I just received a phone call yesterday asking my husband and I if we would be willing to pay for a biretta for our parish priest so he could go for training in the Extraordinary Form. We said absolutely (and offered towards an altar rail!). Even here in a diocese that has been forsaken for so long, we are building! Now we pray that the new bishop chosen for us is an orthodox one.
That, folks, is how it is done.
Today is the feast of St. Teresa of Avila.
There is an interesting story about the Teresa and our present, modern Julio-Gregorian calendar.
In 1582, the ancient Julian calendar (organized by, yes, Julius Caesar and still observed by many Orthodox Christians) officially was terminated on Thursday 4 October by the command of Gregory XIII (1572–1585, Ugo Boncompagni) via the papal bull Inter gravissimas.
At midnight of 3-4 October the calendar skipped automatically to a day named Friday 15 October.
The famed Jesuit mathematician Christopher Clavius (+1612) worked out the calculations for this change. He chose October for the moment of the jump because it had the fewest feast days. He also did his calculations without the use of the decimal point!
St. Teresa of Avila died on the very night on which His Holiness had commanded that the calendar shift from 4 October to 15 October, which is why her feast is celebrated on the 15th rather than the 3rd or 4th.
If you are in Rome sometimes, stop my San Salvatore in Lauro and look at the chewed up little fountain to the left of the main doors of the church. It will probably be obscured by parked cars. On this llittle fountain is what’s left of a lamb. Over the fountain there is an inscription which inter alia speaks of a draco or “dragon” who, dutiful (pius), masters the whole globe or the world (draco qui toti pius imperat orbi). This is reference to Pope Gregory XIII whose coat of arms bore a dragon with wings outstretched. this is the Pope who ordered the change in the calendar and after whom we call our modern calendar Julio-Gregorian.
Here is the inscription on the fountain, for those of you who want to take a crack at it. You will need to know that virginea here refers to a famous Roman water source, called Acqua Vergine (which flows over the coins in the Fontana Trevi) and the lupus (“wolf”) and leo (“lion”) refer to other fountains, now lost, which were part of a set, this fountain being the “lamb”.
VT LVPVS IN MARTIS CAMPO MANSVETIOR AGNO
VIRGINEAS POPVLO FAVCE MINISTRAT AQVAS
SIC QVOQVE PERSPICVAM CVI VIRGO PRAESIDET VNDAM
MITIOR HIC HOEDO FVNDIT AB ORE LEO
NEC MIRVM DRACO QVI TOTI PIVS IMPERAT ORBI
EXEMPLO PLACIDOS REDDIT VTROQVE SVO
MDLXXVIIII
Going across the river to San Pietro in Vaticano, we search in the right side aisle for the tomb of Pope Gregory XIII and the interesting relief on his tomb.
It portrays the moment he was so proud of in his pontificate: when Clavius gave him the plans for the new calendar.
One of the things you must learn to do in Rome is pay attention to details, which are really rather funny at times. These people had a wonderful sense of humor.
What is interesting is the style of spectacles from that time, and that the sculptor included it. I haven’t gotten to the bottom of who this fellow might have been. The sculptor himself? The biographer of Gregory? Who knows?
By the way, one of my favorites Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590, Felice Peretti) said:
“Had the Jesuit order produced nothing more than this Clavius, on this account alone the order should be praised”. Clavius was an incredible mathematician who solved some of the most difficult problems of his day and who produced the essential textbooks of the era. Even the way we all learned Euclidian geometry when we were children is due mostly to the presentations of Clavius. His works were translated into Chinese by Matteo Ricci and others so that missionaries could connect with scholars in that far away land and thus bring them to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
PS: Since it is also the Ides of October, today in ancient Rome would have been the day of the October Horse.
In the ultra-liberal newspaper of my native place, the Star-Tribune, there is a wacky article trying to turn Catholics against the Knights of Columbus, because the KCs are donating to help the Marriage Amendment to the Minnesota constitution. Here is an interesting paragraph:
In the last four years, the group has given at least $3.6 million to groups leading marriage fights across the country. Now the group is trying to make its mark in Minnesota, and has directly given more than $130,000 to the fight.
$130K! THAT MUCH! WOWWWWWWWIE!
Think of the tens of millions that liberals and homosexual activists pour into the advancement of contrary-to-nature immorality.
But the KCs! Well! The Catholic Knights of Columbus gave $130,000 dollars to something for which the Catholic Bishops of Minnesota have asked for help.
Who do they think they are?
It seems to me that the whole STrib article is thinly-veiled anti-Catholicism.
Was there a good point from the sermon you heard at Mass when fulfilling your Sunday obligation?
Let us know!
(Tease: I will post a humdinger later on.)
I am sure you have heard this at one point or another… perhaps even too often. Hitherto in many places, during the last stage of preparation before the distribution of Holy Communion, if the work at the altar was going on for a while, the singing of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) would be extended – vamped, in a manner of speaking – by the addition of additional (sometimes even appropriate) Christological titles. Lamb of God… Prince of Peace… King of Kings… etc.
Over the years, however, I have heard some real howlers inserted.
In any event, that’s all over now and the liberal home-spun liturgy types are not happy. No, not one little bit. The Holy See determined that these “tropes”, these additions inserted to lengthen the Lamb of God are right out.
Over at the Fishwrap some of them have a little nutty about the Roman oppression, the “control” they are exerting. Here is a taste, to add some relish to your reading:
[…]
Several also expressed frustration that the Vatican congregation was apparently issuing directives to bishops’ conferences on the matter.
One liturgist, Viatorian Fr. Mark Francis, [This is the guy who, after Summorum Pontificum, in the pages of The Tablet attacked Pope Benedict and anyone who likes the Extraordinary Form. I recall in particular his condescending assertion that the Pope, unlike Francis himself, “is not a trained liturgist”. HERE.] called the changes “another revision to a former way of operating.”
“We’re into this fundamentalist kind of approach,” said Francis, who has previously taught at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago [Ooooo! What prestige!] and served in Rome as his congregation’s superior general until July. [I wonder how they are doing with vocations….]
The changes to the “Lamb of God,” Francis said, are “another example of [the bishops’] trying to maintain the purity of the Roman rite.” [Imagine such a thing! Imagine]
“Other than simply being literally faithful to the previous way of doing these things, what does this do for us?” he asked. [Instead of being “literally faithful” we should be “figuratively faithful”! At least I figure that’s what that means.] “How does this help our worship? That question is very rarely asked anymore.”
Felician Sr. Judith Kubicki, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University, [The admixture of Jesuits and liturgy is usually volatile.] said she saw the change as “two-pronged,” [Sounds rather warlike, no?] both as a logistical adjustment following the recent changes in the liturgy and as a further signal that the Vatican is concerned about “controlling the text” of the Mass. [WHAT?!? What is this you say? Imagine! The “Vatican” trying to control the text of the Mass!]
“It’s another example of a need to completely supervise what the prayer text is,” [It is almost as if there is a connection between what we believe and how we pray!] said Kubicki, who also served as president of the North American Academy of Liturgy in 2008. “And if you have these tropes … they’re no longer under supervision.”
[…]
Imagine Rome trying to control the text of the Roman Rite!
Who do they think they are?!?
Those men in the Congregation. Are they liturgists?!?
At the end of the Call to Holiness Conference, I spoke at the dinner. I led with a reference to popular culture, a song by Kenny Chesney. In the country-music song, a young man learns that his girlfriend is with child. He sings, “There goes my life.”. His little girl grows up to be the light of his life. As she leaves home he sings, “There goes my life.”
Sometimes mistakes result from alcohol. The Church experienced some inebriation during and after Vatican II. We see there were mistakes made. When we sober up and let time pass, and see how God was working, we find that some mistakes can be blessings. Lots of people after the Council felt, “There goes my life”. But, “There goes my life”, often ends in graces.
Pope Benedict, in his critique of the Council and in his talks at the 50th Anniversary and the Opening of the Year of Faith has offered some sober and sobering views of where we are now and of the Council. Mistakes have been made, but that is not where it ends.
And now we have serious work to do… in the desert.
That is how I started. For there rest… you’ll have to get it elsewhere. I set my notes aside at a certain point and just let it rip.
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Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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