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

Here is a find from American Papist:

Report: Does incense make you high?
Of course not, but that doesn’t prevent scientists from issuing research papers with titles such as this (I’m not making this up): "Incensole Acetate, an Incense Component, Elicits Psychoactivity by Activating TRPV3 Channels in the Brain."

MSN’s Health & Fitness gives us the popular treatment:

... Frankincense—the incense traditionally burned in religious ceremonies—can act on the brain to lower anxiety and diminish depression.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Hebrew University administered incensole acetate, a component of frankincense, to lab mice and learned that it lit up areas of their little mouse brains that control emotion, including nerve circuits affecting anxiety and depression.  [Imagine what it does to the brains of progressivists…. or maybe not.]

Of course, as soon as the author strays from the science his commentary gets fairly useless very quickly.

I wonder, however, if these sorts of findings could be used as backdoor argument to convince liberal parishes and liturgy commissions to allow incense back into the celebration of Mass? Hmm….

Fr. Joseph Kramer, FSSP, Pastor of Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini in Rome, gave an interview to Vatican Radio:

Here is the Italian text.  I am rather too busy to do a translation.  Maybe one of you Italian readers can do the job?


Click here for audio:

 A Roma, la parrocchia per i fedeli che vogliono assistere alla Messa in latino, secondo il "Summorum Pontificum" del Papa. Intervista con don Joseph Kramer

A un anno dalla pubblicazione del Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum di Benedetto XVI, una conseguenza pastorale concreta del documento papale è stata la creazione, l’8 giugno scorso, della parrocchia "personale" della Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, nel settore Centro della Diocesi di Roma. Si tratta della prima comunità parrocchiale costituita in Italia in applicazione dell’art. 10 del Motu Proprio e dunque non sulla base del territorio ma del rito, in quanto composta da fedeli legati all’antica forma del rito romano. La parrocchia, eretta per decreto dal cardinale vicario su disposizione del Papa, è stato affidata a don Joseph Kramer, religioso australiano della Fraternità sacerdotale di San Pietro, in Italia ormai da tren’tanni. Eccolo al microfono di Fabio Colagrande.

R. – L’apertura è andata molto bene: erano tutti contentissimi. Questo ha suscitato molto interesse – anche la stampa ne ha parlato – e da quel giorno la gente è venuta in Chiesa ogni giorno a vedere di cosa si tratta. Questa è una parrocchia personale che non dipende dal territorio. E’ aperta a tutti i fedeli che vogliono frequentare i Sacramenti e la Santa Messa, secondo la forma antica del rito romano. E’ una parrocchia che bisogna creare a distanza. La difficoltà è, infatti, che la gente abita lontano e deve venire da fuori. L’idea è di avere non solo la Messa, ma tutti i Sacramenti – battesimi, matrimoni – oltre alla Quaresima e al Triduo pasquale.

D. – Chi sono i vostri parrocchiani, don Joseph?

R. – Molto vari: gente di tutte le età, molti giovani, famiglie con bambini, persone oltre i 50 anni, che ricordano il rito antico e che sono contente di riacquistare un posto nella vita normale della Chiesa. E anche la gente locale è contenta di vedere che siamo lì, con la forma antica del rito, e che teniamo aperta una chiesa rimasta chiusa per molti anni.

D. – Il cardinale Castrillon Hoyos ha ricordato che l’erezione di questa parrocchia personale ha un valore esemplare per le altre diocesi, sia in Italia che nel mondo…

R. – Sì, perché Roma è sempre un esempio, una città centrale per tutto il cattolicesimo. E già altri vescovi hanno deciso di aprire delle parrocchie seguendo l’esempio dato qui a Roma, ed è molto importante.

D. – Padre Kramer è corretto dire che la sua è una parrocchia di fedeli tradizionalisti?

R. – Questa parrocchia è per tutti i fedeli cattolici normali, che apprezzano la forma antica, ma non appartengono ad una categoria diversa, dei tradizionalisti appunto. Seguire la forma antica non vuol dire diventare necessariamente tradizionalisti. Il nostro desiderio è di essere integrati nella vita quotidiana della Chiesa. E siamo molto, molto grati al cardinale vicario per questa opportunità di entrare nella vita della Chiesa e di non essere considerati un "branco" al di fuori della normativa.

UPDATE: 13 July 19:45 UTC:

NLM has a translation.

A year after publication of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI… a "personal" parish [was erected], Santissima Trinita dei Pellegrini, located in the center of the Diocese of Rome. This is the first parish community established in Italy under the motu proprio… The parish, erected by decree of Cardinal Vicar at disposal of the Pope, was entrusted to Fr. Joseph Kramer, an Australian priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter…

Fr. Kramer: – The opening [Mass] went very well: they were all content. This has aroused great interest – even the press has spoken of it – and from that day people have come to church each day to see what is going on. This is a parish that does not depend on territorial boundaries and is open to all the faithful who wish to attend the sacraments and the Holy Mass in the ancient form of the Roman rite… The idea is to have not only the Mass, but all the sacraments – baptisms, weddings – in addition to Lent and the Easter Triduum.

Who are your parishioners, Father Joseph?

R. – Very different: people of all ages, many young people, families with children, persons over 50 years who recall the ancient rite and are happy to regain a place in normal life of the Church. Even local people are happy to see that we are there, in the form of ancient rite, and that we re-opened a church that had remained closed for many years.

Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos said that the erection of this parish has an exemplary value for other dioceses, both in Italy and worldwide …

R. – Yes, because Rome is always an example, a city that is central to the whole of Catholicism and other bishops have already decided to open parishes following the example given here in Rome, and that is very important.

Father Kramer is it correct to say that this is a parish for faithful traditionalists?

R. – This parish is for all the Catholic faithful who appreciate the ancient form…. Worshipping in the ancient form does not mean necessarily becomes a traditionalist. Our desire is to be integrated into daily life of the Church and we are very, very grateful to the Cardinal Vicar for this opportunity to enter the life of the Church and not be considered a "flock" outside the law.

Remember Rule #4?

4) Be engaged in the whole life of your parishes, especially in works of mercy organized by the same.  If you want the whole Church to benefit from the use of the older liturgy, then you who are shaped by the older form of Mass should be of benefit to the whole Church in concrete terms.

If you are able, I recommend that you subscribe to The Catholic Herald, which seems to be pretty much on the correct side of most of our issues.

Today I read an interesting review by Alcuin Reid of a new book.  My emphases and comments.

Divine worship and the rise of ‘feel-good liturgy’
Philosopher Laurence Paul Hemming’s critique of the changes to the Mass after the Second Vatican Council will shake the liturgical establishment, says Alcuin Reid
11 July 2008

Picture
A priest celebrates Mass in the extraordinary form in New Orleans, Louisiana

Worship as a Revelation: The Past, Present and Future of Catholic Liturgy by Laurence Paul Hemming, Burns & Oates £14.99

We talk too much. We read too much. We hear too much. So much so, that we have lost the art of doing, of acting either as individuals or as a people. We no longer understand what it is to belong to a people who acts, who has "public action" of its own. We are no longer liturgical. For in our vernacularism and modernisation and reform, the very nature of the leiturgia – the nature of what is truly the work of the people – has been lost. [At this point, I am scratching my head wondering where he is going.  Liturgy is certainly the "work of the people", but it is first the action of the true Actor, Jesus Christ.  So… let’s read on.]

Today we seek to comprehend and explain and decide what we do in our churches but it is utterly questionable as to whether our people experience the liturgical revelation of Almighty God.  [Good.  I am constantly writing that a liturgical action which does not facilitate an encounter with Mystery, is a failure.]

In fact, let’s drop the adjective "liturgical" and use Hemming’s words which assert that the liturgy is nothing less than "the ordinary and continual revealing of [God’s] truth". If this is so, it cannot be a forum for our own self-expression. [Yes.] It cannot necessarily be within our immediate comprehension or subject to our didactic commentary. [Very good!] It must be experienced, indeed lived, as worship of Almighty God – as opposed to being "enjoyed" as a form of Christian activism – in order to begin to grasp something of what is being communicated in it: the very life of God Himself.

This raises the question not only of what liturgical practices are appropriate but, more fundamentally, of the place of the liturgy in Catholic theology.

Why has Hemming, essentially a philosopher, concerned himself with this question? The answer is simple. This is not an erudite academic discourse. Nor is it an ecclesio-political one. It is the fruit of the author’s experience of Catholic worship. It is also testament to his experience that most attempts to facilitate such connection in recent decades – from guitars to garrulous clergy – while they may have resulted in our happily holding hands with each other, have in part (at least) led us to forget about the worship of Almighty God.

And while modern liturgical forms might have led us to "feel good", it is the former that most clearly and fruitfully reveals the Triune God who has definitively revealed himself in our history, and who thereby makes demands upon us by way of both orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Hemming – as a worshipping Catholic – knows this. As a philosopher and a theologian he has investigated its import for us today. Hence Worship as a Revelation.

This book’s philosophical and theological sophistication will challenge theologians and liturgists to re-examine their assumptions about how they perceive the relationship between theology and liturgy. For if worship is indeed the revelation of Almighty God, its centrality and indeed its priority in theological endeavour cannot be denied. [This is what Pope Benedict is making apparent.] The Sacred Liturgy can no longer be one component of theology; it must be its foundation, for theology that is not grounded in the living revelation of God rapidly degenerates into the mere study of religion.

Hemming’s evaluation of the liturgical reforms over the past century are provocative. Very few will have located the genesis of the late 20th-century liturgical crisis in the reign of the good and sainted Pope Pius X, but Hemming’s argument for precisely this is compelling.

The author wisely refrains from proposing simplistic solutions but allows us to see the anomalies of liturgical reform in the 20th century for what they are - a dangerous tampering with the continuity of God’s revelation. [Could we call that "tampering" perhaps a journey into "discontinuity and rupture"?] Few "trained liturgists" have been prepared to enter into serious debate on this question. It is to be hoped that this book might bring them forth.

For Hemming’s rich and clear liturgical theology is starkly distinct from that prevailing in the western Catholic Church because it is not based on the desire for archaeological reconstruction of a "dreamtime" primitive liturgical purity, nor indeed for a modern ideological construction of something tailor-made for "modern man".  [Very good.  This is a rejection of what Pope Benedict has rejected.]

Hemming is no ideologue, nor is he an antiquarian. Catholic worship is indeed a revelation. It is a live epiphany. It is tangible theology. It is the very heart – indeed the "source and summit" – of our faith. That, of course, is why we tamper with the liturgy at our peril. That is why Pope Benedict XVI has placed the reform of the Sacred Liturgy so high on the agenda of this pontificate. [as part of his Marshal Plan]  And that is why this book will provoke the liturgical establishment, for Hemming does not accept that the apotheosis of all Christian liturgy may be found in the forms produced following the Second Vatican Council, or indeed in the manner in which these forms have been celebrated in the subsequent years.

The role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church is another area in which his liturgical theology makes serious and important claims. In short, he points out – and at last someone has had the courage and clarity to do this – that "the liturgy is the proper ground of Scripture (and not the other way round, ie the false view that the liturgy derives from Scripture)," or, put more simply, in the modern understanding of the relationship between the liturgy and scripture, "scripture has lost its ground".  [A very good observation.  In many places liturgical studies have had the life sucked from its veins by the wrong sort of theory of reading and studying Scripture.  Also, remember what Papa Ratzinger stated in The Spirit of the Liturgy in regard to the proper translation of pro multis.  Ratzinger correctly gave the absolutely perfect answer to the issue in stating that translation of liturgical texts is not, in fact, the same as translation of Scripture.  The liturgical texts constitute their own theological source.  Thus, we must translate what the liturgical texts really say.]

This claim to priority on behalf of the liturgy over the biblical text will certainly provoke debate. But, once again, if Worship as a Revelation becomes a catalyst for the re-examination of what a Catholic understanding of the role of Sacred Scripture is, it shall have done very well indeed.

This then is a book that must be read and studied and read again by theologians, scripture scholars, liturgists, all seminary faculty and indeed by all liturgical practitioners.

It will challenge and it will inform. The pontificate of Pope Benedict continues to remind us that "the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy is the centre of any renewal of the Church whatever". Hemming has rendered the Church a fine service by pointing us along the path toward a true understanding of the liturgy, a path that cannot but inform our celebration of it.

Dr Alcuin Read is a London-based liturgical scholar

Here is a short excerpt from my weekly column for The Wanderer.

Let us move to this week’s Collect, which historically was in the 8th century Liber sacramentorum Gellonensis.  It was also the prayer over the people, Super populum, in the 1962MR for Wednesday after the 4th Sunday of Lent.  It was not, I believe, in the 1970MR or 1975MR (Novus Ordo), but it was reinserted on Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent in the third edition of 2002, which revived the ancient Lenten Super populum blessings.

COLLECT (1962MR)
Pateant aures misericoridae tuae, Domine,
precibus supplicantium:
et, ut petentibus desiderata concedas;
fac eos, quae tibi sunt placita, postulare.

Supplico, so we are instructed by the Lewis & Short Dictionary, is formed from sub and plico, meaning “to fold, double up.”   The image is of one who is doubled-over, bent over praying.   Someone who is supplex is bent down, at least at the knees, in an attitude of prayer.  Postulo is “to ask, demand, require, request, desire”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Open the ears of Your mercy, O Lord,
to the prayers of those humbly beseeching:
and, that You might grant the things desired to those seeking them,
cause them to desire the things which are pleasing to You.

We often use anthropomorphic expressions in our prayer, giving God physical, human characteristics.  The image of God opening or inclining His ears is common.  Our Latin liturgical prayer constantly has God harking to us or lending His celestial ear, or inclining toward us so that He can listen more closely, not miss our meaning, our sincerity, our need.  We want to be in His hearing and in His sight.  We want Him to hurry to us and to be near.

This language is normal in the human experience of praying to our mysterious and transcendent God, who is infinitely removed from us, but who is nevertheless closer to us than we are to ourselves.  St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) in his Confessions gives expression to this tension of transcendence and immanence in words unsurpassed by man for over fifteen centuries. 

Perhaps in the light of the events of the last week, we might linger over the great Doctor of Grace’s words (Conf. 5.2; 6.3):

Thou alone art near even to those that remove far from You.  Let them, then, be converted and seek You; because not as they have forsaken their Creator have You forsaken Your creature. Let them be converted and seek You; and behold, You are there in their hearts, in the hearts of those who confess to You, and cast themselves upon You, and weep on Your bosom after their obdurate ways, even Thou gently wiping away their tears. And they weep the more, and rejoice in weeping, since Thou, O Lord, not man, flesh and blood, but Thou, Lord, who made, remakest and comfortest them. And where was I when I was seeking You? And You were before me, but I had gone away even from myself; nor did I find myself, much less You! …
 
O crooked ways! Woe to the audacious soul which hoped that by forsaking thee it would find some better thing! It tossed and turned, upon back and side and belly – but the bed is hard, and thou alone givest it rest. And lo, thou art near, and thou deliverest us from our wretched wanderings and establishest us in thy way, and thou comfortest us and sayest, “Run, I will carry you; yea, I will lead you home and then I will set you free.”

Interesting…  I caught this from VIS:

 S.E. Mons. Pierre-André Dumas
S.E. Mons. Pierre-André Dumas è nato a Saint-Jean-du-Sud, nella diocesi di Les Cayes, il 26 settembre 1962. Dopo gli studi primari compiuti presso i Fratelli dell’Istruzione Cristiana a Les Cayes, e quelli secondari al Liceo "Pétion" di Port-au-Prince, è vissuto un anno a Taizé (Francia).
Entrato nel 1985 come alunno nel Pon