What Does The Prayer Really Say?

Pelosi invokes St Joseph for her bill

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:02:36 +0000

Did I understand this right? Did Speaker Pelosi REALLY invoke St. Joseph for the passage of this health care legislation? From NO online:

Friday, March 19, 2010 Oh Dear, Saint Joseph [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Correct me if I am wrong, but the outrage of this isn’t that she’s praying to Saint Joseph for the passage of her life-threatening health-care legislation (bad enough) but that she comes as close to claiming his endorsement as she can get away with: [THE VIDEO DIDNT PASTE… Sorry] UPDATE: Yes, as I mentioned on Twitter, she’s also off on what feast day it is today. 03/19 02:49 PMShare

Some one please post a link to the YOUTUBE clip. NB: Pelosi says today is St Joseph the Worker. Fail. Double Fail.

In Manhattan again

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:20:46 +0000

On my way to a symposium on science and faith, two NYC landmarks.

UPDATE:

I am in the Time-Life Building.

Archbp Nienstedt to MN Reps

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:37:55 +0000

I found this on the blog of the USCCB. There are other good contributions there too.

Here’s an email message from earlier this week from Archbishop Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis to the Minnesota Congressional delegation:

March 15, 2010
E-Mail Message
Dear Senator or Representative,

I write to urge you, as a member of Senate or House, to commit yourself to enacting genuine health care reform that will protect the life, dignity, consciences, and health of all.

While I am grateful that the House health care bill, by way of the Stupak amendment, applies the existing prohibitions on federal funding for abortion, I am deeply concerned about the current Senate health care bill. This legislation fails to keep in place the current law. It requires taxpayers and the federal government to fund and facilitate plans which include elective abortion and then requires people in those plans to pay directly into a fund which only pays for abortions. This is unacceptable.

I thank you for your leadership to the state of Minnesota, and hope that you will continue to represent Minnesotans faithfully. No legislation should be finalized until and unless basic moral criteria are met. The only way we will get needed health care reform legislation that protects the life, dignity, conscience and health of all is if you continue to provide strong and consistent moral and political leadership. I hope that we as Minnesotans can count on your help in this urgent task.

Please know of my prayers for you and your families as you face these decisions that will impact us all.

With every good wish, I remain,
Cordially yours in Christ,

The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt
Archbishop of Saint Paul and
Minneapolis

A WDTPRS FIRST

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:56:09 +0000

I am, for the first time, posting from an airplane during a flight using an inflight connection!

This opens a range of possibilities.

I have a good connection, fast. I was even able to stream my satellite dish via SlingBox (blessed be slingbox) and access the nerve center computer at home.

For longer flights, especially when I have a writing deadline this could really help.

You can access the Internet from a laptop or a handheld. I am on my iPhone, for which I have an external supplemental power pack. Next time I will use my laptop.

OLDIE PODCAzT 82: St. Joseph: a hymn dissected and a sermon of St. Bernardine of Siena

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:11:23 +0000

Here is an oldie:

PODCAzT 82: St. Joseph: a hymn dissected and a sermon of St. Bernardine of Siena

Somehow appropriate

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:03:48 +0000

Doesn’t this just fit the news today, on so many fronts?

What Bp. Zollitsch (Pres. German Bps Conf.) wrote for Die Welt

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:49:15 +0000

The wonderfully persistent Anna Arco of the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald, has provided a translation of the defense of Pope Benedict made by Bp. Zollitsch (Pres. of German Bishops Conference) in Die Welt.

Responding to accusations in the German papers such as the Spiegel and Die Zeit that the Pope was maintaining silence vis-à-vis the German abuse scandal, Archbishop Zollitsch wrote an article defending the Pope in Die Welt, yesterday.
Here is [Anna’s] translation [from the original German with my usual…]:
My Pope. Your Pope. These days the Pope has hold forth for many things. Often enough nobody wants to hear him, now he is widely being reproached that he is silent on the subject of the abuse scandals within the Catholic Church in Germany. [And they will continue to refuse to hear him until he says what they have predetermined he ought to say.]

What sorts of things will then be then still demanded from this man tomorrow? That he takes part in round tables? That he thins out the tangle of statutory periods of limitation or claims for compensation?

Everyone formulates his own demands of the Pope just as he needs them. Simple, practical,good. The wonderment on the on-line edition of one German newspaper about why the Pope had not yet made a comment to the terrible events in the school in the Odenwald [a non-Catholic UNESCO school where abuse cases came to light in recent months]proves just how much the ability to judge has lost its orientation.

The fable of the silent Pope often ignores the fact that there is not a Pope for German and not a Pope for Spain. There is only one Pope for the whole world-wide Church. [A good phrase: "fable of the silent Pope". Applied so often to Popes. They have rehearsed it for years especially on Pius XII.]

Accordingly, Benedict XVI must weigh up intelligently when ,where, in which form and to whom he says what. Demands are quickly thrown into the room that the Pope must take a position on the German problem because he is German.

This is as short-sighted as it is superficial. The head of the Catholic Church must find words for the terrible abuse of minors which will be heard in all the world and which will count for everyone even if they are spoken in a certain country.

He has found them. The weight of a word does not grow the number of times it is repeated. This is true in life, in existential thing especially.

I know from my conversation with the Pope, how much he is shaken by the abuse of children through priests, especially in Germany. He has spoken unmistakable spoken about this – as he says himself—“abominable crime”: “Not one of my words could describe the pain and sufferings caused by such abuse. I also cannot frame the damage which arisen in the body of the Church in adequate words.”

During his visit in the United States he challenged us—and that counts for the whole world—to do everything within our power “to advance healing and reconciliation” and to support those who were hurt. [Interesting that he refers to the US visit.]

What should the Pope say that is new? His words have validity and consequences. As bad as the situation in Germany is: What has been said should not be constantly repeated. That which has already been said retains its weight if it is not continuously repeated.

Those who hate the Church will never be satisfied.

Airport challenges

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:37:15 +0000

It is an interesting experience to walk through an airport right now, with CNN’s anti-Catholic pogrom blaring from televisions at every gate and lounge and restaurant.

I haven’t had any expressions of rudeness so far… which happened often when this revved up the last time. As a matter of fact, I have had some cordial greetings.

But, in the lounge waiting for my next flight, people check me out when those CNN stories are on. I suppose they are watching for my reaction. Hard to blame them.

BTW… did anyone see the ridiculous hit-piece by that … what’s her name… Christianne Amanpour (sp?) the other day? Allen was as usual direct and succinct and fair, but the overarching approach was asinine.

Lent and Passiontide: Dying with the Church

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:34:21 +0000

Some time ago, I wrote a description of what happens in the Churches liturgy during Lent and how the liturgical changes should reflect our Lenten experience.

I bring this up because we are well into Lent and Passiontide is around the corner. In the older form of the Roman Rite we will begin to see some changes that reflect the intensity of the season as we come into the final stretch.

All around, as spring sets in, bushes and trees are being pruned, to help them grow and flower later on. This is a pattern in the Church’s liturgy and in the arc of our lives.

Here is something of what I wrote, slightly adjusted.

____

We lose things during Lent. We are being pruned through the liturgy.

Holy Church experiences liturgical death before the feast of the Resurrection. The Alleluia goes on Septuagesima. Music and flowers go on Ash Wednesday. On First Passion Sunday in the older, traditional calendar (5th Sunday of Lent in the newer, post-Conciliar calendar), statues and images are draped in purple. That is why that Sunday is sometimes called Repus Sunday, from repositus analogous to absconditus or “hidden”, because this is the day when Crosses and other images in churches are veiled.

The universal Church’s Ordo published by the Holy See has an indication that images can be veiled from the 5th Sunday of Lent.

Traditionally Crosses may be covered until the end of the celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday and images, such as statues may be covered until the beginning of the Easter Vigil. You could, of course, unveil statues of the Pietà or Ecce Homo and the Crucified Lord after the Good Friday service.

Also, as part of the pruning, as of 1st Passion Sunday in the older form of Mass, the “Iudica” psalm in prayers at the foot of the altar and the Gloria Patri at the end of certain prayers was no longer said.

The pruning cuts more deeply as we march into the Triduum.

After the Mass on Holy Thursday the Blessed Sacrament is removed from the main altar, which itself is stripped and bells are replaced with wooden noise makers.

On Good Friday there isn’t even a Mass.

At the beginning of the Vigil we are deprived of light itself! It is as if the Church herself were completely dead with the Lord in His tomb.

This liturgical death of the Church reveals how Christ emptied Himself of His glory in order to save us from our sins and to teach us who we are (cf. GS 22).

The Church then gloriously springs to life again at the Vigil of Easter. In ancient times, the Vigil was celebrated in the depth of night. In the darkness a single spark would be struck from flint and spread into the flames. The flames spread through the whole Church.

If we can connect ourselves in heart and mind with the Church’s liturgy in which these sacred mysteries are re-presented, then by our active receptivity we become participants in the saving mysteries of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

To begin this active receptivity we must be baptized members of the Church and be in the state of grace.

Of best sellers

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:45:40 +0000

This is confirmation of what we already know.

From a friend:

.....1962 Missale Romanum (and Latin breviaries are not far behind..)

The AD should play a gingle like “Tradition, works every time it’s tried” or “Catholic identity, 20 centuries of guaranteed success” or “2000 years: how’s that for time-tested reliability?”

“But wait, there’s MORE! Young people like it! With a New “old” Missal you get several young vocations a year and countless graces a day! Order Now!”

http://www.paxbook.com/algorithmiS/servusPrimus?iussum=monstraPaginamPrimam (scroll down to the right )

BESTSELLERS March 2010
1. Missale Romanum Ex Decreto SS. Concilii Tridentini Restitutum Summorum Pontificum Cura Recognitum 2. Missale Romanum 3. Der Glaube in Bildern 4. Missale Romanum Editio Typica Tertia 5. Catholic Church and Modern Science 6. Liturgia Horarum vol. II. Tempus Quadragesimae. Sacrum Triduum Paschale. Tempus Paschale 7. Compendium Eucharisticum 8. Liturgia Horarum vol. III. Tempus per annum, hebdomadae I – XVII 9. Lettera “Communionis Notio” su alcuni aspetti della Chiesa intesa come Comunione 10. Rituale Romanum 11. Pontificale Romanum 12. Annuario Pontificio 2009 13. Communicationes 2005 14. Communicationes 2008 15. Liturgia Horarum vol. I. Tempus Adventus, Tempus Nativitatis 16. Liturgia Horarum vol. IV. Tempus per annum, hebdomadae XVIII - XXXIV 17. Ordo missae ad usum fidelium 18. Bibliorum Sacrorum Nova Vulgata editio maior 19. Rituale Romanum ed.princeps 20. Liturgia Horarum Tegumentum e corio factum 21. Martyrologium Romanum 22. Dominus Est 23. Breviarium Romanum
No. 9 is also interesting. That’s certainly due to either more parish priests educating their people, or the faithful themselves getting interested and looking for stuff. “Gravitational” pull full steam ahead! Of course the actual numbers would be interesting to know, but it’s still a pretty comforting to see no?