I was about to post something along the lines of “KETCHUP: THE WONDER FOOD”, but then I saw this.
Remember. Vatican II was – pace St. Joan – the new Pentecost… Springtime in the fullest sense. It surely – pace the cynical Joan – unleashed a tsunami of renewed Catholic identity across Gaia that influences even the never-to-be proselytized.
The following is NOT from the Babylon Bee.
I sense that the contestants might have been either non-Christians or Fishwrap readers. Tautology? Not sure. Anyway, any decently educated non-Christian, of any creed or none at all, should be able to get this.
From FoxNews (which I stopped watching on 3 Nov 2020).
‘Jeopardy!’ fans unleash wrath over ‘pathetic’ lack of response to biblical clue: ‘Sad world we’re in’
A biblical passage stumped three ‘Jeopardy!’ contestants on Tuesday“Jeopardy!” contestants made an error of biblical proportions on last night’s show.
Fans were enraged Tuesday after all three contestants failed to answer what many believed to be a very easy question about the Lord’s Prayer.
Host Mayim Bialik read a clue that began, “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, [THIS] be thy name.’”
When the camera cut to Laura, Joe and returning champion Suresh, not one contestant buzzed in with a response.
[…]
Are we surprised? Really?
This leads me to a question.
Have you MEMORIZED prayers? Have you had your children MEMORIZE prayers? Once they are in there they are useful in myriad circumstances, even years in the future.
Fathers: Memorize a Mass. When you are in the gulag, it could be useful. I recall the story of a priest in solitary in a repressive regime who had prayed for a chance to say Mass on Christmas Eve. In the one hour he could walk around, a mysterious figure he didn’t know gave him a tiny bit of bread and a little vial of wine. Later, he said Mass in his cell, scraping frost off the inside of his window for water and using his cupped palm as a chalice.
He was in jeopardy. He had memorized a Mass formula.
Perhaps I can get back to the practical applications of “Ketchup: The Wonder Food” at another time.
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I have memorized the commonly said prayers (Our Father, Hail Mary, etc.) as well as others. I make it a point to memorize a new prayer every so often no matter the length of the prayer. I think it is helpful to keep my memory active and helpful in case of emergency. I also do not want to rely upon the Internet because who knows what can be edited or censored. I pray during my commute to work and thus there is a necessity for memorizing.
Fr. Z asks: “Have you MEMORIZED prayers?”
Quite a few, Father. As one who assists fairly much at N.O. Masses (TLM not readily available in our area) – I’ve practically memorized Eucharistic Prayer II! ?
Many years ago…when I was in college, I knew a fellow who belonged to a small evangelical community who’s pastor organized the members into teams to memorize the entirety of Scripture. The fellow knew (if memory serves me!) a large portion of Romans by heart. The goal was that in the event of an emergency, the members could literally write down the entire Bible in a day.
While I am grateful for the conversion I did have, I do wish I’d converted to the Catholic faith earlier when I was able to memorize with some degree of success.
Alas, I can rattle off the first few stanzas of Kipling’s Grave of the Hundred Head but as for so much truly valuable material of the Church, I’m a lost ball in the high weeds.
Too bad that we didn’t have a trad contestant on the show to ask, “Quid est ‘sanctificetur’?”
Seriously, though, it’s sad but unsurprising as there’s a generation of “nones” out there who are completely ignorant about religion in general and Christianity in particular. A few months ago, after exiting my parish church (in a business district of a major U.S. city), I overheard a conversation among two 20-something young men as they walked in front of me down the street. Young man #1: “I think this is some kind of church. A Catholic church, maybe.” Young man #2: “You know, I was watching this documentary on one of the streaming channels. There’s like this whole little city in Italy, in, Rome I think, that like the Catholic Church or something totally runs. It’s really weird.” Young man #1: “Right. I’ve heard of that. Like the Vatican or something.”
The correct answer is obviously “sanctificetur”.
I memorized the basic ones in Latin to freak out the normies.
But that’s just sad. Even my five year old knows the Our Father and Hail Mary.
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Senator Jeremiah Denton once said that reciting the rosary kept his mind straight while surviving 7 years and 7 months as a POW.
I recommend his book When Hell was in Session.
I memorized the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Gloria Patri and the Fatima prayer in Latin so that I can say the rosary in Latin (to annoy the Devil). I need to work on the Salve Regina and the Apostles Creed, I still have to say them in English.
It would also be useful to memorize certain psalms so one could say a daily office. I have Psalm 95 for morning prayer/mattins, plus the Benedictus and Magnificat, need to work on others.
What makes me sad is that Alex Tribeck was a practicing Catholic who was educated by the Christian Brothers in Canada for 12 years. God rest his soul. He would be appalled. I remember in an interview when asked about sexual abuse at religious school, He firmly said in all his years living with the Christian Brothers there was no a hint of scandal.
P.S. My Son and I always watched Jeopardy. He was on his way to the final test to be a Contestant when Covid hit and they were all canceled.
I teach ccd to the kiddies at the local parish. We are asked to be sure they know their prayers: OF, HM, GB, I t add the prayer to St. Michael and Memorare. As a ccd teacher you don’t know how much the kids will retain, especially if not practised at home. In the tough moments, I hope these prayers will come to them. I also have them memorize the answer to ‘why God made me’ and since we were in class at 6pm, Angelus. By the end of the ccd year, they were reminding me when they heard the 6pm bells!
I hope every lay person here volunteers to teach ccd.
Ten years ago, my Catholic college (“in the Jesuit tradition”) opened a time capsule.
Our alumni magazine identified one of the contents as “a religious necklace.”
It was a silver rosary…
When I was in Catholic grade school (now defunct Little Flower Catholic School in Berkeley Heights, NJ), we were told to memorize Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd . . . ) – 40+ years later I can still pray this. Recently I’ve taken to pray the rosary. I was tired of having to look up the Apostles Creed (I know, I know, I should already know it), so I decided to memorize that. Next up is the “Hail Holy Queen” and I’ll be able to pray the whole Rosary without any aids – well except for knowing which mysteries to pray each day.
My kids all know the usual ones, and my “younger” ones can even do the Agnus Dei that is chanted in Latin at our NO Mass (something I’m not able to do yet). When I heard them chant it without any aids, I was surprised.
No one took a guess on the main thematic words, either, “trespass” and “bread.”
My mother’s father, Arthur, died early in her life. She thought for a time as a child that the prayer was “Our father, who’s Art in heaven, hallowed…”
JRR Tolkein to son Christopher:
“…In Letter 54, he writes to Christopher that he regularly uses prayers such as the Gloria Patri, Laudate Dominum, and Sub tuum in Latin. “It is also a good and admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstance keeps you from hearing Mass.…”
From:
“Tolkien’s Traditionalism: Conveniently Forgotten?”
By Julian Kwasniewski|June 13th, 2023
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2023/06/tolkien-traditionalism-conveniently-forgotten-julian-kwasniewski.html
Tolkein > Tolkien (I should know better!!)
I thought the missing word was “Harold”; as least I did when I was a kid!
It’s not that difficult to memorize prayers, folks. I’m 71 yo, & over the past few years I’ve managed to memorize all the rosary prayers in Latin, including St. Michael’s & the St. Benedict prayers (still working in the Creed though). I have the advantage of being in an FSSP parish, so I’m regularly exposed to (& thus attuned to) Latin.
Repetition is key to memorization, IMO; you DO say the rosary every day, right?
lol Jack, that’s superb!
During the lockdowns I walked to our cathedral, praying a Rosary on my way. I started off with “Gloria Patri” then “Ave Maria” then I struggled to memorize the “Pater Noster” but eventually managed. Now I pray my Rosary in Latin, and I’m afraid I’d pray in Latin at a public Rosary because I’m so used to it. I still need to memorize the “Salve Regina” and the Creed.
Praying for your mum daily, Fr Z.
I have always had the most curious memory. Something would be well memorized and then, without warning, it would be gone. Re-memorizing things becomes progressively harder. During my teens someone had given a talk on Angels (I’ve long forgotten who or exactly what), shortly after that it dawned on me to ask my Guardian Angel to help me with my prayers. Ever since before needing to say some prayer I will always either find the prayer I need or else someone else will come along to say the bits I forget. God always provides
That priest was a Romanian one who is buried in the crypt of one of the churches (maybe the Liebfraukirche?) in Munich. His nephew told me the story about the Christmas Eve Holy Mass. From the moment the imprisoned Romanian priest prayed the Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus until the final blessing, he saw all the angels and saints and all heaven there in the prison cell with him!!
Oddly, it’s possible that the contestants could have been Evangelicals. David B. Currie, a convert from Evangelical Fundamentalism and son of parents who were on the faculty of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (a major Fundamentalist seminary), wrote in his 1995 memoir of his conversion, “Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic” that “[m]ost Catholics (and ‘mainline’ evangelicals) would be amazed to hear this, but I have never been in an Evangelical church that regularly recited the Lord’s Prayer.” Many of these communities “wing it” with spontaneous prayer and are hostile to the Catholic practices concerning formal prayer, especially the Rosary.