Slavishly accurate liturgical translations & frank commentary on Catholic issues - by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf o{]:¬)
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I have been working to fix the texts of the Internet Prayer in various languages.
Some of the fonts were screwed up when we changed servers.
The Korean version is a mess. I need help with that. The Maltese and Mandarin are having problems too.
Also, take a look at the list of languages. It would be nice to have some audio versions.
If you can add a language to the collection, please do!
Send ‘em in!
I lived with this fellow for several years in Rome!
Bishop-Elect Protase is a wonderful priest. Please pray for him. He comes from the area of Tanzania where all the strife is, the Great Lakes region. Tanzania is the poorest country in the world. In that zone of Tanzania hundreds of thousands of people streamed over the borders into those diocese, trying to escape ethnic persecution and genodice.OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS
VATICAN CITY, 18 JAN 2008 (VIS) – The Holy Father:
- Appointed Fr. Protase Rugambwa, official of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, as bishop of Kigoma (area 45,056, population 1,679,109, Catholics 409,000, priests 70, religious 122), Tanzania. The bishop-elect was born in Bunena, Tanzania, in 1960 and ordained a priest in 1990.
UPDATE: 21 Jan 2008 2317 GMT
I just got this from Bp.-elect Protase:
Thanks so much for your best wishes and I still count on your prayers.
Hope we will be able to meet before I go to Tanzania.
Protase.
He gave us the Internet Prayer in Kinyambo!
KINYAMBO (spoken in Tanzania)
Ensara otakatahile omu intaneti
Mungu owabushobola natalihwaho,
eyatutonzile Omurususo lwawe
kandi eyayenzile katuhiga byona ebili birungi, ebya mazima nebili kusemela,
nangu kulabila Omumwana Wawe wenka Omugonzibwa, Omukama weitu Yesu Kristu,
nitukusaba otubele,
kulabila omunsara zo Mutakatifu Isidore, Omwepiskopi na Daktari,
omurugendo lwaitu olwe intaneti
tutwale emikono yeitu hamo nameiso omubintu ebili kusemela ahali Iwe
kandi tubakolele ne ngonzi hamwe nokwetohya abantu abotulikutanganwa nabo.
Kulabila omuli Kristu Omukama weitu. Amina.
From the American Papist:
Demonstrating students? Please.
Pope Benedict isn’t even scared of the Alien Queen!
(After this day, I needed a chuckle!)
Pope Benedict is probably safe, but I’m pretty sure that Monsignor is toast.
Will you do something small for me?
Jump over to this spankin’ new blog by a popular participant here and give him a bump in his statistics just to encourage him a little!
o{];¬)
PS: When I posted this he had only 118 hits!
Don’t let him look like a rarely visited liberal Catholic’s blog!
Galileo’s university considers inviting Pope to give conference
.- The governor of the region of Veneto in northern Italy, Giancarlo Galan, has proposed inviting Pope Benedict XVI to the historic University of Padua, one of the oldest in the world and where Galileo once taught.“It would be a great tribute as part of the Galilean celebrations that are taking place this year,” Galan said. The governor’s proposal has received the support of the mayor of Padua, Flavio Zanonato, who said that the final decision should rest with the rector of the university, Professor Vincenzo Milanesi.
Meanwhile Professor Furio Honsell, rector of the University of Udine—also in northern Italy—has announced that in response to requests by students, he will invite Pope Benedict XVI to give a lecture. “I think it is a positive response by the young people to an unacceptable situation,” Honsell said in reference to the Pope’s cancelled speech at La Sapienza University in Rome.
You have heard by now that it is strongly rumored that Pope Benedict will by his supreme authority make a change to the texts of the 1962 Missale Romanum and alter the prayer for the Jews on Good Friday.
Lot’s of you will be confused by this, some will not care, some fewer will be hysterical.
I frankly have never thought we should them, but I have such great respect for Pope Benedict that I am forced to think more deeply about this possibility. I have to get my head around it. He wouldn’t do this simply because he want to go to the Roman Synagogue or to Israel in 2009, etc. It goes beyond his respect for Jewish thinkers, such as the one who influence him in his book Jesus of Nazareth.
Before going on, let’s find some clarity about what the old prayers for the Jews on Good Friday really say.
On Good Friday the Church has always prayed for civil authorities, ourselves as Catholics, non-Catholics and non-Christians. Let it be said that prayer for others is a work of mercy and is performed out of charity, not malice.
The more ancient form of the prayer for Jews, all the way back to the 1570 editio princeps, went like this:
Oremus et pro perfidis Iudaeis: ut Deus et Dominus noster auferat velamen de cordibus eorum; ut et ipsi agnoscant Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum. ... Let us pray also for the unbelieving Jews: that God and our Lord take away the veil from their hearts; that they also may acknowledge Jesus [as] Christ our Lord.Tenebrae, plural in form, is "darkness". According to the mighty Lewis & Short, it can imply, literal darkness, or darkness of the mind, the darkness of death, ("death shades")or even the infernal regions. So, one could translate the above as a prayer to "rescue" or "pluck out" the Jews from death which is hell. With the imagery of Christ as the light, it concerns illumination of the intellect and heart. The "veil" also recalls not just blindness, but how at Christ’s death the great curtain in the Holy of Holies tore asunder.
Omnipotens sempiternae Deus, qui etiam iudaicam perfidiam a tua misericordia non repellis: exaudi preces nostras, quas pro illius populi obcaecatione deferimus; ut agnita veritatis tuae luce, quae Christus est, a suis tenebris eruantur. Per eundem Dominum. ... Almighty eternal God, who does not reject even Jewish unbelief from Your mercy: graciously hear the prayers which we are conveying for the blindess of that people; so that once the light of Your Truth has been recognized, which is Christ, they may be rescued from their darkness.
Oremus et pro [...] Iudaeis: ut Deus et Dominus noster auferat velamen de cordibus eorum; ut et ipsi agnoscant Iesum Christum Dominum Nostrum.Also in 1959 Pope John eliminated from the rite of baptism the phrase used for Jewish catechumens: Horresce Iudaicam perfidiam, respue Hebraicam superstitionem ... Dread Jewish unbelief, spurn Hebrew superstition!
Oremus. Flectamus Genua. Levate. ... Let us pray. Let us bend our knees. Arise!
Omnipotens sempiternae Deus, qui Iudaeos ["the Jews"] etiam a tua misericordia non repellis: exaudi preces nostras, quas pro illius populi obcaecatione deferimus; ut agnita veritatis tuae luce, quae Christus est, a suis tenebris eruantur. Per eundem Dominum.
Siman 46 . The Laws of the Morning BlessingsThese are wonderful, really. I wonder what we Catholics would be like were we to pray in this manner during the day. But wait… we do have prayers for during the day, and they obtain indulgences in the proper circumstances… but I digress.
46.1: When one wakes up from one’s sleep, he should say ‘My G-d, the soul etc.’. When one hears the sound of a cock crowing, he should say the blessing ‘Who gives the heart [the ability] to distinguish between night and day’. When one dresses, he should bless ‘Who clothes the naked’. When one places one’s hands on his eyes he should bless ‘Who gives sight to the blind’. When one sits he should bless ‘Who releases the bound’. When one stands up he should bless ‘Who straightens the bent’. When one puts his feet on the ground, he should bless ‘Who spreads out the earth over the waters’. When he ties his shoes he should bless ‘Who has provided me my every need’. When one walks he should bless ‘Who firms [prepares] man’s footsteps’. When one ties his belt he should bless ‘Who girds Israel with strength’. {wears trousers (pants) that separate the heart from the groin}. When one puts his hat on his head he should bless ‘Who crowns Israel with splendor’. When one washes his hands he should bless ‘regarding washing the hands’. When one washes his face he should bless ‘Who removes sleep from my eyes etc.’ ‘And may it be Your will etc.’ until ‘Blessed are you Hashem, Who bestows beneficient kindnesses on His people Israel’. One should not answer ‘Amen’ after ‘Who removes sleep from my eyes’ until the conclusion, ‘Who bestows beneficient kindnesses on His people Israel’ because it is all one blessing.
Baruch atah Hashem Elokenu melech haolam, shelo asani goy … Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe, who did not make me a Gentile.The prayer is from a Tana’itic source and it is in Rabbinic rather than Biblical Hebrew. "Goy" means an individual Gentile.
Siman 46:4: A person must say the Blessings shelo asani goy (Who did not make me a non-Jew), shelo asani aved (Who did not make me a slave), and shelo asani isha (Who did not make me a woman) every day.In fact, some commentators on these berakhot say that if you skip the blessing that you are not a slave or a woman, you should not go back to them after the blessing that you are not a Gentile, because, in logical order, it is worse to be a Gentile than a slave or a woman. The thinking is that even Jewish slaves and women can perform mitvos (roughly, meritorious pious works), and it would be better to be them than a Gentile who can’t. Also, converts to Judaism are not to say this blessing because they did not belong to Jewish people or race. So, there is a racial aspect, not merely one of choice or faith.
Lot’s of ink and electrons are being spilled over the the "Galileo factor" in the La Sapienza debacle going on in Rome.
Pope Benedict was accused of obscurantism because he had the temerity to imagine that perhaps the Church wasn’t completely off-base when handling Galileo.
All sorts of strange ideas float around about what happened with Galileo. This has come up in an entry I posted about a story in the Wall Street Journal.
I am pulling out one of the comments in that entry to start a new entry.
Let’s bring some light to the issue. We will have to be careful with this. I don’t want rabbit holes or off-topic digressions.
In a comment under the abovementioned entry "Joe" addressed "Fabrizio" and Fabrizio is responding:
JOE: And what on earth do you mean by saying that the Church is falsely accused of suppressing the scientist Galileo’s free speech? They showed him the instruments of torture—a harrowing experience in itself. Had he persisted in claiming the right of free speech, they would have tortured him.
FABRIZIO: He never saw “the instruments of torture” because a) that would be in the records and it isn’t b) torture was not used in Rome in Galileo’s time and for his charges (the issue of idiocies about the Church and “torture” would require a whole blog, however it was already disappearing back then) c) Galileo recognized to be wrong (he was in fact wrong) after the preliminary (and very scientific) discussions and under the scrupolous Inquisitorial procedure torture or pressure under any form was forbidden at that early stage.Galileo was wrong on two accounts: 1) he gave the wrong “proofs” of heliocentrism and the Earth’s motion (with which the Pope, like all his 13 most recent predecessors, agreed, that’s why they had been and kept funding Copernicanism that was at risk of being destroyed by mass executions of scientists in Calvinist and Lutheran countries). One of such proofs was ebb tides, which his Jesuit adversaries of the Specola Vaticana rightly attributed to the Moon’s magnetic influence. 2) he wanted to make theology starting form his observation which is obviously non-sense.
Galileo was “condemned” to say the 7 penitential Psalms (the horror!), for having satirized the Pope in a very vulgar way in one of his books. The place of the “execution” was his villa in Tuscany, called “the Jewel” and paid for by Papal funds. Galileo continued to work on (and teach, like the Jesuits of his time) heliocentrism, mathematics, physics and related technologies with the Pope’s financial aid.
Anti-Catholic canards are just that: canards. Only the superstitious ignorance of these dark times we live in, and the power of conformist education/media could lead people to actually believe them.
JOE: Ratzinger’s falsification of the Galileo story is detailed by ex-Vatican astronomer Coyne SJ.
FABRIZIO: Respondeo dicendum “PIFFLE!”. Fr.Coyne – “ex” Vatican astronomer for a reason – should know better than to think than in his capacity of director of the Specola he can give silly interviews defending materialistic evolution and shrugging off what Cardinals and the Pope, who appointed him and pay for his bills, have to say. His credibility is zero, and so are his teaching and now even scientific authority. If he ignores the facts and sides with the enemies of the Church who cares what he says?The Galileo affair could last only thanks to Protestant and Illuminist propaganda, which oviously made inroads also among Catholics. That not all those who opposed Galileo did so for the right reasons iscertainly true and something we must not forget, but that the Church, the Bride of Christ was always also the promoter of true progress is a fact that would become startingly evident if only people forsake their conformist laziness and began to read at least atheist scholars like Feyrabend, Bloch and Lea who recognized that the Church was defending civilization and humanity from the arrogance of scientists. When such vigilance had to retreat, we had Auschwitz, Gulags and the current hooro of abortion, euthanasia and eugenics.
Okay, folks. Let’s shed some light on the Galileo issue.
Be careful. If you don’t have anything pertinent to add, then please just read and learn.
The spread of the older form of Mass is not limited to the USA or Europe. Here is a story from the Philippines.
Latin mass to highlight Mandurriao religious fiesta on Jan. 23
A solemn high mass in Latin will highlight the fiesta of Mandurriao parish on January 23, 2008. Rev. Fr. Esperidion Celis, parish priest of Mandurriao, said he wrote Pope Benedict XVI to seek his blessing of the significant religious undertaking.
Celis said the idea of holding the solemn high mass in Latin is in support of the Holy Father’s decision to bring back and give wider use of the Latin mass according to the 1962 Rite approved by the Papal Moto Proprio "Summorum Pontificum."
Celis said it would be the first time since the 1960s that the Latin mass will be conducted in the Archdiocese of Jaro and even in the entire country.
The Latin mass will be held after the 2:00 p.m. procession around the plaza on January 23.
The mass, which will be officiated by Msgr. Juanito Tuvilla, will have a Gregorian Chant and traditional Christian hymns like Mozart’s "Ave Verum" and Franck’s "Panis Angelicus", as well as a polyphonic rendition of the "Messe Solenelle de Ste. Cecile" by Charles Francois Gounod.
Celis said they have invited parishioners from as far as the province of Capiz and Antique to witness the holding of the Latin mass. They have also invited students of Catholic schools in the city to attend the celebration to give them the chance to experience the 1962 Rite in Latin.
As pretty much everyone knows now, the Second Vatican Council did not abolish Gregorian chant. On the contrary, the Council required that Gregorian chant maintain pride of place among all forms of liturgical music. This has been at best ignored for decades and, at worst, lied about.
Many groups are laudably trying to revive Gregorian chant. Some are using the support of organ accompaniment.
In regard to chant with organ, and related compositions in that style, there is a new website which is garnering a certain measure of support. I refer you to the Chabanel Psalm Project.
They claim some 700 liturgical scores for Responsorial Psalms, Mass parts, and Antiphons on their site. Generally speaking, they are all based on Gregorian chant.
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I am personally not a fan of chant with organ. Chant is just not that hard once you get into it for a while. I have heard chant with organ in many places. The principle reason to use organ is to keep people who can stay on pitch… on pitch. That is one of the most painful things about poorly sung, or sung under the direction of someone who doesn’t know how to work to impress the need for pitch and intonation, actually listening to the chant being sung as you sing it.
Some argue that chant with organ actually becomes a new form of music. Well.. maybe so, I don’t know. I still prefer Gregorian chant without accompaniment.
On the site you read (and these are edited excerpts with my emphases and comments:
Verily, one might ask, “Why accompany the Gregorian melodies at all?”You get the idea. He is in favor of Gregorian chant, and with organ accompaniment.
Three possible answers follow:
(1) This is, simply, a very common practice. [So are guitars and pianos for "On Eagle’s Wings" and "Gather Us In". That doesn’t make it good.] If you ask people why they eat meat inside bread it never occurs to them to give you a history of the sandwich. They simply do it. [A truly silly argument.] ... Several authors claimed to hate this practice, but claim that they were forced by the sheer commonness of this practice to publish their own methods for accompanying chant! ... [So, the argument ehre is "Just give in because lots of people do it."]
(2) Under certain circumstances, organ accompaniment aids the singer. [This is clearly true and it is a good argument as far as it goes. However, it doesn’t say much about the desire to improve the singers and work toward unaccompanied chant.]
(3) For some chant (not every single piece in the repertoire) a well executed organ accompaniment makes truly gorgeous music. It sounds quite different than accompanied chant, but it is beautiful in its own way. [Okay… this is a far better argument. But effectively, you are arguing a change or modification of genres.] Comparing well-done accompanied chant to unaccompanied chant is like comparing a beautiful lily to a beautiful rose: pointless! [No… I don’t think it is quite like that. It is more like comparing a "historic" variety of rose with the "modern" hybrid varieties of roses. They are different, but clearly closely related.] Both can be so incredibly beautiful. Oh, let us praise our Savior for both! [Well… perhaps the choir director.] The happiest memories of my life consist of listening to chant (mainly unaccompanied) for hours and hours, day after day, month after month, year after year. I can think of nothing more beautiful in this entire world than Gregorian chant. It is so beautiful words cannot describe it. However, this does not mean that chant with a good accompaniment is not beautiful. They are both beautiful. All hyperbole aside, [Thank you.] both are so beautiful that I am fainting [!] just thinking of the beauty. May God be praised for his creations! Domine Dominator noster quam grande est nomen tuum in universa terra!
On the blog of Andrea Tornielli of the Italian daily Il Giornale we read a story that says Pope Benedict may change the 1962 Roman Missal’s prayer on Good Friday for the conversion of the Jews.
My translation of the blog item with my emphases and comments:
Benedict XVI has decided to reformulate the text of the prayer for the Jews on Good Friday in the 1962 edition of the "Tridentine" Missal which was derestricted with the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, having received requests from many rabbis. I call to mind the long journey begun under Pius XII (who had published an explanation in which he reminded that "perfidis" referring to the Jews in the liturgy meant "without faith" and he required the genuflection also for this prayer), and continued under John XXIII (who in 1959 eliminated both "perfidis" and "perfidia") and not concludes with Papa Ratzinger, who has eliminated the reference to the blindness of the Jewish people.
Benedict XVI has decided to reformulate the text of the prayer for the Jews contained in the "Tridentine" Missal derestricted by the recent Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum: The publication of the new text, completely reformulated, ought to come out in a matter of days. Gone is the reference to the "blindness" of the Jewish people. The new version will enter into effect already in the celebrations the faithful will follow in the older rite during the next Holy Week. [This will make celebrations of the older rite for Holy Week far more possible and perhaps frequent in many places. That is the upside.]I would remind anyone who thinks that what is going on in Italy or in Rome with all sorts of controversy with the Holy See and La Sapienza or whatever controversy is taking place at any given time, never to underestimate the impact that those Italian and Roman dealings can have on the universal Church.
In the old text one prayed, in Latin, for the conversion of the Jews, asking God to take, "that people… from their shadows" and to remove "blindness" from them (the term borrowed from a letter of St. Paul). As one might recall, after the publication of the Motu Proprio which derestricted the pre-Conciliar Mass, many worried voices were raised in the Jewish world. The head rabbis of Jerusalem, the spiritual guides of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities, had written to Ratzinger to ask for a modification of the prayer on Good Friday.
It must be remembered that the journey of rapprochement was initiated already under Pius XII, who through the Congregation of Rites made clear that the old formulation "pro perfidis iudeis" meant "for the Jews who do not have the faith". [It did NOT mean that Jews were not trustyworthy, etc.] Papa Pacelli reintroduced, moreover, the genuflection for that prayer. John XXIII, from 1959 onward, also eliminated both the "perfidis" and also the following reference to Jewish "perfidia". The text emended by Papa Roncalli, in the 1962 edition, the last of the old Missals before the post-Conciliar reform, was derestricted by Benedict XVI in the last months. In the prayer there remained references to the "blindness" and "shadows" of the Jewish people. "That prayer worries us", Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, President of the Assembly of Rabbis of Italy, told il Giornale last September. "We are afraid that those who read it could put two and two together and reason like this: if we pray that God lift the blindness of the Jews this means that they are outside the truth and this could incite people even to anti-semitism." [I don’t buy that would happen today, but I am not a Jew and it is hard for me to get into their head about this.]
Bishops and prelates tasked with dialogue with the Jewish world asked the Holy See to intervene and an openness in this sense was manifested last July by the Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone who, at Pieve di Cadore, had spoken of a possibility of a correction. Benedict XVI had prepared a draft for the new prayer that ought to be published in the next few days by the Congregration for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. According to leaks, in the new version, while the passages considered by the Jews as offensive were omitted, there would nevertheless remain the outline of the old framework of the prayer, namely, that of conversion. It was precisely on this point that the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,(from 2003 to 2005 the second in command to Cardinal Ratzinger) Archbp. Angelo Amato, explained to the daily Avvenire that "in the Mass we Catholics are always praying, in the first place, for our own conversion. And we beat our breasts for our sins. And then we pray for the conversion of all Christians and of all non-Christians. The Gospel is for everyone." The decision of Benedict XVI is a hand outstretched to the Jewish community, who have invited the Pontiff to visit the Synagogue of Rome. It is noted that Ratzinger would desire very much to be able to visit Israel in 2009, even if the present conditions of the bilateral talks between the state of Israel and the Holy See for solutions about some juridical and administrative problems are not at present leaving much room for hope.
Fri Jan 18 13:16:28 UTC 2008
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict has decided to modify a controversial prayer for the conversion of Jews, an Italian newspaper reported on Friday.
Il Giornale newspaper said this would involve at least the removal of a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ but the changes could be more extensive.
A Vatican source said he expected changes to be announced before Good Friday on March 21 this year, but had no details. Good Friday is the day Christians commemorate Christ’s death.
The Vatican had no official comment on the report.
Controversy arose last year when the Pope issued a decree allowing a wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and a missal, or prayer book, that was phased out after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965.
The Good Friday prayer in Latin asks that God remove the "veil" from Jewish hearts so that they would recognize Jesus Christ and speaks of the "blindness" of the Jewish people.
Jews have called for a change in the Latin prayer which, if left as stands, would be used by several hundred thousand traditionalists who follow the old-style Latin rite.
The overwhelming number of the world’s some 1.1 billion Catholics would use a post Second Vatican Council missal, which includes a Good Friday prayer for Jews but makes no reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ.
The strongest criticism to the Pope’s decree has come from U.S. Jewish communities and there have been fears controversy could come up during the Pope’s U.S. visit in late April.
Benedict’s decree, issued on July 7, authorized wider use of the old Latin missal, a move which traditionalist Catholics had demanded for decades but which Jews and other Christian groups said could set back inter-religious dialogue.
Implementation of the decree has been difficult. The Pope’s number two, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said recently the Vatican was preparing a document on how it should be introduced around the world.
Before the Second Vatican Council, Catholic mass and prayers were full of elaborate ritual led in Latin by a priest with his back to the congregation. [Inaccurate cliche. You would expect more from a distinguished long-time Roman journalist like Philip Pulella after all this time.]
Many traditionalists missed the Latin rite’s sense of mystery and the centuries-old Gregorian chant that went with it.
Some denounced Council reforms that included a repudiation of the notion of collective Jewish guilt for Christ’s death and urged dialogue with all other faiths. [Well… I don’t know that any but the virtually unhinged on the fringe were clinging to calling Jews "Christ killers". This seems out of place to me.]
I got this by e-mail:
I hope you can get to this email in time.
I just spoke with the Liturgy office at the Basilica here in Washington, D.C. The person I spoke to on the phone, Sr. Teresa Mary, informed me that there will be two celebrations of the TLM during the March for Life activities.
Monday, 21 Jan, @ 2:00 PM - Lourdes Chapel (Lower Level)
Tuesday, 22 Jan, @ 9:30 AM - Lourdes Chapel
I think it would be great if attendance exceeded the small capacity of the chapel on the first day so they will need to provide a bigger space the next.
That is a very good idea.
If you are in the Washington D.C. area, you might consider participating at these Masses.
I got this from a reader. It is worth some attention:
Here is a link to a real nice web page for the 1962 Mass at the Cathedral of St Joseph in Sioux Falls, SD. Bishop Paul Swain.
Although quite nice looking and informative, they do not have links to all the pages, so you have to surf to find what you’re seeking.
There is historical and descriptive information under the heading "The Mass."
Schedules and wonderful photos of an actual Mass at the Cathedral under the heading "Our Community."
Bishop Swain’s implementation document under "Documents."
The "Resources" heading and some other links are not completed yet.
It appears to have started in October. There is a document by Bishop Paul Swain "implementing" the Summorum Pontificum, dated September 10, 2007.
The Mass is celebrated every Sunday at 1:30 p.m., on Holy Days, some Feast Days (like All Souls’ Day), First Fridays (low Mass), Forty Hours celebrations, etc.
There is an opinion piece in the Catholic Herald which merits some attention.
My emphases and comments.
A breath of fresh air is wafting through St Peter’s
James MacMillan
Friday January 18, 2008
There is a bewildering array of American Catholic blog sites these days. Some are liberal, but the overwhelming majority seem to express an ever-more confident Catholic orthodoxy on matters of faith, morals and liturgy. [This is itself an interesting point. My theory is that the Catholic blogosphere, like American talk radio and cable news, has finally presented an alternative to the old guard which dominated Catholic media for so long. Thus the success also of EWTN and Catholic radio. Also, the Catholic blogosphere is overwhelmingly conservative for the same reasons: when you are right, you have a way a) to defend your positions and b) you can display a sense of humor and joy.] Many of the posters seem to be young, and take an apparent delight in winding up that generation of post-Vatican II Catholics still moaning about not getting their way in the contemporary Church.
One particular American blogger, Fr John Zuhlsdorf, [!] has recently hailed what he calls “the return of triumphalism”. Ever since Vatican II this has been a taboo word in the Church, but he sees it as a good thing. Is this yet more evidence that we are moving into a new, more confident era for the modern Church? That Catholics are more and more prepared to stand up for their identity and their core values? [Yes.] That liberal secularists and liberal Christians have failed in bullying orthodox Catholics into submission? [Yes.] Is it really time to become assertive about the faith in the public square? [Assertive? Well… yes, in a sense. When we are sure about who we are, we can get engaged in the public square with the confidence that we have something good to offer. This is what Pope Benedict is trying to accomplish in what I call his "Marshall Plan" for the Church, which seeks to strengthed the Church ad intra so that it has more impact ad extra.]
To be honest, there is nothing particularly serious, scholarly or analytical about Fr Zuhlsdorf’s site. [ROFL! He hasn’t read the WDTPRS pieces.] There is, however, a knowing lightheartedness in appearing to indulge some guilty pleasures. He is in raptures [well….] about recent liturgical developments in St Peter’s, and that “more and more, Pope Benedict’s intentions are being clarified in regard to the Church’s traditional liturgical expressions”. There is great enthusiasm for the increased reappearance of Gregorian chant, flappable excitement [LOL!] at the use of the correct, ornate vestments, and at the good taste [long over due] of medieval images of Mary chosen for the ceremonies. The Holy Father is hailed for his “dedication to formal liturgical ceremony and also popular devotion, which is also of great importance in the life of the Catholic people. They strengthen each other, and the Holy Father understands that.
“He is giving a good example as Bishop and chief pastor of Rome to his city and to the world… his way of showing the bishops and priests of the world how this is to be done”. Confident, assertive, provocative stuff.
It is not just in the liturgical sphere that we see a new impatience with the comfy laxness of the previous generation. For many years successful professional Christians have sought to ingratiate themselves with their liberal secular associates by playing down the parts of the Church’s teaching that caused most offence. [O well said! Hear! hear!] Nevertheless there was more at stake here than just their incorporation into trendy sophisticated company.
Secular liberals have gladly gobbled up all these concessions and now want more – the complete obliteration of religion from public life. In the process liberal Christians have lost the respect of their secular peers. [A symptom of this is perhaps playing out in Italy over the debacle with La Sapienza. We even see radicals like Dario fo defending the Pope’s right to speak against those who would silence him. I grant that that is a battle amongst secularists. However, paradigm is the same. you cannot claim respect when you have squandered what is most important.] They gave no indication of intellectual rigour or ethical integrity in their eagerness to ditch bits and pieces of the faith. Their faith has been caught in a cruel light – their Christianity is bland, sentimental and anaemic. [Well written.]
History will look back unkindly on the generation of Vatican II Catholics who were handed such a precious pentecostal gift of grace – a unique opportunity to purify the Church, only to squander it disastrously. They bent over backwards to accommodate the zeitgeist, rather than open a generational heart to the Heilige Geist. This is not what John XXIII foresaw when he inaugurated his great reforming council. He would have been horrified to see how many Catholics fell prey to the trendy nihilism of the 1960s, duped by a destructive iconoclasm which has eroded so much of the West’s culture and morals.
This is the basis of the new positivist impulse among young Catholics, disdained and dismissed by some of their elders as conservative and reactionary. In the new generation, we need to rediscover the optimism that lay at the heart of Vatican II. We need to confront the radical dissatisfaction that led many 1960s Catholics to turn away from or against the Church. We need to challenge their disdain for tradition and that smug superiority that many Catholics of a certain age display towards the deep pieties of the ordinary, “old-fashioned” faithful. Catholic liberalism has had its day, and the legacy of Vatican II requires us to understand the pernicious, corrosive effects of the pick-and-mix tendency. [We must apply a "hermeneutic of continuity".]
The recent experience of our sister faith communities in the Reformed tradition has shown that those who strive to make their churches [Remember the CDF document that says they are not really "Churches"...] “acceptable” to the prevailing, but probably transitory zeitgeist, have triumphed. There are those, within and without the Catholic Church, who have been encouraged by this and are forever pushing in the same direction. They see no problem in being fully communicant while urging the rejection of the most precious doctrines on faith and morals. This rejection can sometimes cover the divinity of Christ Himself, can involve a campaign to legitimise abortion and euthanasia (there is an organisation in America called Catholics for a Free Choice), and the defeatist acceptance of the sexual hooliganism which has so harmed the position of marriage and the family in modern life.
The western world’s love affair with self may have taken off in the 1960s but it will only get worse. The Catholic Church must provide a counter-cultural challenge to this, and offer the alternative of Christ’s own way.
It is not triumphalist to say this, but it requires the Church to be happy and confident in its own skin. [Yes.] Catholics need to know what it means to be Catholic [Exactly.] – to understand what our core values are, and to feel they are not just worth defending, but worth proclaiming from the rooftops. The young generation of Catholics are right to be assertive about our beliefs in the public square. If we do not speak boldly and honestly to power in these contexts, if we run scared in the face of the new anti-religious elites, we will be expelled from the public square, never to return.
Perhaps American bloggers like Fr Zuhlsdorf know this. Our British reserve can make us cringe with embarrassment in the face of such brash self-confidence, but we may have to develop our own ways of being assertive. [Frankly, I take great heart and inspiration from blogs of priest friends in England. Perhaps reserve and brashness are creating a synergy in the Catholic blogosphere as we polinate across the Pond.]
We can begin with the liturgy. [We MUST begin with the liturgy.] Nothing signals the weakened state of the modern Church more than the contemporary practice of Catholic liturgy in hundreds of churches throughout the land. A breath of fresh air is wafting through St Peter’s, and in his own gentle way Pope Benedict is inviting the universal Church to taste the beauties and spiritual sustenance of true Catholic worship. I am convinced that from the liturgy everything else will flow. We British don’t flap with excitement, [You are "unflappable"?] but there may be good reason for us to pray for Christ’s Church with a warm glow of expectation and confidence as we look with hope to the future.
James MacMillan’s St John Passion
will be premiered by Sir Colin Davis
and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican on April 27
You can read the rest of our news coverage in this week’s Catholic Herald
This fellow has his head screwed on in the right direction.
This cannot be said too often: The Pope is working to reinvigorate Catholic identity in a secularizing world and liturgy is the tip of the spear.
