Wow, has it really been 18 days since I posted last? I’ve been visiting family for the holidays, but even so that’s a long time… as my little brother would say, I’m loafin’. I’m just in time, though, to wish everybody a Merry Christmas before it isn’t anymore. And Happy New Year as well!

Among other enjoyable holiday activities, the Doctor and I took a short trip with my family to Palm Springs in the week after Christmas. (Ah, the joys of Priceline! With its help we were able to stay, for little more than a Super 8 would cost, in a very comfortable resort-type place featuring multiple heated pools, fountains, picturesque avenues of palm trees, and all the things one would wish to see on a vacation to Palm Springs.) On the whole it was a very successful trip. But because it was over a weekend, it did occasion the unfortunate necessity of going to a Saturday vigil Mass at a random Novus parish in Palm Springs. Mostly there were all the usual things — nothing to compete with last year’s Teen Life Mass — but there was one that I at any rate hadn’t seen before: inviting all the children of the parish up around the altar during the consecration. Now, isn’t that cute.

Obviously this is objectionable on multiple levels. It’s irreverent. Crowding lots of people into the sanctuary makes it feel like story hour, not an intensely sacred event. Also, it’s very bad for the children. Inviting them up to the front (and of course the priest gathered them all behind him so that they were facing the people, rather than having them sit at the foot of the altar to adore the Blessed Sacrament) makes them feel like they’re the center of attention. If there is one time in the week when they should not feel like the center of attention, it is at Mass.

Thinking about it, though, it really just seemed kind of sad. How typically Western, to want to show off whatever children you have by bringing them up right in the middle of Mass. It’s characteristic of aging and dying societies to want to worship childhood and youth. Is it really surprising, then, that people would get mixed up about where to keep the children for the holiest part of the Mass?

I’m not quite sure what to make of this appointment. Does anyone know more about Bishop Vigneron? It looks like Bishop Vigneron was not unfriendly to the old rite in Oakland, yet that parish does not yet fully belong to the ICKSP; but that could have been for any number of reasons. At any rate, especially given the positive movement towards the Tridentine Mass around the world and in the U.S. in particular, I’d bet that it won’t be too much longer before Detroit sees a priest of the F.S.S.P. or the ICKSP.

In his Colloquia Erasmus has a short dialogue on the subject of hunting. These lines caught my attention:

La. Equidem malo insidiari piscibus; est mihi hamus elegans.

Ba. Sed unde parabis escam?

La. Lumbricorum ubique magna est copia.

Ba. Est, si tibi velint prorepere e terra.

La. At ego mox efficiam, ut multae myriades prosiliant.

Ba. Quo pacto? incantamentis?

La. Videbis artem. Imple hanc situlam aqua. Hos iuglandium summos cortices virentes confractos immittito. Hac aqua perfunde solum. Nunc observa paulisper. Vides emergentes?

Ba. Rem prodigiosam video. Sic olim, opinor, exsiliebant armati ex satis serpentis dentibus. . . .

Are walnut leaves as worm bane a classical idea or is this one of those true for all time but we moderns (or at least Iosephus), who no longer live close to the earth, have forgotten these things? Just wondering if anyone knows. Continue reading

Ummm . . . maybe I can get this post to stick this time around; I put it up a few days ago, but then it vanished into the aether. Fr. Z’s blog put me onto this blog, Rogue Classicism, which often has some interesting news; also, the occasional informative tidbit, like the following:

Here’s something I betcha didn’t know:

Technically speaking, the Germans really borrowed Prost (or more accurately, Prosit) from the Romans, since the word is a conjugated form of the verb prodesse, which means “to be useful,” or “to agree with.” Prosit is the verb’s subjunctive mood and literally means “May it agree with you” or “May it be useful,” which seems rather appropriate when talking about, well, a toast. So when you’re out and about celebrating the New Year on Wednesday, why not impress your friends with a hearty “Prosit Neujahr,” or “Happy New Year!” We hope it will be a great one for you!

Of course, traditional altar servers and clergy will recognize the word “prosit” as the - what to call it? - one word prayer said while bowing together towards the crucifix in the sacristy after Mass. That was, at least, how I experienced it at the Oxford Oratory. (For example, see footnote 101 here.)

Fr. Z had some comments about this word back in 2002: Continue reading

Subsequent to penning the second two paragraphs of this post, I became the owner, thanks to my indulgent wife, of an iPhone. But don’t worry, I haven’t begun to pray the new Breviary! I wanted to mention that while looking through Apple’s App store, I noticed that iBreviary wasn’t the first in the iPhone app game; Universalis was there before and it looks like they have a much nicer new Breviary on offer. The main difference is price; Universalis, at $32.99, probably isn’t going to be an impulse buy. One advantage of Universalis is that one download gives you the whole Breviary; you wouldn’t need to reconnect to the internet to download new content each day. Now for most people, especially for iPhone or iPod touch users, connecting to the internet at least once a day is hardly a rare occurrence. Anyway, if you’re interested, you can visit the App store in iTunes and read the customers’ reviews. From a few reviews that I read, iBreviary isn’t as pretty as Universalis; but iBreviary has the advantage of multiple languages (including Latin).

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If you’re looking for a good way in which to sanctify the sabbath and other festival days, remember that the edition of the Catechism of the Council of Trent which was published by Roman Catholic Books (originally published in 1923) has an outline for “a complete course in Christian doctrine” based upon the Epistle and Gospel readings for each Sunday of the year and other holy days of obligation. For each Sunday, a dogmatic and moral subject are given with page references to those topics in the catechism. The Catholic Encyclopaedia (1912) offers this hearty endorsement:

To some editions of the Roman Catechism is prefixed a “Praxis Catechismi”, i.e. a division of its contents into sermons for every Sunday of the year adapted to the Gospel of the day. There is no better sermonary. The people like to hear the voice of the Church speaking with no uncertain sound; the many Biblical texts and illustrations go straight to their hearts, and, best of all, they remember these simple sermons better than they do the oratory of famous pulpit orators.

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One of the questions that often comes up in discussions of the Resurrection is the question of animals.  I like to think that there will be animals in the Resurrection.  They, along with plants, were there in Eden.  By our very natures, we are meant to be masters of beasts and tillers of gardens.  We naturally like pets, and many saints were lovers of animals.  God took care for the plants and animals in the Deluge.  He also told Jonas that one of the reasons He did not want to destroy the guilty city of Nineve was the large number of innocent animals in the city (Jonas 4:11). 

Now, if there will be animals in the Resurrection, does that mean that animals can be resurrected?  This perplexes me, as according to Thomism plants and animals have mortal souls. Continue reading

Probably many of you have read by now the interview that Bishop Conry of Arundel and Brighton gave to The Catholic Herald. There are plenty of disturbing remarks in this, as Damian Thompson says, “astonishingly frank” interview, but here’s the one that’s making all the headlines:

“You can’t talk to young people about salvation. What’s salvation? What does salvation mean? My eternal soul? You can only talk to young people in young people’s language, really. And if you’re going to talk to them about salvation, the first thing they will understand is saving the planet. You’re talking about being saved, and they will say: ‘What about saving the planet?’”

Okay. An idiotic thing to say? In a sense yes, but on another level (a pagan level, you might say) Bishop Conry has made a very sensible observation: it isn’t easy for young people to grasp the concept of salvation, because the whole idea is quite beyond them.

Perfectly true. But, Your Excellency. It’s beyond all of us. That’s the whole point, isn’t it, of the Incarnation, and Our Lord’s great Sacrifice?

The Bishop’s words here aren’t exactly foolish, but they simply aren’t Christian. To order one’s life towards a postmortem supernatural end is a challenge indeed, and he is not wrong in this observation. But he does err in supposing that maturity is the ingredient needed to make this difficult task possible. No amount of ordinary human development would ever put that end within reach. Grace is the only thing that will serve. And that, Deo gratias, has been made available to every human creature, regardless of age.

Obviously he isn’t going to be asking my advice, but if he did, I would encourage His Excellency to meditate a bit on what the Good News really is. Perhaps he needs to regain a bit more of that childlike wonder.

Perhaps in part reflecting on Bonifacius’ Georgia post, and in part reading Mark Steyn’s latest article about the Mumbai attacks, I’ve made a decision. Traditionally-minded Catholics need to make more of a show of shaming Muslim extremists. I’m not talking about condemning terrorism. Everybody’s doing that nowadays, and nobody’s impressed by it. Condemning terrorism is practically code for “dismissing acts of terrorism and moving on down the political agenda.” Soon-to-be President Obama will no doubt be condemning terrorism on a regular basis, but we can be fairly confident that Muslim extremists will not be quaking in their boots when he does. They’re well aware that this kind of pious hand-wringing is no real threat to them; if anything it only makes them feel that much more complacent about the impotence of the West.

But perhaps if we could step up to the plate, hardcore Catholics could offer something better. In fact, I’ve long considered that if anyone has a chance of “dialoguing” with the Muslims in a remotely productive way, it’s the Catholics. The idea that secular liberals might somehow make headway on this front is laughable. They represent everything that Muslim extremists hate most, and their pretense of “sympathy” with extremists’ goals only makes them that much more contemptible in the eyes of Muslim fundamentalists. It would be hard to imagine a group of people more poorly equipped to negotiate a truce with the Muslim world.

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A few things to which I would like to draw your attention.

The first is a nice lecture given in 1998 by Joseph Kerman, “Music and Politics: The Case of William Byrd” (PDF warning). Cath Con posted a link for it yesterday and it was a nice read. The author is a professor at Berkeley and he seems very keen on Byrd, not just as a musician but also as a Catholic dissident.

The second thing is that online donation is now up and running for the Institute’s restoration project in St. Louis; you can read all about it at their blog, Tradition for Tomorrow: Restoring the Landmark of South St. Louis. Even though it may be years (if ever) before we’re next in St. Louis, I myself like to support this sort of thing. It seems to me that we all have a stake in the restoration of beautiful churches around this country where the traditional forms of the sacraments will be celebrated and the Faith handed on, in all its richness, to the next generation. Beautiful churches filled with traditional liturgies also seem to me to be one of the best avenues to conversions, whether of protestants or agnostics.
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