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

This is in from the Times.  My emphases and comments.

Church of England clergy plan mass exit over women bishops
1,300 write protest letter to archbishop

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

More than 1,300 clergy, including 11 serving bishops, have written to the archbishops of Canterbury and York to say that they will defect from the Church of England if women are consecrated bishops.

As the wider Anglican Communion fragments over homosexuality, England’s established Church is moving towards its own crisis with a crucial vote on women bishops this weekend.

In a letter to Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, seen by The Times, the signatories give warning that they will consider leaving the Church if two crucial votes are passed to introduce female bishops.

The Church’s moderate centre is being pressured as never before by evangelicals opposed to gays, and traditionalists opposed to women’s ordination. The crisis is unprecedented since the Reformation devastated the Roman Catholic Church in England in the 16th century.

The General Synod, the Church’s governing body, meets in York on Friday, when clergy will decide whether legislation to consecrate women should be introduced, and whether it should have legal safeguards for traditionalists or a simple voluntary code to protect them.

The letter’s signatories – who represent 10 per cent of practising clergy and hundreds of retired priests – will accept women bishops only if they have a legal right to separate havens within the Church. These would offer opponents of women bishops a network of parishes where they could worship under the leadership of exclusively male clergy and bishops.   [Which is no solution at all.  If they cannot stand fast on who a bishop is, they are doomed.]

The archbishops of Canterbury and York are keen to see women bishops as soon as possible but liberals who support the move have raised the stakes by saying they will not back the change if legal conditions are attached. They fear that such safeguards would enshrine discrimination by creating a “church within a church”.

The signatories are largely from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church and many will attempt to seek a ministry in the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is short of priests and is expected to welcome them again, even if they are married with families, as it did when the Church of England ordained women priests.

The protest over women bishops came as Dr Williams tried to assert his authority [HAH!] on the wider Anglican communion with a strong rebuke to evangelicals who promised last week to form a breakaway Anglican church after a summit in Jerusalem. He described their move as “problematic” and urged those involved to “think very carefully about the risks”. He also made clear his view that the doctrinally strict evangelical wing was not itself free from sin. [That’ll help.] “On all sides of our controversies, slogans, misrepresentations and caricatures abound, and they need to be challenged,” he said.

Of the 1,333 clergy who signed the protest letter, 60 per cent are serving clergy. Among the retired bishops is the former Bishop of Chichester, the Right Rev Eric Kemp. Some women deacons have also joined the protest.

The traditionalists write: “We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England . . . We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear.”

At the same time 1,276 women clergy, 1,012 male clergy and 1,916 lay church members who support women bishops signed a statement objecting to the prospect of “discriminatory” legislation to safeguard opponents. 

Doomed.

Our sharp-eyed friends at Rorate have a very interesting story.  Not my translation, but my emphases and comments:

I.Media: SSPX asks for removal of excommunications

Agence France-Presse (AFP) publishes today the information that the Rome-based French religious news agency I.MEDIA reports that the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX) has asked the Holy See to lift the excommunications: [If this is so, then it is reasonable to assume that the request was made in the context of a fairly positive letter, the response the the "ultimatum".]

The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X has asked the Vatican to lift the excommunications pronounced against it, an Integrist [sic] [The French term "integriste" is a way of saying "traditionalist", but it has a bit of a pejorative overtone.] organization, to display its will to dialogue, according to religious news agency I.Media.

The Superior of the Fraternity, Bishop Bernard Fellay, sent Pope Bendict XVI a letter responding to the conditions posed by the Vatican to a reintegration of this organization, founded by schismatic [sic] bishop Marcel Lefebvre, the agency notes.

According to an internal note of the Fraternity [read=SSPX] mentioned by I.Media, Bishop Fellay asks that the dialogue "be placed at a doctrinal level" and that he may avoid every hastiness. He underlines that "prior withdrawal of the excommunication of 1988 would favor the serenity of such a dialogue".
...

[I have to fix up this next part of the translation…]
"These conditions seem to aim at securing a favorable climate for a later dialogue rather than precise commitments on specified points," the Priestly Fraternity assesses in its note.

I am very happy to read this.

Note a few things.

The SSPX is trying to slow things down.  This might be important for their interior cohesion as a group.

 

The SSPX wants to talk about doctrine, whereas the Holy See is, at least right now, focused on getting them to tone down the harsh rhetoric and show some positive interest in union.  Issues before group hug.  

When someone incurs a censure for something that is done in public, some sort of public redress is necessary.  You can’t simply ask for an excommunication to be lifted without some sort of public expression of regret or submission.   To make this principle clearer, think of the situation of a "Catholic" politician who says publicly he is pro-abortion and acts on those views in voting, etc.  He must make public reparation before he can receive Communion in public.  Even if he changes his heart, goes to confession and receives absolution, he must make public redress somewhere along the line because the scandal he caused was public.  This is a matter of justice.  Of course the Holy Father can apply whatever mercy it pleases him to apply to what is required by strict justice.

Most importantly, they all seem to be talking in some way about concrete things.

This sad story comes from the Boston Globe.

I just posted an entry a while ago, mentioning that Archbp. Burke, when he was in St. Louis, saved one of their great churches by entrusting it to a traditional group.

Closure doesn’t have to be the only answer. 

On the other hand… if people are not supporting it…. what to do?

Last rites
Parishioners at St. Casimir, Holy Trinity gather for final Mass as churches close
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff and Christopher Baxter
Globe Correspondent / June 30, 2008

The three were the rarest of congregations: the only German Catholic parish in Greater Boston, one of the area’s last two Lithuanian churches, and the first local group of traditionalists authorized to pray in Latin.

In each case, a few hundred worshipers were bound by deep connections to history, strong sense of community, and affection for prayer in languages spoken by few in this part of the world.

The Archdiocese of Boston, strapped for cash and priests, decided it could no longer sustain the three congregations, and yesterday, it shuttered the two churches in which they worshiped: Holy Trinity in Boston’s South End, home to the German and Latin Mass congregations, and St. Casimir in Brockton, the Lithuanian parish.

In a ritual that has become familiar in Eastern Massachusetts, where Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley has cut the number of parishes from 357 to 292 over the last four years, somber and often angry worshipers packed into three funereal Masses yesterday, taking pictures, telling stories, and wondering what they will do next. Each Mass drew about 300 worshipers.

"This is a sad day, a very sad day," said Diane DuBois, who has been praying at St. Casimir for 38 years. On her lapel, she wore a pin that read, "Jesus hears us. Save our Church."

At Holy Trinity, organist George Krim, whose father, uncle, and great-grandfather also played the organ there, was greeted with applause as he played a final postlude with his teary son standing beside him. "There’s been so much joy here, it’s going to take a while," said Krim, 82.

Krim’s two brothers, both at the service, were angrier. "It was hard for me to walk out of there today," said Joe Krim, 72.

Supporters of both parishes plan to challenge the closings by appealing, first to O’Malley for reconsideration, and then to the Vatican. But the odds are long. Although a few parishes have persuaded O’Malley to reconsider, none has succeeded at the Vatican, and on Friday, Pope Benedict XVI appointed a new chief judge, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis, who is viewed as likely to be even less sympathetic to opponents of parish closings than was his predecessor. [That seems like a cheap shot.  I think that he would be very sympathetic indeed.  However, he knows the rights of the Archbishop of Boston in these matters.  He must o by the law, not by what he would prefer or what he would have done himself.]

In several other closed parishes, worshipers have occupied the buildings and refused to leave – in some cases for years. However, there are no plans for such protests in Boston or Brockton.

"We recognize that there is sadness, anxiety, and hurt being felt and expressed in these parish communities," Terrence C. Donilon, the archdiocesan spokesman, said in an e-mail. "We are committed to seeing that the parishioners of Holy Trinity and St. Casimir know that, despite these closings, that we need them to help us in building up our local church."

The archdiocese is offering to accommodate the German-heritage and the Latin Mass congregations from Holy Trinity at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, which is less than a half-mile away. But members of the two congregations are viewing the offer with some skepticism, in part because of their affection for the history and architecture of Holy Trinity, which was built by German immigrants and which has the marble communion rail, high altar, and dense iconography preferred for the Latin Mass.

The Latin Mass worshipers, who have been praying at Holy Trinity since 1990, have several other options. O’Malley has established a weekly Latin Mass at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Church in Newton, and last year the pope opened the door to wider use of the older rite, which was replaced with Mass in English and other local languages in 1970, so there are now Latin Masses available occasionally in Brighton and East Boston, as well as, starting next week, at the cathedral.

"You become closer to God here," said Neal MacKenzie, 46, of Marshfield, who attends the Latin Mass with his wife and 10 children. "It feels more reverent."

At the same time that the archdiocese is eliminating Masses in Lithuanian and German – languages associated with immigrant populations that mostly arrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries – it has been expanding its offerings in languages spoken by more recent immigrants. Currently, Mass is said in 20 languages in the Archdiocese of Boston, but O’Malley has said that the primary reason for foreign-language Masses is to enable worshipers to understand and participate in the liturgy, and not to preserve the culture of earlier generations.  [If more Masses were in Latin, and people had hand Missals, many problems would be resolved.]

Lithuanian immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1860s and established the Brockton parish, originally called St. Rocco, in 1898, according to the archdiocese. The parish, eventually renamed St. Casimir, in recent years had been dwindling, saw its school close, and last year had just one wedding, two funerals, and an average weekend Mass attendance of 161.

But the remaining parishioners were fiercely loyal. [Of course!  Their grandparents made huge sacrifices to build these churches and decorate them for the proper worship of God.  They received the sacraments in these churches!]  In recent weeks, in a symbol associated with Lithuanian Catholicism, worshipers posted crosses in the lawn and gardens surrounding the church and attached them to the church’s fence. At yesterday’s closing Mass, parishioners held Lithuanian and American flags over an icon of St. Casimir during the final procession.

"In this time of trial, you have all tried your best to keep St. Casimir open," said the Rev. Henry Mair. "But the Holy Spirit has come to another conclusion."

Resentment toward the archdiocese bubbled through the morning’s sadness at a gloomy reception after the service. Some vowed never to forget a church they say was unfairly taken from them.

"I feel like I want to smack somebody," said Marilyn Yesonis. "We all went to the church. We paid the bills. The archdiocese has nothing to do with our parish." And Agnes Benoit, who lives next door to St. Casimir and has attended Mass there for 81 years, tapped her finger on a folding table as she said, simply, "This is my church."

The archdiocese says the St. Casimir community will be welcome now to attend St. Michael Church in Avon, and that the last Lithuanian parish in the archdiocese, St. Peter in South Boston, will help minister to the Lithuanian community.

In Boston, the reaction was mixed: Some worshipers were angry and said the archdiocese had betrayed them, while others were nostalgic. That parish was established in 1844 and the current building was constructed in 1877; there was a time when the parish had a school in Roxbury as well as a school and multiple ministries in the South End, but more recently its congregation, too, has dwindled.

"The memories just flood back," said John Doucette, 64, of Salisbury, who was an altar boy and a member of the drum and bugle corps at Holy Trinity in the 1950s, and returned yesterday to say goodbye. "But time goes on."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.

This question came via e-mail:

I have seen a number of patterns of spoken congregational response in Masses in the Extraordinary Form.  Occasionally you get something like the old "Dialogue Mass", a low Mass where the congregation joins the server for many of the responses.  But not long ago at a low EF Mass I was admonished by the lady next to me in the pew when I said "et cum spiritu tuo" after the priest’s "Dominus vobiscum"—it was an almost unconscious response on my part.  She tapped me on the shoulder, scowled and hissed "shh".  I hadn’t spoken at all loudly, but clearly she felt it was wrong to respond.  Seems to me that it’s the priest’s role to decide whether the congregation responds, and to signal that somehow to the congregation.

So: when should the congregation respond vocally in a low EF Mass, or a Missa Cantata, or a High Mass?  How can priests provide guidance on this?

 

Ah, yes.  The Hissing Lady.  All too common in some places where the TLM is celebrated I’m afraid.

There is no hard and fast rule about vocal responses.  I think you have to go with the flow.

That said, various Popes before the Council encouraged congregational responses, the so-called "dialogue Mass".

On 3 Sept 1958 (anniversary is coming!) an extremely important document, De musica sacra, was issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites.  This document established rules for the outward participation of the congregation in three different levels for the Missa cantata and the Missa solemnis. 

In the first, the people would also sing the liturgical responses.  In the second, they would also sing the Ordinary.  In the third, they would also sing the Proper.

De musica sacra also established rules for Low Mass in four levels of outward participation.  First, answering aloud the short responses.  Second, also saying all the responses the server would say as well as the Domine non sum dignus.  Third, also reciting with the priest celebrant his parts of the Ordinary, the Gloria, Creed, Sanctus, Our Father, etc.  Fourth, also saying the Propers, the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Communion antiphon.

In my travels, I have seen various levels of participation.  In some places the congregation is pretty silent, leaving everything to the servers or choir.  In others, the Hissing Ladies are vigilant.  In yet others, people speak and sing without censorship.    Much will depend on what the priest wants and promotes. 

But yes, congregational responses are permitted and, in many cases, a good idea.

Personally, I prefer responses from the congregation and have no problem at all with them saying the parts pertaining to the server, and even prayers like the Gloria and Creed. 

What I do not like are the Hissing Ladies of both sexes. 

But I think you have to go with the flow.

1 July 2008 is the third anniversary of the canonical erection of the St. Francis de Sales Oratory of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest.

This German Gothic revival church had been slated for closure, but was rescued by Archbishop Burke and entrusted to the ICK.

Churches don’t always have to be closed.

For those of you in the St. Louis area, there will be a Solemn High Mass at 6:30pm at St. Francis de Sales Oratory.

St. Francis de Sales Oratory

2653 Ohio Avenue
Saint Louis, Missouri 63118
314. 771. 3100 p
314. 771. 3295 f
sfds@institute-christ-king.org

I found this:

 

 StarTribune.com
Audacious theft at archbishop’s home nets Catholic treasures

By ANTHONY LONETREE, Star Tribune

June 30, 2008

An overnight burglary at the St. Paul residence of new Archbishop John Nienstedt netted the thief or thieves the gem- and precious-metal-laden rings and crosses worn by bishops throughout the 150-year-plus history of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, a church official said Monday.

"These things are historically and reverentially irreplaceable," said Dennis McGrath, spokesman for the archdiocese. "They’re beyond value."

Believed to be missing, as well, are rosaries and a small safe. "It’s like a historical treasure trove, if you will," McGrath said.

The burglary came on a weekend that was set to be a glorious one for Nienstedt, who was in Rome for a welcoming ceremony featuring Pope Benedict.

According to St. Paul police, the break-in occurred at the residence at 226 Summit Av. between 1:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. Saturday. Whoever broke in climbed onto a first-floor roof and broke into a second-story window, police spokesman Peter Panos said.

About a week earlier, Nienstedt had set out for Rome with a group of about 100 church officials and worshipers, many of them acquaintances from his years as the bishop of the New Ulm Diocese, McGrath said.

On Sunday, they were witnesses to a ceremony in which Nienstedt received from the pope a pallium—a garment presented to all archbishops. "It is an important event," McGrath said.

Along with Nienstedt’s "former faithful from New Ulm," the archbishop then was to embark for Ulm, Germany, on a trip that had been delayed by his selection to his new post, McGrath said.

Early Monday, Panos, the police spokesman, said that it appeared that the stolen items might consist of a camera and personal jewelry, "but they’re not sure," he added. But by afternoon, McGrath reported first the addition of the safe, then the rosaries and finally, after a church official reached Nienstedt overseas, the rings and pectoral crosses.

McGrath said there is no evidence that the burglary had political overtures against Nienstedt, whose orthodox style has been controversial with some Catholics in the archdiocese. The intruders were clearly bent on burglary, he said, adding that it appears that there were at least two people working in tandem and that they were familiar with the residence.

"These guys were pros," he said. "The glass they broke through is, like, three or four inches thick. They couldn’t get through without a sledgehammer. They executed a well-thought-out plan. They knew exactly where to go in his bedroom."

Panos said that police, too, believe that more than one person might be involved. The weight of the safe alone, he said, suggests that teamwork was required.

McGrath, who said he did not know if the stolen items were insured, said he couldn’t imagine someone wearing them. The crosses, for example, "are on a gold chain, very ornate," and drape over the chest, he said.

"I don’t think 50 Cent would wear it," he said, referring to the rap star.

Looking back, McGrath said he could not think of another such incident in the archdiocese’s history.

"It takes a lot of gall to rob an archbishop" across the street from the Cathedral of St. Paul, he said.

 

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