I was alerted to this video over at Rorate.
I would point out that this year on 29 June is the 60th Jubilee of our Holy Father’s ordination to the priesthood, together with his brother Georg.
It is too bad that there could not be a Pontifical Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC for the anniversary of Pope Benedict’s election.
Wouldn’t it be great if there could be one – somewhere – for his 60th Jubilee?
US Bishops do care about theology and what is being taught and written. For example, even though we already knew this, Sr. Elizabeth Johnson’s book on the Trinity, Quest for the Living God, is not a good book.
The Doctrine Committee of the USCCB has issued a statement about the doctrinal orthodoxy of Sr. Johnson’s little tome. Sr. Johnson, a CSJ, teaches as the Jesuit school Fordham University in NYC.
The USCCB Doctrine Committee is chaired by His Eminence Donald Card. Wuerl.
There is a 21 page pdf available.
The nearly ubiquitous John L. Allen, Jr., sadly still writing for the National Catholic Fishwrap has a very good summary article about the statement on the theological orthodoxy of Sr. Johnson’s book. He saves you some time so you don’t have to slog through the pdf.
After saying explaining that Sr. Johnson’s book was very popular, and that it won awards, and how many awards and degrees Sr. Johnson has, we learn that … well… let me share some of this with my emphases and comments:
First, at the level of method, the statement accuses [Interesting choice of words. It may actually be accurate.] Johnson of questioning core elements of traditional Christian theology, including its understanding of God as “incorporeal, impassible, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.” Doing so, the statement asserts, is “seriously to misrepresent the tradition and so to distort it beyond recognition.” [I believe the Church teaches that God, Triune, is all of those things.]
Second, the statement faults Johnson for treating language about God in the Bible and in church tradition as largely metaphorical, implying that truth about God is essentially “unknowable.” Even if mysteries such as the Trinity and the Incarnation can never be fully grasped, the statement says, they can nevertheless be “known.” While Johnson bases part of her argument on early church fathers, according to the statement, her position actually has more in common with Immanuel Kant and “Enlightenment skepticism.”
Third, the statement asserts that in talking about the “suffering” of God, Johnson actually undermines God’s transcendence, suggesting that God differs only in degree, not in kind, from other beings. [That would be bad.]
Fourth, according to the statement, Johnson advocates new language about God not based on its truth but its socio-political utility. In particular, she argues that all-male language about God perpetuates “an unequal relationship between women and men,” and thus has become “religiously inadequate.” [And so we get to it.] In fact, according to the statement, male imagery about God found in scripture and tradition “are not mere human creations that can be replaced by others that we may find more suitable.”
Fifth, the statement asserts that Johnson’s emphasis on the presence of the Holy Spirit in non-Christian religions “denies the uniqueness of Jesus as the Incarnate Word.” [That would be bad.] In effect, according to the statement, Johnson’s argument suggests that for the fullness of truth about God, “one needs Jesus + Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, etc.”, a position it says is “contrary to church teaching.”
Sixth, the statement says, Johnson’s treatment of God as Creator ends in pantheism, undercutting the traditional understanding of God as “radically different from creation.” [The inevitable end of Modernism.]
Seventh, the statement faults Johnson’s understanding of the Trinity. Johnson treats traditional language about God as three persons as symbolic, according to the statement, thereby undercutting the church’s belief that “Jesus is ontologically the eternal Son of the Father.”
[NB] In its conclusion, the statement says the root problem with Johnson’s book is that it “does not take the faith of the church as its starting point.”
“It effectively precludes the possibility of human knowledge of God through divine revelation,” the statement says, “and reduces all names and concepts of God to human constructions that are to be judged not on their accuracy … but on their social and political utility.”
With today’s statement, Quest for the Living God joins a handful of other recent books by prominent American theologians which have been singled out for formal criticism by the Committee on Doctrine. [Get this great list:] Those works include The Sexual Person by Todd Salzman and Michael Salazar (Georgetown University Press, 2008); Being Religious Interreligiously by Peter Phan (Maryknoll, 2004); and two 2006 pamphlets on contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage by Daniel Maguire.
I am happy that the USCCB Doctrine Committee is reading books. Also, we should be grateful to Mr. Allen for giving us a summary.
Imagine the possible applications!
[wp_youtube]3CR5y8qZf0Y[/wp_youtube]
And did you see the video of the guy who can spin an inverted glass full of water? Did ya?
Over at Southern Orders there is a study in contrasts.
For your consideration.
And then…
We need Summorum Pontificum. We need the new, corrected translation.
In the Anderson, South Carolina Independent Mail.
Police investigating break-in at Anderson church
ANDERSON — Anderson police are investigating a break-in at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Anderson.
A church member went to St. Mary to unlock it around 6:35 a.m. today and found damage to a window.
A window was broken and some cabinet doors were damaged. Desk drawers had been opened and items strewn around the space.
The office of Father Aubrey McNeil, pastor of the church, was broken into, and the key to the church tabernacle taken, officials said.
Bread used in communion and distributed at Mass was taken from the tabernacle, but it does not appear that anything else was, officials said.
Mass cannot take place at the church until officials there find out from the bishop for the Diocese of Charleston how to proceed because communion material was disturbed.
McNeil said to his knowledge the break-in is the first at the church since it opened in 1943.
Please pray for the person(s) who did that and please perform some penitential act today in reparation for the desecration of the Eucharist.
The Catholic left condemned President Bush and the Iraq War.
Why is the Catholic left not condemning President Obama and what he is doing in Libya?
Liberals who don’t like the new translation either don’t like the clearer theology of the prayers or the sound of the prayers.
The usual tack they take is people are too stupid to understand the new texts. This has been the mantra for a long time now, since long before the new translation was approved by the bishops conferences and then by Rome and then emended by Rome.
I think people will take to the new translation pretty well. Yes, there will be a period of adjustment. It’ll be okay.
As far as being too dumb… well… when I was seven years old my grandmother, who had been in her long life a school teacher, gave me sets of LP records of Shakespeare plays. At first I didn’t understand them at first, but I was fascinated by the sound of it and in time I got them just fine, thank you very much. I was changed by them.
I am not saying that the new translation is anything like Shakespeare. Not at all. I have read the Eucharistic Prayers aloud in PODCAzTs. During Lent I have include the corrected versions of Collects in LENTCAzTs. They are not Shakespeare, folks. They are in some respects more challenging and awkward to read than many of my own slavishly literal versions I worked up for the sake of prying the Latin originals open, versions I never intended to be anything like liturgical, blunt instruments for the sake of study.
When I read them and heard them read aloud, the new, corrected translations do sound like translations. But I have gotten to the point, as I have said before, it is often okay for a translation to sound like a translation.
Ehem… they are translations. Latin is our liturgical language, not English.
With that as a prelude, there is a good post at CMR about the different sound of the language of the new, corrected English translation of Mass.
My emphases and comments.
The New Mass Translation – The Power of Fancy
by Pat Archbold Tuesday,
I may be weird, but I am looking forward to the new translation of the Mass.
It’s not that I am secretly a Latin scholar who has for years lamented improper translations. I am not. I don’t know my e pluribus unum from my ad nauseum. But I like the idea that the language will be fancier. I like fancy language. Fancy makes things seem special. [He is on the right track here.]
Fancy can take the the otherwise mundane and elevate it and make it memorable. [the lame-duck texts are so indecorous, any new translation would have meant an elevation.]
Do you remember those Merchant Ivory films from twenty years ago? They were all the rage back then. They won all kinds of awards and stuff. One I remember in particular, Remains of the Day.
Remains of the Day starred Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Hopkins plays a stuffy, emotionally repressed butler who never gets up the nerve to ask the maid out until it’s too late. This plot isn’t just mundane, this plot is mundane’s older but even more boring brother, humdrum. I would rather read Brecht while listening to Zamfir on the pan flute than watch this movie.
But….
You throw in some fancy tuxedos, fancy language and some fancy British accents and Bam!! Eight academy award nominations. Fancy did that.
And I remember it twenty years later. Fancy did that, too.
I have been convinced for years that if men started wearing bowler hats again, workplace productivity would go up 20%. It’s the power of fancy. [What he is really dealing with here is called decorum theory. He is talking about the effect of our contact with and pursuit of the aptum and pulchrum.]
Who among us, after watching a Shakespeare play, does not feel as if their IQ went up 20 points? I like to watch Shakespeare movies for no other reason than to look down on the people coming out of the Matt Damon movie in the next theater. [He lost me with the second part, even though I am sure he is making a funny, but that first part is surely right. Especially in this day of horrific English, which makes us stupider day by day, hearing Shakespeare does make us smarter.]
Let’s look at this another way. What happens if you take away the fancy? Would the prom still be the prom if everyone wore shorts and flip flops? No, then it would be like a regular summer Mass. But I digress… [Has the big question occurred to you yet?]
Fancy matters because fancy helps us remember that what is going on is special. And what is more special than the Mass? If a little elevated language can remind us how special the Mass really is, isn’t that a good thing? If a few thees and thous and a consubstantial can remind us to lift up our hearts, to lift them up to the Lord, I say all the better.
So while some may lament that the new translation is too, for lack of a better word, fancy, I say bring it on. Bring on the fancy. Sursum corda and all, whatever that means? But it sure sounds fancy.
His scriptis, do you want fancy? Want elevated language?
Just. Use. Latin.
Why is this so hard for the Latin Church to remember?
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami had an editorial letter in the Miami Sun Sentinel in defense of true, natural marriage. Wenski’s note was dignified and measured. He began:
Those who see “same sex marriage” as progress towards a more “tolerant” society will, with characteristic intolerance, label their opponents as “intolerant,” “bigoted,” “homophobic” and so on.
There was a response to Archbp. Wenski’s letter. A fellow named Brandon Thorp wrote a nasty, religiously bigoted attack on Catholics in the Broward-Palm Beach New Times. He began:
Just to be clear, Archbishop Wenski believes that a virgin gave birth to a deity who was nailed to a piece of wood to save us from the wrath of his father; and who rose from the dead, floated in the air, and ascended through a magic portal to heaven. I mention this not to cast aspersions on Wenski’s faith — I’ll do that in a moment — but to underline what Wenski means when he asserts that his side of the culture wars that is concerned with the “reality of things,” and the other side is full of fantasists.
It gets a lot worse.
Thomas Peters has a good analysis of the response made to Archbp. Wenski.
I find the Thorp … response loathsome. But this is what we are going to face more and more.
I bring it to your attention so that you can know what is coming.
A reader reminded me about something on the Vatican website for the Office of Liturgical Ceremonies:
5) The maniple is an article of liturgical dress used in the celebration of the extraordinary form of the Holy Mass of the Roman Rite. It fell into disuse in the years of the post-conciliar reform, even though it was never abrogated. The maniple is similar to the stole but is not as long: It is fixed in the middle with a clasp or strings similar to those of the chasuble. During the celebration of the Holy Mass in the extraordinary form, the celebrant, the deacon and the subdeacon wear the maniple on their left forearm. This article of liturgical garb perhaps derives from a handkerchief, or “mappula,” that the Romans wore knotted on their left arm. As the “mappula” was used to wipe away tears or sweat, medieval ecclesiastical writers regarded the maniple as a symbol of the toils of the priesthood.
This understanding found its way into the prayer recited when the maniple is put on: “Merear, Domine, portare manipulum fletus et doloris; ut cum exsultatione recipiam mercedem laboris” (May I deserve, O Lord, to bear the maniple of weeping and sorrow in order that I may joyfully reap the reward of my labors).
As we see, in the first part the prayer references the weeping and sorrow that accompany the priestly ministry, but in the second part the fruit of the work is noted. It would not be out of place to recall the passage of a Psalm that may have inspired the latter symbolism of the maniple.
The Vulgate renders Psalm 125:5-6 thus: “Qui seminant in lacrimis in exultatione metent; euntes ibant et flebant portantes semina sua, venientes autem venient in exultatione portantes manipulos suos” (They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds, but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their maniples).
And remember: How to keep that maniple on your arm.
UPDATE 30 March 1909GMT:
I HAVE IT.
Sheer glory.
There is included a DVD (Region 0) which has more audio in surround sound and a documentary on the recording.
“But Father! But Father!”, you are surely saying. “You mentioned sackbuts. Where are the sackbuts? Are there really sackbuts?”
I’ll give yah sackbuts!
There are also lots of shawms and viols. And don’t forget the lirone!
And I love the fact that this was recorded in a church in Tooting (London) … yes Tooting… not far from where I usually stay when I am in those parts.
_____
ORIGINAL POST Mar 14, 2011 @ 14:51
USA order HERE.
UK order HERE.
For your “Just Too Cool” file this is in from Reuters:
“Lost” 450-year-old mass soars on British charts
By Michael Roddy
LONDON (Reuters) – A sumptuous first recording of a long-lost 450-year-old Italian Renaissance mass written for 40 different vocal parts has soared onto British pop charts a week after its release. [I am reminded of the incredible concert I heard recently in NYC of music associated with the Sarum liturgy. Overwhelming waves of holy sound.]
The recording by British vocal group I Fagiolini [The String Beans] of the little-known Alessandro Striggio‘s 1566 mass for 40 voices [OOH-RAH!] — most masses are written for four — made its debut at number 68 on the pop charts, above Bon Jovi, George Harrison and Eminem.
It was number two on the classical charts, just behind Dutch violinist waltz master Andre Rieu.
“We really worked hard so that there could be a properly magnificent and extravagant sound world for the piece to revel in,” I Fagiolini’s conductor and founder Richard Hollingworth, 44, who thinks the mass has a “mesmeric” quality, told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday. [“mesmeric”… that’s “hypnotic” for residents of Columbia Heights. But I bet it doesn’t make you go blank!]
“This is not the grainy, black-and-white film, this is the full Hollywood Technicolor. I think that’s why it works so well…it’s like a kind of aural kaleidoscope.”
The mass was performed in several major European cities when it was written but had been mis-catalogued at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where it was rediscovered a few years ago by musicologist Davitt Moroney, and given its first modern performance at the BBC Proms in London in 2007. [BTW… a shameless request to friends in or around London. I would very much like to go to the closing of the Proms sometime… perhaps this year?]
I Fagiolini and their label Decca Classics, a part of the Universal music group, spared no expense on the recording. It uses five choirs and a panoply of period instruments, from trombone-like sackbuts to the 11-stringed lirone, a cello precursor, as well as lutes, recorders and Renaissance strings. [If it has to be an instrumental Mass, it really ought to have lirones and sackbuts.]
The instruments play lines of music that would otherwise be sung, which Hollingworth said was accepted practice at the time.
The CD release includes a DVD which offers the Striggio mass, plus another 40-part Striggio motet, and English composer Thomas Tallis’s 40-part “Spem in Alium” — written after Striggio’s works, and possibly inspired by them — in surround sound, plus a documentary about the making of the recording.
Striggio, who lived from 1536/7 to 1592, was a court composer to the Medici family in Florence and would have written the mass in 40 parts because, as Hollingworth put it, the Medicis liked to “make a big stink and money wasn’t a problem.”
Musical events at the time included the use of “cloud machines” on which performers descended to the stage, costumes and oil lamps to create special visual effects — “and finally you would hear the music,” Hollingworth said.
[…]
Read the rest there.
This was the era of the Counter-Reformation, when great “theatrical” thrones and sets were constructed in great “theatrical” churches such as the Chiesa Nuova in Rome for Exposition for the rapidly developing Forty Hours Devotion. Confraternities for adoration were springing up and music was written to accompany devotions and Mass. It was an astounding explosion of Faith-outward inculturation which shaped an age’s art.
I’m putting this one on my wishlist! [UPDATE! It had it on the wishlist and someone, I don’t know who, sent it to me. THANK YOU! It is amazing.]
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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