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

Welcome to another installment of What Does the Prayer Really Sound Like? 

Today we will hear the prayers for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost in the 1962 Missale Romanum.  The texts for this Mass are from the 6th Sunday left after Epiphany.   This is explained at length in a recent article in The Wanderer.  I speak all the prayers and readings and also sing the Collect and Post Communion prayers in the Festal Tone.

http://www.wdtprs.com/prayercazt/071112_25_post_pent.mp3

If priests who are learning to say the older form of Holy Mass can get these prayers in their ears, they will be able to pray them with more confidence. So, priests are my very first concern. 

However, these audio projects can be of great help to lay people who attend Holy Mass in the Traditional, or extraordinary form: by listening to them ahead of time, and becoming familiar with the sound of the before attending Mass, they will be more receptive to the content of the prayers and be aided in their full, conscious and active participation.

My pronunciation of Latin is going to betray something of my nationality, of course. Men who have as their mother tongue something other than English will sound a little different.  However, we are told that the standard for the pronunciation of Latin in church is the way it is spoken in Rome.  Since I have spent a lot of time in Rome, you can be pretty sure my accent will not be too far off the mark.

I deliver them more slowly than I would ordinarily during Mass.  But hopefully the pace will help you hear the words a little more clearly.

If this was useful to you, let your priest friends know this resource is available.  And kindly make a little donation using the donation button on the left side bar of the blog or or by clicking here.  This is a labor of love, but those donations really help.  And don’t forget to check out the PODCAzTs!

Pray for me, listen carefully, and practice practice practice.

Nota bene: With the beginning of a new liturgical year at the 1st Sunday of Advent, I will be evaluating whether or not I want to continue to do these audio projects based on the download statistics.  Good stats – PRAYERCAzTs – Bad stats – .... cf. Hamlet V.ii.363

I am not able to tell how many might be using this project from iTunes, but my podpress plugin is showin these results for downloads:

01 – 937
02 – 584
03 – 411
04 – 341
05 – 363
06 – 248

The bishops had before them a document on sacred music proposed by the USCCB’s liturgy committee, headed by the outgoing Erie Bishop, His Excellency Most Reverend Donald W. Trautman.

The document was originally intended to establish particular law.  As such it would have required a 2/3 majority vote and then the recognitio of the Holy See.

However, at the suggestion of several bishops, Bp. Trautman’s committee is proposes this document as an official statement of guidelines of the USCCB.  This is similar to what the conference did with Built of Living Stones, which replaced the earlier dreadful Environment and Art in Catholic Worship.  Thus, the new document Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship is designed to replace Music in Catholic Worship. 

Since the proposed document will be merely guidelines, a simple majority of bishops could passed it and it would not require the recognitio of the Holy See.

I was a little anxious about what the USCCB (BTW… every go review Apostolos suos) might do with something as important as sacred music.  If there is anything that needs good guidelines, it is sacred music.  I am sure most of the readers of this blog will agree.  Nevertheless, I shudder with the horrors my imagination conjured.  So, the fact that this document is not going to establish particular law is a good thing.

However, consider that the document, if it is eventually passed in the form of Guidelines, would not need the approval of the Holy See.  

We all know that in the past even guidelines were taken as if they had the force of law.  Think of the disasters that resulted from the NCCB’s ghastly Environment and Art in Catholic Worship and various other now obsolete unofficial documents.  And Built of Living Stones contains a deadly error in its notes in translating the Latin of GIRM 299 which concerns the position of the altar.  Even though the Holy See issued a clarification about what GIRM 299 means, and even explained the Latin grammar, Built of Living Stones makes GIRM 299 sound as if it requires that Mass be celebrated versus populum.  GIRM 299 doesn’t and the CDWDS clarified that.  But there it is in the conference’s document.

Thus, I wonder what interesting little things will be in this new document on music.

Had the document on sacred music remained proposal for particular law of the conference, Rome could have gotten involved with the content.

Now that it is proposed as guidelines, the bishops will not have to send it to Rome fopr approval.

Food for thought.

I also want to know if any consideration was given to the fact that the Roman Rite is now considered, at least juridically, to have two forms, an extraordinary use and an ordinary.  Does the document deal with this important new dimension of the Church’s liturgical life?

Does it consider Summorum Pontificum and the 1962 Missale Romanum at all?

I don’t know, but I suspect it doesn’t.

No, this isn’t about ancient Greek Literature or ancient Chinese proverbs, which seem for some reason to favor horses.

Try this on for a scary story. 

Scary: Trojan Horse Hidden in New Maxtor Hard Drive Transfers Datas Automatically to China

Posted by chinaview on November 12th, 2007

By Yang Kuo-wen, Lin Ching-chuan and Rich Chang, Taipei Times, Sunday, Nov 11, 2007-

Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.

Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.

The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner’s knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said.

The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics 500G discs.

The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information.

Sensitive information may have already been intercepted by Beijing through the two Web sites, the bureau said.

The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved.

In recent years, the Chinese government has run an aggressive spying program relying on information technology and the Internet, the bureau said.

The bureau said this was the first time it had found that Trojan horse viruses had been placed on hard discs before they even reach the market.

The bureau said that it had instructed the product’s Taiwanese distributor, Xander International, to remove the products from shelves immediately.

The bureau said that it first received complaints from consumers last month, saying they had detected Trojan horse viruses on brand new hard discs purchased in Taiwan.

Agents began examining hard discs on the market and found the viruses linked to the two Web sites.

Anyone who has purchased this kind of hard disc should return it to the place of purchase, the bureau said.

The distributor told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) that the company had sold 1,800 tainted discs to stores last month.

It said it had pulled 1,500 discs from shelves, while the remaining 300 had been sold by the stores to consumers.

Seagate’s Asian Pacific branch said it was looking into the matter.

Pray for the American bishops, meeting in plenary session.

In another entry I posted an article from the the ultra-lefty English weekly The Tablet.  In that same issue there was an unsigned editorial. 

What follows is an exercise in vindictive hatred for people who desire the traditional form of Mass. 

This is the stuff of cry babies.

Here it is with my emphases and comments. 

Editorial, 10 November 2007

Harsh words from Rome

Celebration of the Eucharist is at the heart of Catholic identity, to the extent that regular attendance at Mass usually defines who is and who is not entitled to call themselves by that name. This may be why liturgical controversy in the Church sometimes takes on a hard and bitter edge. The latest display of ill feeling has been triggered by the somewhat unenthusiastic welcome [How about "cold and defiant rejection"?] in some parts of the Church given to Pope Benedict’s motu proprio of last July, licensing the more general use of the Tridentine Rite. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship at the Vatican, this week accused bishops who were trying to limit use of the Tridentine Mass of being "in rebellion against the Pope" and guilty of "one of the gravest sins" – pride. Certain "theologians, liturgists, priests, bishops and even cardinals" had issued "interpretative documents that inexplicably try to limit the Pope’s motu proprio", he complained. [He properly observed.  It is all a matter of perspective, right?]

The substance of his charge is somewhat perplexing, as the motu proprio itself implied some limitations, such as its restriction of the use of the Old Rite to "stable groups" [There it is again!  Do you see how pernicious this bad translation is?] who had "adhered" to it. That seemed to refer to strongly traditionalist Catholics who already [You see?  There is the argument of some of those who are stonewalling.  The group desiring the older form of Mass had to already exist, which is clearly not what Summorum Pontificum implies.  This is the way those who object seek to limit the rights of the faithful, which were expanded generously by the Holy Father.] had special dispensation to celebrate Mass in that form, and such groups are by no means either numerous or evenly spread. Thus the judgement of Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, for instance, that no such groups existed in his diocese, seems a reasonable one and hardly an act of disobedience.  [B as in B.  S as in S.] If the Pope meant to give universal approval for the use of the Tridentine Rite without conditions, he would presumably have said so.  [He pretty much did.  It is only when you entirely ignore the Church’s practice of interpretation of law and refuse to read the Latin that you are able to find restrictive "loopholes".]  And if Archbishop Ranjith’s words signal his lack of confidence in the loyalty of various bishops to the Pope, such intemperate language will hardly gain him the confidence of the wider Church.  [The writer is assuming that Archbp. Ranjith needs human respect in this matter.  And notice the slimey word "confidence" here.  What does that mean, exactly, from the pen of this writer?] He has made his own job immeasurably more difficult.  [Let me get this straight.  There are bishops and priests all over the world, for decades, violating the rubrics of the Novus Ordo, in sharp and conscious defiance of documents of the Holy See and repeated admonitions and yet Ranjith has made Ranjith’s job harder?] Indeed one of those he appears to be criticising is Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, who is a key player in the drafting of a new English version of the Mass whose final promulgation may be only months away. He too has written to his priests offering an interpretation of the motu proprio.

Bishops have every right to have reservations about the return of the Tridentine Mass, [More on this below.] as it has long been the symbolic flag carried by elements in the Church which most disliked the reforms promoted by the Second Vatican Council. The bishops have a duty not to let this disobedient and anti-conciliar spirit spread. [WHAT?  I submit that the writer must have his head in a very dark place indeed.  What the vast majority of the people who desire the older form of Mass objected to was the hideous irreverence and utter disdain for liturgical tradition imposed on them for decades.  Let’s just ask ourselves these questions: Upon whom did the onus of obedience lie heavier?  Clergy or laity?  Bishops and priests, who let everything veer diabolically out of control, and even aided the chaos, or lay people who were still told to shut up and keep putting money in the collection?] It is already present in some seminaries, where a proportion of young men studying for the priesthood seem particularly attracted to a backwards-looking style of Catholicism that was familiar in the novels of Evelyn Waugh. [I think we know what the implication is.] The Tridentine Rite reflected the Counter-Reformation theology that emerged from the Council of Trent, and the Second Vatican Council marked the moment when the Catholic Church decided, definitively,[Definitively?  Really?  In what document can that be cited?] that the Counter-Reformation era was over. It is because the motu proprio seemed to give comfort and support to those with a nostalgic and obsolete view of the faith [Note that "comfort and support" are usually given to the "enemy" by "traitors".] that many bishops worldwide felt the need to limit the damage it might otherwise have caused. It is a pity that some in Rome did not understand this. 

What I understand is that the writer thinks those bishops ought to have defied the Pope’s provisions and that they are doing well to place restrictions on Summorum Pontificum.

I want to follow up on that phrase "Bishops have every right to have reservations about the return of the Tridentine Mass".

I agree!

Bishops have the right to their opinions just like everyone else.  They can like the older Mass or not, fear it or embrace it, long for it or wish it would go away. 

They are perfectly within their rights.

What they do not have the right to do is violate the right of others to pray at Mass in this form.

They do not have the right restrict the provisions given by the Supreme Pontiff.

The writer is a coward for not signing this editorial.