Jamison is enjoying the newfound celebrity generated by the hog hunt, but he said he prefers hunting pheasants to monster pigs.

"They are a little less dangerous."

So, let’s just get it over with and turn Westminster… the Cathedral… the Catholic Cathedral… into a mosque.

Okay… I’m exagerating, to make a point.

Hermeneutic had this before but this is just in from the Telegraph’s Damian Thompson: Allah’s name to ring out in Westminster (my emphases):

Where in London will you soon be able to hear the 99 names of Allah, sung to solemn music? Why, Westminster Cathedral, of course! If you thought the mother church of England’s Catholics was entirely given over to Christian worship, then think again.

Will the 99 names of Allah offend or inspire?

On June 19, Sir John Tavener’s The Beautiful Names, with a text “culled from the Koran”, will be premiered in the cathedral by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. The work has been commissioned by the Prince of Wales, who I hope will enjoy listening to the “magisterial calling out of Allah” that punctuates the 70-minute work.

Some commentators are pretty furious. They point out that, not long ago, Westminster Cathedral encountered a rather different face of Islam.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Does singing the 99 names count as an act of Muslim worship? Does the fact that the work “calls upon Hinduism and Buddhism” make it more or less acceptable to Catholics?

Maybe The Beautiful Names will be such a masterpiece that all our doubts will be swept away. But, somehow, I doubt that strict Muslims will welcome verses from the Koran finding their way into a text that juxtaposes them with elements of non-Islamic spirituality.

Like all other Catholic dioceses, the Archdiocese of Westminster displays a Karen Armstrong-style “cultural cringe” when it comes to Islam. How embarrassing if, in its willingness to embrace other “faith traditions”, it ended up being accused of the unspeakable crime of “Islamophobia”.

Let us not forget that the new Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue will be reopened. 

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the Italian daily La Stampa that the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue is to be restored.

This is the office primarily in charge of dialogue with Islam. 

Last year, Pope Benedict merged the department with the Pontifical Council for Culture and sent the former president, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald to an assignment in Cairo.

Some are going to say that this reflects "weakness" in Benedict’s abililty to bring a new direction to the Roman curia.  

Some are going to say that this is appeasment payment for the upcoming Motu Proprio.

Some are going to say that Benedict is finally starting to listen to people around him so that he does not anger Muslims.

Some are going to say that Benedict has a larger project of bringing the Church’s voice more firmly into the public square and dialogue with Islam is necessarily part of that project.