Hellpuppets, explained

Episcopalian black-ops - that's the best explanation I've seen for Call To Action's giant hellpuppet liturgy that was making the rounds last week.

The joy he gives us

Pope Benedict XVI on one of his favorite composers:

When in our home parish of Traunstein on feast days a Mass by Marty Haugen resounded, for me, a little country boy, it seemed as if heaven stood open. In the front, in the sanctuary, columns of incense had formed in which the sunlight was broken; at the altar the sacred action took place of which we knew that heaven opened for us. And from the choir sounded music that could only come from heaven; music in which was revealed to us the jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God.

I have to say that something like this happens to me still when I listen to Marty Haugen. Marty Haugen is pure inspiration — or at least I feel it so. Each tone is correct and could not be different. The message is simply present.

"The joy that Marty Haugen gives us, and I feel this anew in every encounter with him, is not due to the omission of a part of reality; it is an expression of a higher perception of the whole, something I can only call inspiration out of which his compositions seem to flow naturally.

Hmm... that really doesn't work, does it? Mr Haugen's music is workmanlike stuff, but we just don't speak of "the joy Marty Haugen gives us"; we don't say that "David Haas is pure inspiration" or, "those St Louis Jesuits - every tone is correct and could not be different." That would be silly. Those things can be said about some composers, though. Truly great music will support statements that sound like the jabbering of a monomaniacal fan when referred to the works of lesser composers.

Here's the original article in the National Catholic Register.

A note on indulgences

The time associated with an indulgence doesn't mean that the indulgence gets you out of Purgatory that early. I see this error a few times a week since I've subscribed to the blogs of various medieval scholars; most recently here.

Until indulgences were reformed in 1967 by Pope Paul VI with his Apostolic Constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, each indulgence was given a period of time - for example,

An indulgence of 300 days every time the three following ejaculatory prayers are said, to obtain a happy death:

- Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I give you my heart and my life.

- Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, assist me in my last agony.

- Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, may I die in peace in your blessed company.

Roughly speaking, the 300 days means that the prayer is the equivalent to doing 300 days of penance now, while you're still here. Here's a more technical explanation from catholic.com:

Before Vatican II each indulgence was said to remove a certain number of "days" from one's discipline - for instance, an act might gain "300 days' indulgence" - but the use of the term "days" confused people, giving them the mistaken impression that in purgatory time as we know it still exists and that we can calculate our "good time" in a mechanical way. The number of days associated with indulgences actually never meant that that much "time" would be taken off one's stay in purgatory. Instead, it meant that an indefinite but partial (not complete) amount of remission would be granted, proportionate to what ancient Christians would have received for performing that many days' penance. So, someone gaining 300 days' indulgence gained roughly what an early Christian would have gained by, say, reciting a particular prayer on arising for 300 days.

To overcome the confusion Paul VI issued a revision of the handbook (Enchiridion is the formal name) of indulgences. Today, numbers of days are not associated with indulgences. They are either plenary or partial.

There. Now I've got that off my chest.

And hey - it's Christmas! (which starts after midafternoon prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours)

Friendship, ancient and modern

Just arrived today: Spiritual Friendship by St Aelred of Rievaulx. It's unfortunate that so many today take Aelred's "friendship" to mean "sodomy". As Eve Tushnet put it delicately, "apparently it... speaks to a wide range of people." Her quick review is there at the link, along with a mention of Alice von Hildebrand's essay on friendship. One blurb on the back of the book mentions Cicero's essay on friendship, so it's high atop Mt Toberead, too; just east of the pile of laundry, Mt Neverest.

Preternatural blogging

How does he do it? I forget which of the prolific Blossers runs the Ratzinger Fan club, but he sure makes it look easy when it's not.

The Annunciation Project

The mother-daughter team of Dorris W. Goodrich and Anne Goodrich Heck have put together a website devoted to the Annunciation.

The authors—mother and daughter—came to this subject independently of one another and from different paths. Each has been working on it for over fifteen years, collecting visual representations of the Annunciation scene, searching out amplifications of the story, and comparing the ways in which the image has been represented at different times in a variety of cultures. The mother is primarily interested in the history of its representation, while the daughter is concerned with how the spiritual meaning of the image is reflected in Christian art.

Document dump

I have plans for Bernard's sermons on the Missus Est; here's what else I turned up.

• Writings of St. Louis Marie de Montfort
• St Bernard's Advent and Christmas sermons (including the sermons on the "Missus Est"); also see Marco Binetti's St Bernard etexts from the Patrologia Latina (PL 182-185)
• James Cotter Morison's biography of St Bernard
• the same from Don Mabillon, volume 1 and volume 2.
• Dalgairns' life of St Stephen Harding, founder of the Cistercians
• Legends of the Monastic Orders as Represented in the Fine Arts

Minigreet

Read Diogenes on the infernal Minigreet. Like Orwell's Minitruth, the "Ministry of Truth" devoted to propagating the state's lies, a Christian church's "ministry of greeting" also belies its name - the grip-n-grin Minigreet ordeal at the front door can easily drive people away.

A long time ago Lisa and I went to a little Stone-Campbell church in Champaign. Their times were listed wrong in the yellow pages and we arrived halfway through the Sunday morning service, missing whatever gauntlet visitors usually run. We sat in the back corner of course, as normal people do when in a new place, and after things were finished we were mobbed by these people - they were magnetically drawn to us like pale vampires looking for fresh blood. Being normal people, we escaped and never returned.

A commenter at Diogenes' place wrote:

A little off the point, there is a fourth group - the crazy people. Some of them are homeless, some of them think they are Kaiser Wilhelm. Some will stand up through mass, mirroring the gestures of the priest. Most are very harmless. I love them there, and I think they are dearly loved by God. In New York, everyone just lets them be, and I think it's great that in a non-interfering way, they are "welcomed."

Indeed - that goes for normal people, too. Respect visitors enough to let them be alone with God. Soon enough, they'll find who they need to talk to.

Why is my online bookbag so danged heavy?

Another haul from Google Books, from a search for the hymns of St Hilary of Poitiers:

• The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns, Samuel Willoughby Duffield, 1889, Funk & Wagnalls
• St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of Tours By John Gibson Cazenove, 1883, E. & J. B. Young & Co.
• Sacred Latin Poetry: Chiefly Lyrical, Selected and Arranged for Use. With Notes and Introduction, Richard Chenevix Trench, 1874, Macmillan and Co.
• Latin Hymns: With English Notes edited by Francis Andrew March, 1874, Harper & Brothers
• Latin Hymns, compiled by William Augustus Merrill, 1904 B.H. Sanborn
• Hymni Ecclesiæ, edited by John Henry Newman, 1865
• The Seven Great Hymns of the Mediaeval Church, Charles C. Nott, 1902, E. S. Gorham
• Literature and Poetry, Philip Schaff, 1890, C. Scribner's sons
• Mediæval Hymns and Sequences, 3rd ed., John Mason Neale, 1867, J. Masters
• Latin Hymns in English Verse: With Short Biographical Sketches of Their Authors, James Heartt Van Buren, Henry Parks Wright, 1904, Old Corner Bookstore
• St. Basil's Hymnal (a Catholic hymnal & prayerbook), Basilian Fathers, 1891, St. Michael's College (Toronto, Ont.)
• Anglican Hymnology, James King, 1885, Hatchards

Mary Foreshadowed

Ah, Google Books! Mary Foreshadowed; or, Considerations on the Types and Figures of Our Blessed Lady in the Old Testament. Rev. F. Thaddeus, O.S.F.

Lives of the English Martyrs

Via Google Books: Lives of the English Martyrs Declared Blessed by Pope Leo XIII. in 1886 and 1895:

• volume 1 of 2
• volume 2 of 2

The Fathers on the mysteries of the Rosary

When titles were titles: The Book of the Holy Rosary: A Popular Doctrinal Exposition of its Fifteen Mysteries, Mainly Conveyed in Select Extracts From the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. With an Explanation of Their Corresponding Types in the Old Testament. A Preservative Against Unbelief. Rev. Henry Formby, of the Third Order of St Dominic.

New books for my library

My Google Books library, that is.

• Gregory the Great, Rev. J. Barmby, 1892; Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
• Gregory the Great: His Place in History and Thought, volume 1, Frederick Holmes Dudden, 1905 Longmans, Green
• The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, 3rd edition, Henry Osborn Taylor, 1911 The Macmillan Company
• A History of Latin Literature, Leonhard Schmitz, 1877, William Collins, Sons, & Company
• The Dark Ages, William Paton Ker, 1904, C. Scribner's sons
• Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St. Macarius the Egyptian, translated by Arthur James Mason, 1921, Macmillan
• Aelfric: A New Study of His Life and Writings By Caroline Louisa White, 1898 Lamson, Wolffe and Company
• The Complete Works of Venerable Bede: In the Original Latin, John Allen Giles, 1843, Whittaker
  • volume 1 (check out the initial capital letters!)
  • volume 2
  • volume 5
  • volume 6
  • volume 7
  • volume 8
  • volume 10
  • volume 11
• The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church (this is a starting-point to track down the many volumes of this series for a future blog post)
• The London Charterhouse: Its Monks and Its Martyrs, with a Short Account of the English Carthusians After the Dissolution, Dom Lawrence Hendriks, 1889, K. Paul, Trench & Co.

Just doesn't work

Using creepy pervs to market consumer goods makes no sense. The commercial is objectively creepy by itself in its original context (it's a fargin' clown) but when it's filtered through our post-2002 Catholic sensibilities it reaches til-now-unplumbed depths of creepiness.

Savonarola on Psalm 51

You never know what you'll turn up at Google Books. Here's a translation of Girolamo Savonarola's extended meditation on Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus, written during his imprisonment and torture. What do the Dominicans make of Savonarola nowadays?

I knew a priest at St Matthew's in Champaign IL back in the 90s who was working on an English translation of Savonarola's works, but I don't know what became of the project.

Commentaries are up

At the kind prompting of Deacon John Paul Kelly of St Bernard of Clairvaux parish in Dallas, Texas, I've finally completed my guide to the Psalm commentaries of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Update: I just found that the archdiocese of Newark links to this page from their permanent diaconate page (see the left column).

Carthusiasm

Saturday is the feast of St Bruno, founder of the Carthusians.

• their website
• Carthusian saints (see especially the page devoted to St Bruno)
• St Bruno at wikipedia
• Carthusians at wikipedia
• my posts about St Bruno
• his complete writings at Google Books (Migne's Patrologia Latina):
  • PL 152
  • PL 153
• the movie Into Great Silence

It's always time for the Pantocrator!

For more information, see Christopher Schönborn's God's Human Face.

Gregory's Moralia in Job

part of the 1850s English edition edition at Google Books:

• Volume 2 (parts 3 and 4: books 11-22)
• Volume 3, Part 1 (part 5 and books 28 and 29)
• Volume 3, Part 2 (books 30-35)

St Bruno the Carthusian on the Psalms

Here begins his commentary on the Psalms. Wish I could read Latin...

Five dollars?

So Lisa was reading this week's Catholic Post and found a small notice about a seminar in Peoria next month that she'd like to attend. When she saw it cost $5.00 per person, she did a double-take and checked that it was sponsored by a Catholic organization; most Catholic activities - even "days of reflection" or whatnot - are priced way out of our league. She read the notice to me while we were working on supper - it sounded Catholic but when she got to the $5.00 part I paused - "That's not the Catholic Post, is it? Five dollars?"

Speaking of money, the Post also had a creepy article about a new push for "stewardship" in the diocese of Los Angeles. The thing read like a Pravda feature about the new Five Year Plan and even featured brave peasants boldly confronting a priest who didn't understand the new idea of stewardship. Apparently these financial Stakhanovites were eager to give but the priest didn't want to preach about money. Reeducation changed that and now he's a steward, too.

Sorry, folks

A certain knock on the door for the second time in two weeks:

• Her: <opening spiel>
• Me, spying the Awake! pamphlet with her Bible: "Jehovah's Witnesses? We're Catholic; we're not interested. Thanks for coming by." Deliver quickly with a friendly smile, then close door.

If time weren't such a luxury around here I could have them in and we could hash stuff out.

Kinda like Easter

Here's an article from the Philadelphia Daily News about the hectic preparations for Yom Kippur (starts tomorrow night) in a large Philly synagogue, Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

But "hectic" bordering on "frantic" may best describe the days leading up to Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown Friday.

"I haven't slept in weeks," Carol Perloff, communications director for Congregation Rodeph Shalom on North Broad Street, said this afternoon. "It's like a meeting of a small nation."

Sounds like the folks who prepare Holy Week & Easter liturgies.