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

As you know, not many Catholic universities have rushed to implement Summorum Pontificum when students make requests for the older form of Mass.

However, we did hear that Ave Maria University finally made a move to see to the legitimate spiritual desires of the students desiring the traditional form.

I wrote a while ago that Fr. Fessio would be the point man at the University in the matter of the TLM.

I received a little by e-mail from a student at Ave Maria, which I share here:

Dear Father,
 
I received a letter from the Bishop today concerning the use of the extraordinary form on campus. In it, he quoted from the letter he sent to Fr. Robert Garrity, the Chaplain of Ave Maria University, on December 17, 2007. Here is the text.
 
Due to the demand for the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, both from Catholics residents in Ave Maria Town as well as from students, faculty, and staff at Ave Maria University, and in accordance with the "Summorum Pontificum", it is fitting that a Sunday Mass be celebrated on campus in the Extraordinary Form. In keeping with the same manifest desire, it would seem opportune that the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite be celebrated on a daily basis at the University, and at a convenient time. Further, it is noted that, in accordance with "Summorum Pontificum", unscheduled Masses can also be celebrated by priests on campus, in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
 
I thought this might clarify some of the rumors going on surrounding the TLM at Ave Maria. I think that the Bishop is being very fair in this matter.

 

This is excellent support from Bishop Dewane and I am glad for the news!

I wonder what will happen at other Catholic schools throughout the world.

This is in from VIS:

CODE OF CANON LAW PROMULGATED TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

VATICAN CITY, 22 JAN 2008 (VIS) – In the Holy See Press Office at midday today, a press conference was held to present a forthcoming congress on the theme: "Canon Law in the Life of the Church, research and perspectives in the context of recent Pontifical Magisterium". The event has been organised to mark the 25th anniversary of the Code of Canon Law which was promulgated on 25 January 1983.

  Participating in the press conference were Archbishop Francesco Coccopalmerio and Msgr. Juan Ignacio Arrieta, respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

  "Twenty-five years ago, the long process of revising the 1917 Code of Canon Law came to an end", said Archbishop Coccopalmerio, explaining how the revision "had been announced by Pope John XXIII on the same day he proclaimed the celebration of Vatican Council II" and how it aimed "to re-examine the central corpus of the Church’s legislative code in accordance with doctrinal aspects contained in the conciliar documents".

  The archbishop then went on to consider differences between the Code of Canon Law and the legal codes of nations. The former, he said, "contains the law of the Church, just as a State code contains the laws of a particular nation. And it is called ‘Canon Law’ because it is made up of ‘canons’, which are equivalent to the ‘articles’ of a State code".

  However the Code of Canon Law "is not just a collection of norms created by the will of ecclesiastical legislators", it "indicates the duties and rights inherent to the faithful and to the structure of the Church as instituted by Christ".

  And the legislator, having identified fundamental duties and rights "also establishes a series of norms that have the aim of defining, applying and defending [those] duties and rights".

  "For this reason", the archbishop went on, "the Code of Canon Law is like a large and complex painting depicting the faithful and the communities within the Church, and defining the identity and ‘mission’ of each. And the painter of this work of art is the ecclesiastical legislator" whose model comes "from the doctrine of the Church and from … Vatican Council II, as Pope John Paul II taught us when he promulgated the current Code".

  Turning his attention to some of the "novelties" of the 1983 Code with respect to that of 1917, Archbishop Coccopalmerio mentioned Canon 208 whence, he said, "arise many tangible consequences that concern all the faithful and especially the lay faithful: all are called to play an active role in the Church". Other novelties include "the definition of matters concerning the Roman Pontiff, the College of Bishops, the Synod of Bishops and the episcopal conferences".

  The 1983 Code of Canon Law, said the archbishop, was, "like all human works, ... perfectible". Hence one of the aims of the current congress is "to identify certain points in need of a little restoration".

  In closing, the president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts enumerated the functions of his dicastery: "helping the supreme legislator (the Pope) to keep Church legislation as complete and up to date as possible, ... overseeing the correct application of current laws" and "helping the Pope in the delicate process of interpreting norms".

  For his part, Msgr. Arrieta affirmed that the aim of the congress is "to undertake a purposeful study … into the progress of the application of the Code, and of all the other norms that the various offices of the Roman Curia and individual legislators have produced over the last 25 years".

  The congress will begin with an "overall assessment of the development of these norms" presented by Cardinal Julian Herranz, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, who is, said Msgr. Arrieta, "the historical memory on this subject, having followed the entire process personally since Vatican Council II".

  The secretary of the pontifical council highlighted how, due to the time limits of the congress, only some offices of the Roman Curia had been chosen to study the process of the Code’s application over the last quarter of a century. Thus, for example, Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, will speak on the theme: "Acceptance and operation of Canon Law in the mission lands. Cultural encounters and technical limitations".

  Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops will deliver an address on: "Universal law and the production of norms at the level of particular Churches, episcopal conferences and particular councils", while for his part Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, will turn his attention to: "The formation of ministers of God: the teaching of Canon Law".

  Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" will give a talk entitled: "Spontaneity of charity. The needs and limits of normative structures".

  On Friday, 25 January, before their scheduled audience with the Pope, Cardinal Franc Rode C.M., prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, will address the gathering on: "Consecrated life and normative structures. Experience and perspectives of the relationship between general norms and particular statutes". For his part, Cardinal Peter Erdo, archbishop of Budapest, Hungary, and president of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences, will speak on: "Rigidity and elasticity of normative structures in ecumenical dialogue". Following a brief debate , the congress will conclude with a contribution from Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. on the theme: "Canon Law and the pastoral government of the Church. The role of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts".

  The congress, which is due to be held in the Vatican’s Synod Hall on 24 and 25 January, will be attended by members of episcopal conferences, and by professors and students of Canon Law from Italy and the rest of the world.

Remember my entry about Archbishop Prendergast in Ottawa going to celebrate the older form of Mass?

Check this out!

I really like the gloves with the little suns on the back.

Biretta tip   o{]:¬)   to St. Clement’s in Ottawa.

 

Today I step out of my patristicist shoes and take off my theologian’s cap, to become for a moment what I started out as lo those many years ago: a classicist.

TV representations of ancient Rome often give you the impression of unbridled licence and unchecked immorality.  In fact, the ancient Romans were, just like all normal people, rather conservative in their views.   They were, as a matter of fact, rather negative about abortion.  Yes, it is true that there was infanticide at times, as in many cultures, but I suspect that was mostly among the very wealthy.

In any event, the ancient poet Ovid has something to say about abortion.  Here are two of his elegies from the Amores (not my translation) which say something about the attitudes of commen people.

I find these two poems provocative and moving.

Keep in mind that Ovid is one of those Neoteric poets, men who rejected the very long, epic style of poem, in favor of shorter, snapshots.  They also like to use lots of fancy references and hints to other places and people: sort of like post-modernists do when they write.

In this first elegy, a frightened Ovid is relieved that his mistress "Corinna" survived an abortion, from which she nearly died.  My emphases.

Book II Elegy XIII: The Abortion

Corinna lies there exhausted in danger of her life,
after rashly destroying the burden of an unborn child.
I should be angry: she took that great risk
and hid it from me: but anger’s quelled by fear.
All the same it’s me by whom she conceived – or I think so:
I often take things for facts that only might be.
Isis, of Paraetonium, and the joyful fields of Canopus,
you who protect Memphis, and palmy Pharos,
and the land where the swift Nile spreads in its wide delta,
its waters flowing through seven mouths to the sea,
by your sistrum I pray, by the sacred head of Anubis –
so may Osiris love your holy rites for ever,
and the slow serpent glide about your altar,
and the horned Apis follow your procession!
Turn your face towards us, and spare both in one!
Then you will grant life to her, and she to me.
Often she’s taken pains to attend your special days,
when Gallic laurel crowns your worshippers.
And you, Ilythia, who pity girls struggling in labour,
whose hidden child strains their reluctant body,
be gentle with her and hear my prayers!
It’s proper for you to demand gifts for yourself.
I myself, in white, will burn incense on your smoking altars,
I myself will lay at your feet the gifts I vowed.
I’ll add an inscription: ‘Naso, for saving Corinna!’
Make that occasion soon, for the inscription and the gifts.
If it’s still possible to warn you, girl, in such a state of fear,
let it be enough for you to have fought this one battle!

Abortion also scares, and scars, men.

At the time Ovid was writing, some Egyptian mystery religions were big in Rome.  Thus all the references to slithering.  But there is no self-deception about the poet’s own feelings.  In this poem, de-Nile is just a river in Egypt.
 
Were Ovid a Catholic, he might be writing about lighting a candle or having Masses said.  Some things are universal, aren’t they?

Ovid had the amazing ability, perhaps unlike any other Latin poet we have, of turning out verse afer verse of gorgeous flowing words.  Simply amazing talent.

 

The next poem also concerns abortion, but this time we see revealed something of the attitudes of the masses.  Read carefully and note also the comparison he uses.

Book II Elegy XIV: Against Abortion

Where’s the joy in a girl being free from fighting wars,
unwilling to follow the army and their shields,
if without battle she suffers wounds from her own weapons,
and arms unsure hands to her own doom?
Whoever first taught the destruction of a tender foetus,
deserved to die by her own warlike methods.
No doubt you’d chance your arm in that dismal arena
just to keep your belly free of wrinkles with your crime?
If the same practice had pleased mothers of old,
Humanity would have been destroyed by that violation.
and we’d need a creator again for each of our peoples
to throw the stones that made us onto the empty earth.
Who would have shattered the wealth of Priam, if Thetis,
the sea goddess, had refused to carry her rightful burden?
If Ilia had murdered the twins in her swollen womb,
the founder of my mistress’s City would have been lost.
If Venus had desecrated her belly, pregnant with Aeneas,
Earth would have been bereft of future Caesars.
You too, with your beauty still to be born, would have died,
if your mother had tried what you have done:
I myself would be better to die making love
than have been denied the light of day by my mother.
Why rob the loaded vine of burgeoning grapes,
or pluck the unripe apple with cruel hand?
Let things mature themselves – grow without being forced:
life is a prize that’s worth a little waiting.
Why submit your womb to probing instruments,
or give lethal poison to what is not yet born?
Medea is blamed for sprinkling the blood of her children,
and Itys, slain by his mother, is lamented with tears:
both cruel parents, yet both had bitter reason
to shed blood, revenge on a husband.
Say, what Tereus, what Jason incites you
to pierce your troubled body with your hand?
No tiger in its Armenian lair would do it,
no lioness would dare destroy her foetus.
But tender girls do it, though not un-punished:
often she who kills her child, dies herself.
She dies, and is carried to the pyre with loosened hair,
and whoever looks on cries out: ‘She deserved it!’
But let these words vanish on the ethereal breeze,
and let my imprecations have no weight!
You gods, prosper her: let her first sin go, in safety,
and be satisfied: you can punish her second crime!

What an amazing poem.  The poet’s rage and sorrow are nearly palpable.

Who knows what Einsteins or St. Francis of Assisis have been killed before birth?

Doesn’t this also say something about the poet’s sense of the role of women in society, in life?

He seems to be saying that women are, by their very nature, deeply connected to giving life, not taking it.  Thus, Ovid uses military imagery and then references the animal kingdom.  "Not even lionesses do this!"   The masses of people who see the funeral of the girl who dies from the abortion are also enraged. 

Every once in a while it is good to turn to different times and cultures for a reality check.

Some time ago, the now liberal American weekly U.S. News and World Report had a cover story about a return to traditional religion.  I wrote about it here. The cover photo was of a celebration of Mass in the older form.  No doubt the publication was taking its cue from the implementation of Summorum Pontificum.

Someone sent me by e-mail a link to the reactions of people, written to the publications about that story. 

I share them here, with my emphases and comments.

A Religious Revival
January 17, 2008 10:13 AM ET | Permanent Link

Thank you for the cover story "A Return to Tradition" [Dec. 24, 2007].

In Roman Catholic worship, instead of a return to tradition, it is really an embrace of nostalgia [This is obviously what this writer would like for it to be, so that the new phenomenon could be easily written off.  Sorry, Charlie!] —turning the theological and liturgical clock back 50 or 60 years to what some think was a simpler, holier era. In truth, the so-called tradition of worship with the priest turning his back [cliche] to the congregation only dates back to the Counter-Reformation, when Catholics were on the defensive and partly responding to the Protestant reformers with liturgical entrenchment. The renewal of the Catholic mass after Vatican ii (1962-1965) actually restored the mass to its true tradition rooted in the Bible, the church fathers, and nearly 1,000 years of practice before the reforms of the Council of Trent. The modern mass is more in keeping with Catholic tradition than the Latin mass that nostalgic Catholics are embracing. [How may factual errors can you find in this?]

John R. Mastalski
Sacramento, Calif.

 

"A Return to Tradition" pointed out something I have noticed among young Catholics: Their interest in tradition is not to be confused with fundamentalism. In this regard, I thought of a seminarian I know from his days as a student at the University of Wyoming. Though he is embarrassed by the behavior of some fundamentalist groups here, he was deeply impressed by the experience of a traditional Tridentine Latin mass in Denver. In his words: "I had never before been part of a mass where people were so perfectly clear about who was worshiping whom." Tradition, yes; fundamentalism, no.

The Rev. James A. Schumacher
Laramie, Wyo.

 

"A Return to Tradition" details the movement toward conservatism in religion but fails to mention one church that has followed tradition for some 2,000 years—the Orthodox Christian Church. It is often said that stepping into an Orthodox church is like walking into 2,000 years of history where "traditional monastic and religious orders" certainly are not new.  [Fly in amber?]

Harry Moskos
Knoxville, Tenn.

 

Why give space to traditionalists and their Tridentine mass that harks back to the Council of Trent? They are a minority living in the past, worshiping elaborate ritual. A priest turning his back on lay Catholics is an insult.  [This is just knee-jerking.  Poor guy.]

Ted Branstrom
Lincoln, Neb.

 

If not allowed to become rote by its practitioners, ritual is a structured way of getting us to ponder greater ideas that we might not if left to our own devices and schedules. When we consider the structured activities that we join—including the gym, book clubs, etc.—because they help us focus, religious ritual makes a great deal of sense.

Bryan Kirchoff
St. Louis

 

My feeling is that people are returning to religion and religious services because they present a familiar ritual that is comforting and reassuring as our world becomes more complex with fewer definitive solutions.  [Lot’s of emotion here.]

Janet E. Ordway
Bangor, Maine

 

The Rev. Thomas Reese, the Jesuit priest quoted in the story, said the only thing that began to make sense to me. [Poor fellow!] The church should focus less on the Latin mass than on the three things that draw most churchgoers: "good preaching, good music, and a welcoming community." [What the writer, and probably Fr. Reece, don’t get is that this doesn’t have to be a zero sum game: either good preaching or the older Mass.]  While I understand that many people need some kind of tradition in their lives, what we really need  [and he knows!] today is love for all men and women, [All you need is luv!] good quality of life, a sense of belonging, new moral direction, love for the Earth, [luv!] and a firm understanding that God is on the side of all humanity. [Luv is all you need!] So let’s open ourselves to one another. Any religion that doesn’t promote these things first is irrelevant. [NB: The writer doesn’t mention promoting a blessed afterlife, only earthly concerns.] A return to tradition, what amounts to religious conservatism, is absolutely not what we need today. We need something new and far greater.  [And he… she? ... knows.]

Bernie Rachel
Cleveland Heights, Ohio

 

Reading about the revival of ceremonial traditions among various religious groups reminded me of the scene I beheld one recent summer when picking up my Catholic children from the vacation Bible school at a local Presbyterian church. There, parading through the congregation’s place of worship were several hundred, mostly Presbyterian Bible schoolers, their foreheads smudged with ashes once associated exclusively with the Lenten rituals of Catholics and other "liturgical" Christians. What the event encapsulated for me, however, was the intriguing flip-flop that has occurred in the last half century between certain Catholic and Protestant groups, at least, that has implications for ritual. Inspired partly by the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has grown in its appreciation for the Word, while various Protestant denominations have begun to explore the benefits of sacraments.  [A good observation.  I know of Lutheran congregations where their eucharist is reserved, they kneel, and have adoration.  Who would have imagined that 40 years ago?]

Michael E. DeSanctis
Erie, Pa.

 

Traditional religious rituals do not make one moral. To believe one is serving a god though such distracting rituals and managing actions in a moral fashion is wrong when all he is doing is embracing religious self-deception.  [Wow.  David apparently has issues.] I must say, however, that these traditional rituals could, in the minds of some believers, create ethical behavior and perhaps a closer relationship with their particular god.

David Gunn
Corona, Calif.

 

I concur with the people of all faiths who long to have a sacred tradition based on the Scriptures, ritual, and love for God and neighbor. [There it is!] I salute you for the article and reporting the need for this return to tradition. Praise God!

The Rev. Michael Lubinsky
Augusta, Ga.

 

It’s not a return to tradition that we need. [And Wallace knows!] It’s not a return to the Counter-Reformation or the Reformation itself. It’s a return to the providentially preserved Scriptures of the Bible. These indicate that worship was very simple and unadorned in the early days of Christianity. Christians weren’t in church buildings. They first met, as Scripture puts it, "from house to house" (Acts 2:46). Let’s return to their practice and not to apostate tradition.  [Another liturgical primitivist.  This takes: fly in amber" to the extreme.  Somehow, everyone wearing sandals and having scraggly beards is more authentically Christian.  Is development and maturation not possible in religions?]

Wallace A. Bell
Oceanside, Calif.

 

The cover of your issue on religion featured a traditional Latin mass said by a Roman Catholic priest, yet the three Catholics quoted—a Jesuit priest, religious sister, and Georgetown professor—all opposed or dismissed the rising popularity of the centuries-old liturgy. If one were to look at those in the pews of the Latin mass, he would see many young people, the driving force behind the restoration of Catholic practices that were eliminated in the 1960s, before their time. Asking the 20-to-30-somethings why they were there would have been more interesting than relying on tired analyses by older, liberal Catholics.  [A very good insight, but not in keeping with the publications purpose, I am guessing.]

Kenneth J. Wolfe
Alexandria, Va.