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

I see that Damian Thompson has his blade sharpened:


My emphases and comments:

November 30th, 2009

Happy 40th birthday, Novus Ordo!

It is 40 years ago today since the New Mass of Paul VI was introduced into our parishes, writes Margery Popinstar, editor of The Capsule. [Blue or Red, I wonder.]  We knew at the time that this liturgy was as close to perfection as humanly possible, but little did we guess what an efflorescence of art, architecture, music and worship lay ahead!  [That’s a good way to put it.]

There were fears at first that the vernacular service would damage the solemnity of the Mass. How silly! Far from leading to liturgical abuses, the New Mass nurtured a koinonia that revived Catholic culture and packed our reordered churches to the rafters.

So dramatic was the growth in family Mass observance, indeed, that a new school of Catholic architecture arose to provide places of worship for these new congregations. Throughout the Western world, churches sprang up that combined Christian heritage with the thrilling simplicity of the modern school, creating a sense of the numinous that has proved as irresistible to secular visitors as to the faithful.

For some worshippers, it is the sheer visual beauty of the New Mass that captures the heart, with its simple yet scrupulously observed rubrics – to say nothing of the elegance of the priest’s vestments, which (though commendably less fussy than pre-conciliar outfits) exhibit a standard of meticulous craftsmanship which truly gives glory to God!

The same refreshing of tradition infuses the wonderful – and toe-tapping! – modern Mass settings and hymns produced for the revised liturgy. This music, written by the most gifted composers of our era, has won over congregations so totally that it is now rare to encounter a parish where everyone is not singing their heads off! Even the secular “hit parade” has borrowed from Catholic worship songs, so deliciously memorable – yet reverent! – is the effect they create. No wonder it is standing room only at most Masses!

Did Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who birthed this kairos, have any idea just how radically his innovations would transform the Church? We must, of course, all rejoice in his imminent beatification – but, in the meantime, I am tempted to borrow a phrase from a forgotten language that – can you believe it? – was used by the Church for services before 1969: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

 

 

 

Today is my day trip to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center!

I had been here many years ago. how things have changed! I did enjoy the Rocket Park.

I thought the Soviet era Soyuz was pretty interesting.

And I thought the American astronauts were brave.

I bet the first cosmonauts who looked at this stuff on the outside just shrugged as thought….

... "Hey… what could go wrong?"

 

Imagine jamming yourself into a VW Beatle, sitting it on top of a stick of dynamite 36 stories tall, and telling them to light the fuse.

And once you were up there, staying up there in the VW fully dressed in all sorts of stuff for days.

With less computing power than my mobile phone.

Mission control has less computing power than my mobile phone.

Amazing.

Do any of you have an iPhone and have iBreviary installed?

I do. 

I don’t know if any of you have the same experience, but I don’t think it is being updated.

More often than not, I refresh and there are no texts available.

Is this just me?

Do we need to warn people off this app?

Some recent posts:

• NYT Op-Ed on 40 years of the Novus Ordo
• Whatever it is we’re doin’… ain’t workin’!
• My view of Benedict’s XVI’s sermon for 1st Vespers in this new liturgical year
• Australia: Holy See tells http://wdtprs.com/blog/wp-admin/post-new.phpCatholic diocese not to host Anglican ordination of women
• “Bishooooops, don’t let your chapels grow up to be discooooos….”
• “Catholic Democrats” … “Sycophantic Toadies”… take your pick 
• DOG BITES MAN! SUN RISES AT DAWN! LIBERAL SISTERS UNCOOPERATIVE!
• CDWDS responds on question of H1N1 and restriction of Communion on the tongue
  
• The Holy Father’s new Ferula
• New Benedictine Ferula
• REVIEW: St. Antoine Daniel Gregorian Chant Ordinaries (and Fr. Z rants)
• A little … not so little… project for US Catholic bloggers
• PODCAzTs on the 40th Anniversary of the Novus Ordo
• John Paul II - flagellation before he ordained priests

 
 

As you start your new work week, tell us all some of your good news.

I understand that Fr. Rawley Myers has died.

Requiescat in pace.

I understand that Fr. Robert Fox has passed away on (U.S.) Thanksgiving Day.

May he rest in peace.

Fr. Fox was a great apostle of Our Lady of Fatima and her message.

Every once in a while, walking about in Rome you come across a forlorn little ex-church or chapel, now serving as a nightclub or art gallery or worse.   It’s like something out of a cartoon.

I know of a once beautiful minor seminary bought by a fundamentalist bible school.  They use the old chapel as a cafeteria.

This comes from AFP:

Don’t turn our churches into nightclubs, urges Vatican

(AFP) – 3 days ago

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Thursday warned Italy’s bishops against letting deserted churches be transformed into nightclubs if the decision was taken to sell the places of worship.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s new culture commissar, urged "the greatest caution" after announcing that Roman Catholic churches with few worshippers could be sold off.

He gave the example of a church in Hungary which was "transformed into a nightclub and where striptease took place on the altar."

The archbishop, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said dwindling numbers of worshippers at some churches meant it now made sense to sell, or even destroy, the buildings.

"Faced with falling number of worshippers, a phenomenon which we are also unfortunately witnessing in the centre of Rome, churches without any artistic value and which need significant work can be sold or destroyed," he told reporters.

Italian bishops’ groups would be responsible for deciding whether the sites should be sold, said Ravasi, adding each case would be separately assessed.

What ever happened to the old cathedral of Los Angeles, St. Vibiana?

BTW… if you go to that AFP article, and you don’t really have to, they have a picture of the wrong bishop and identify him as Ravasi.  The bishop in the photo is actually Most. Rev. Sergio Pagano, BB.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I picked up this story from an Australian source theage.com.au.

I get the sense that, in the past, the local Catholic diocese in Victoria had allowed Anglicans to have ordinations in a

My emphases and comments.

Vatican ban on offer to Anglicans
BARNEY ZWARTZ
November 28, 2009

THE Vatican has ordered a Victorian bishop to withdraw an offer to let Anglicans ordain deacons in a Catholic church tomorrow because four of the seven are women.

Bendigo Catholics and Anglicans have both expressed sadness [Why am I not surprised?] at the decision, which comes a month after Pope Benedict XVI told Anglicans they were welcome to become Catholics and keep their Anglican identity.  [Ummm…. yah.   But, that identity doesn’t include things against the Christian faith, right?]

Sandhurst Bishop Joe Grech offered Bendigo Anglican Bishop Andrew Curnow use of the city’s oldest Catholic church for the celebratory service because the Anglican cathedral is closed for repairs.

Bishop Grech said yesterday that he had checked widely before offering St Kilian’s, and had the approval of the Papal Nuncio (ambassador), Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto.  [Did any of them check ahead of time who… or what… was scheduled to be ordained?]

But he was ordered to withdraw the offer by a Vatican department – he did not want to say which – after a Catholic complained to Rome about the planned service. 

‘’It had wider ramifications, and the conclusion was it was better not to have it,’’ Bishop Grech said.

‘’I was saddened, obviously. I was disappointed I couldn’t help more, but there is tremendous rapport between us and the Anglicans. They know it’s not a snub, it’s the doctrine of the church.’‘

Sandhurst Vicar-General John White also said he was disappointed. ‘’We believe we have a very good working relationship with the Anglicans, and there was no way we were endorsing their theological stance for the ordination of women – it was a generous offer to help when they could not use their own facility.’‘  [Really?  So, if someone, for example, opens up his home to a guy who, for example, want to have a political campaign and helps raise money and so forth, neither of them are endorsing each other’s positions?  Would they allow, for example, worshipers of Moloch to have one of their services in the church?  Extreme examples, I know.  But somewhere along the line the question has to be asked: Is this right?]

Anglican theologian Charles Sherlock – a member of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, which is discussing theological rapprochement between the churches – said it was particularly disappointing because Bishop Grech had been so generous.

‘‘It is disappointing that he is not allowed to act as he thinks best for the people of God in Bendigo,’’ Dr Sherlock said.  [But is it not important that your counterparts in ecumenical dialogue are also true to their identity?]

Anglican Dean Peta Sherlock (Dr Sherlock’s wife) said the Anglicans would hold tomorrow’s ordination at St Andrew’s Uniting Church instead, and were grateful for the hospitality.

‘’I think it’s indeed sad. Catholics in Bendigo are shocked by it. They say ‘it’s not us’, and we say ‘we know’. It was a fantastic good news story, and now it’s gone.‘’  [And it is still a fantastic news story, because that ordination is not happening in a catholic church.]

Dean Sherlock said the Anglican cathedral closed in January. ‘’There’s bits falling off. Anything cement or mortar has perished.’‘  [There is a metaphor here somewhere.   .... Nope.. it’s gone.  I hope they can fix their building!]

She said restoring the cathedral would cost $5 million. An appeal had been launched, which so far had raised $20,000.

‘’We are worshipping in the hall next door and having fantastic fun. We sit closer together, talk to each other and sing much better. [Well… that’s what is all about, after all.] But it’s the big stuff we can’t do: weddings, funerals, ordinations.’‘

Local Catholics criticised the decision and apologised to Anglicans in letters to the Bendigo Advertiser. Beryl Rokesky wrote: ‘’I was ashamed to call myself a Catholic … Contrary to what we were taught in Catholic schools, Catholics aren’t the only ones who will end up in heaven.’‘  [Have you seen the reporter – to this point – quote someone who was happy about the decision?  No?]

Peter Bugden wrote that the decision was evidence that the Roman Curia was concerned with power and control, and that Christianity had been usurped by Churchianity.  [Wow.  That’s clever.]

Bishop Curnow is on retreat with the seven ordinands and could not be contacted.

 

I suspect some people in Bendigo, in the diocese of Sandhurst, might be pleased that a simulation of a sacrament won’t be taking place in their church.

Too bad the reporter didn’t have the integrity to do some… what’s the word…. you know… reporting?

Our friend John Sonnen at Orbis Catholicus has posted a nice photo of one of the purple dalmatics made for the pontificate of Benedict XVI.  These are the purple vestments used at Vespers at the beginning of Advent.



Here is a detail.

In no special order here are a few images and notes from Florida and a maternal visit. I made some spaghetti … nothing special. Just good ingredients combined and presented in simplicity.

Nice to have fresh basil off a plant in the ground at this time of year. There are no palm trees or orchids at the Sabine Farm.

Nor is there any papyrus… though there should be!

A friend of my mother and my mother herself are both diligent in the creative conversion of old stuff into new stuff. Here are a few interesting applications of shards of stained glass to old guitars and other stringed instruments. These are the pretty striking in person, and I can’t help contemplating a metaphor.

The whole family are fans of bluegrass and many if them play instruments. At gatherings they sometimes play together. In their kitchen you can what can be done with one of these guitars and some car detailing stuff.

Being in Florida there is strong dedication to NASCAR and the Gators.

I was also struck by an old violin with a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon worked into the design.

The local Catholic church is dedicated to St Helena. It is a sober neo-Romanesque structure.

It seems to be a reasonably serious and busy parish, lots of northern "snow birds", with a strong pro-life spirit. The are sundry birds I don’t know but they don’t wait for me and my iPhone to get near. I especially enjoy the Sand Hill Crane. Oh well. The waning day is nice.

You may know that when he was Archbishop of Munich, Pope Benedict gave series of sermons on the Sundays of Advent.  He has spent significant time reflecting on this season.

But year and each change in our lives, changes our perspectives on things we may have known well for years.  For example, the mysteries of our faith or what we observe in the liturgical years don’t change from year to year, but we do.

This is why we must never be complacent when it comes to our Faith, either they Faith by which we believe (the gift from God which is a grace that we pray will be deepened) or the Faith in which we believe (the content we can learn and study make a part of our worldview and lives). 

So many people come to their 60th year with no long catechism than that which they have have heard at 6 and forgot by 16.  And yet our Faith asks us to seek understanding.

That is a little preamble to a few points from Pope Benedict’s sermon for 1st Vespers of Advent and a new liturgical year.  I won’t translate the whole thing; only a few key sentences.  I will mostly summarize.   I haven’t seen an English version of the sermon anywhere and thought you might want more than a spoonful.

I was struck by something in this sermon.  I was caught by the possibility that the Pope is suffering in a human way and in a spiritual way.    I was struck by the notion that at this point in his life, with the burdens he bears and the life perhaps he thought he was going to have after the death of the late Holy Father, he is sorting many things out on a personal level even as he gazes at the Church in this modern world, this modern world around our Church. 

Benedict XVI, in his sermon for 1st Vespers of Advent, reflected on the word "coming… adventus". 

He observed that it can be translated variously as "presence, arrival, coming" and that in the ancient world it had to do with the coming of an important person, such as the visit of the emperor to a province.  It could also mean the coming of a divinity.  Christians adopted this word to describe their relationship with Christ.

They were saying: "God is here, he hasn’t left the world, he has not left us alone.  Even if we cannot see and touch him as he comes in a sensible reality, He is here and he comes to visit us in many places."

"Adventus" also has to do with visitatio, "visit", especially a visit by a God: "He enters into my life and wants to address me."

"We all have the experience, in our daily life, of having little time for the Lord and little time even for ourselves.  One winds up absorbed by ‘doing’.  Isn’t it perhaps true that often it is exactly activity that possesses us, society with its multiple interests that monopolizes our attention?  Isn’t it perhaps true that one dedicates lots of time to diversions and amusements of different kinds?"  ... "Advent invites us to stand in silence in order to understand a presence. ... How often God causes us to perceive something of His love!"

He also elaborated another point.  "Another fundamental element of Advent is waiting, a waiting which is at the same time hope."

Advent helps us to understand the meaning of time as kairos, as the favorable opportunity for our salvation.  Jesus pointed out this mysterious reality through parables.

Through the different stages of his life man is constantly waiting.  But he comes at last to find that he hoped for too little if all he hoped for was social standing or a profession.  Christians, however, have the sense that God is along side us, "and will one day dry our tears".

There are many different forms of waiting.  If time isn’t filled with meaning, waiting is unendurable.  "Every breath that passes seems exaggeratedly long." If it is enriched with meaning, then "in every instant we perceive something specific and of value."

"Dear brothers and sisters, let us intense live the present, where the Lord’s gifts are reaching us, let us live it as if we were launched towards the future, a future charged with hope."

Christian Advent helps us to an understanding of waiting.  The Messiah waited for centuries and was born into poverty.  Coming among us, he offered the gift of His love and salvation.  Present among us He speaks in many ways: in Scripture, in the liturgical year, in the saints, in the events of daily life, in all creation.  "For our part, let us address  Him, let us offer Him the sufferings that afflict us, the impatience, the questions that burst from our hearts. Let us be sure that He is always listening to us!" "If He is present, we can continue to hope even when others cannot any longer assure us of any support, even when the present becomes wearying."

At the end the Holy Father made a comment that gave me pause: "Advent is the time of the presence and waiting for eternity.  For just this reason it is, in a special way, the time of joy, of interiorized joy, that no suffering can take away."

I don’t know how many times my own proposals, or those of others I have heard about, were rejected because of "young people".   "No, no.  We have to do [FILL IN BLANK] for young people".

Pretty much you know in your heart that [FILL IN THE BLANK] is going to flop because a) young people aren’t stupid and b) young people don’t have 1960’s-70’s baggage and c) what ever hip bad groovy sick cool thing you attempt in church is always done better elsewhere by people who are actually good at it.

Over at NLM I saw an interesting graph.



This graph concerns age groups against frequency of Mass attendance.

My friend Jeffrey Tucker puts it this way (with my emphases and comments):

The upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s were justified largely based on the desperate need of young people for a liturgical experience that meets their needs and speaks to a new generation. [Sounds about right.  Ever heard that yourself?] Apparently the "new generation" didn’t much like what they heard, because they left in droves. Meanwhile, the strongest attachments to Catholic Church can be observed among those raised in a liturgical environment widely decried for its failure to connect to people and its propensity to foster alienation. These are the survivors who cling to the memorized portions of the Baltimore Catechism for sustenance in difficult times.

Knowing nothing other than these facts, one can easily conclude that the conventional wisdom is complete wrong and that the truth is the reverse of what we’ve been told. The hip and happening style at Mass backfired and emptied the Church. It is the "bad old days" that instilled deeper attachments. The proper direction for change, then, is to recover what we lost.

 

Do I hear an "Amen!"?

You can read the rest over there.

From the op-ed page of Hell’s Bible comes this from a name that some of you will recognize


NEW YORK TIMES

OPINION

By KENNETH J. WOLFE
Published: November 29, 2009

Washington

WALKING into church 40 years ago on this first Sunday of Advent, many Roman Catholics might have wondered where they were. The priest not only spoke English rather than Latin, but he faced the congregation instead of the tabernacle; laymen took on duties previously reserved for priests; folk music filled the air. The great changes of Vatican II had hit home.

All this was a radical break [Some might say "rupture".] from the traditional Latin Mass, codified in the 16th century at the Council of Trent. For centuries, that Mass served as a structured sacrifice with directives, called "rubrics," that were not optional. This is how it is done, said the book. As recently as 1947, Pope Pius XII had issued an encyclical on liturgy that scoffed at modernization; he said that the idea of changes to the traditional Latin Mass "pained" him "grievously."

Paradoxically, however, it was Pius himself who was largely responsible for the momentous changes of 1969. It was he who appointed the chief architect of the new Mass, Annibale Bugnini, to the Vatican’s liturgical commission in 1948.

Bugnini was born in 1912 and ordained a Vincentian priest in 1936. Though Bugnini had barely a decade of parish work, Pius XII made him secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform. In the 1950s, Bugnini led a major revision of the liturgies of Holy Week. As a result, on Good Friday of 1955, congregations for the first time joined the priest in reciting the Pater Noster, and the priest faced the congregation for some of the liturgy.

The next pope, John XXIII, named Bugnini secretary to the Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy of Vatican II, in which position he worked with Catholic clergymen and, surprisingly, some Protestant ministers on liturgical reforms. In 1962 he wrote what would eventually become the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the document that gave the form of the new Mass.

Many of Bugnini’s reforms were aimed at appeasing non-Catholics, and changes emulating Protestant services were made, including placing altars to face the people instead of a sacrifice toward the liturgical east. As he put it, "We must strip from our … Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants." (Paradoxically, the Anglicans who will join the Catholic Church as a result of the current pope’s outreach will use a liturgy that often features the priest facing in the same direction as the congregation.)

How was Bugnini able to make such sweeping changes? In part because none of the popes he served were liturgists. Bugnini changed so many things that John’s successor, Paul VI, sometimes did not know the latest directives. The pope once questioned the vestments set out for him by his staff, saying they were the wrong color, only to be told he had eliminated the week-long celebration of Pentecost and could not wear the corresponding red garments for Mass. The pope’s master of ceremonies then witnessed Paul VI break down in tears.  [I am the one who brought that story to the internet.  I heard this story from a priest, one of the papal MC’s, who was an eye-witness to the event. Second hand, granted, but also from someone who wasn’t a fan of Ecclesia Dei and a resurgence of the older form of Mass either.]

Bugnini fell from grace in the 1970s. Rumors spread in the Italian press that he was a Freemason, which if true would have merited excommunication.  The Vatican never denied the claims, and in 1976 Bugnini, by then an archbishop, was exiled to a ceremonial post in Iran. He died, largely forgotten, in 1982.

But his legacy lived on. Pope John Paul II continued the liberalizations of Mass, allowing females to serve in place of altar boys and to permit unordained men and women to distribute communion in the hands of standing recipients. Even conservative organizations like Opus Dei adopted the liberal liturgical reforms.

But Bugnini may have finally met his match in Benedict XVI, a noted liturgist himself who is no fan of the past 40 years of change. Chanting Latin, wearing antique vestments and distributing communion only on the tongues (rather than into the hands) of kneeling Catholics, Benedict has slowly reversed the innovations of his predecessors. And the Latin Mass is back, at least on a limited basis, in places like Arlington, Va., where one in five parishes offer the old liturgy.

Benedict understands that his younger priests and seminarians – most born after Vatican II - are helping lead a counterrevolution. They value the beauty of the solemn high Mass and its accompanying chant, incense and ceremony. Priests in cassocks and sisters in habits are again common; traditionalist societies like the Institute of Christ the King are expanding.

At the beginning of this decade, Benedict (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) wrote: "The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself." He was right: 40 years of the new Mass have brought chaos and banality into the most visible and outward sign of the church. Benedict XVI wants a return to order and meaning. So, it seems, does the next generation of Catholics.

Kenneth J. Wolfe writes frequently for traditionalist Roman Catholic publications.

I am surprised that NYT published this.

I can easily imagine the vitriolic responses that people will send.

I don’t know, but does this seem like a pretty good summation to you?