Catholicae Testudines

Mass and the Bible

In a "Bible service" you read the Bible, but in the Mass you live the realities that are recorded in the Bible.

Latin

Besides what Pope Benedict said, everything sounds better in Latin, anyway.  Want to make something already good sound as impressive as it should?  Say it in Latin (Greek is good, too).  You know it's true.  Even trivial and mundane things sound better in Latin.  Like, I was flipping channels the other day and saw this Harry Potter movie on tv and Harry injures his arm and this wizard guy casts a spell to fix it.  And you know what the words were?  "Brachium emendo!"  If he had said magic words so prosaic in English it would have sounded laughable, but since he said it Latin it sounded good.  Isn't it even more fitting that great prayers should get the benefit of language that "clothes wisdom itself in a vesture of gold" (as Bl. Pope John XXIII put it)?

Don't object that you don't know Latin grammar.  So?  Just learn what the words mean, learn to make the sounds, and say them with the intent of what they mean, and maybe eventually learn heuristically the conventions of how they're used.  I bet that's how you learned English, too.  Half of you probably couldn't tell me the difference between a gerund and an adverb in English. 

And don't object that it's not "authentic."  It's authentic because you're Catholic, and therefore Latin is your language in a way that it isn't for a scientist or even a classics scholar, even one who speaks it better than you do.  And it won't seem so awkward once you start using it more regularly (trust me).  Furthermore, you wouldn't want to be one of those old fogeys who are so old-fashioned they don't even know any Latin, would you?  Go ahead, laugh now, but young people tend to be more enthusiastic about the Church's good traditions.

Pope presents Catechism summary, urges memorization of prayers in Latin

From CNS.

St. Francis

I had tons of interesting tidbits about St. Francis because I just finished listening to a lecture series about him - very interesting.  It was given by secular university professors who did not seem to profess even a modicum of Christianity, but they did a good job nonetheless trying to understand the saint and even the Church on their own terms (rather than their own personal opinions).

But now they've slipped my mind.  Usually if I want to write something down I have to do it right when the thought strikes me or I'll forget it, but my internet connection has been intermittent lately.  They're bouncing around somewhere in there, so maybe they'll come out here sometime. 

Anyway, the number-one best-selling anything about St. Francis is "Brother of the Universe," a comic book produced by Marvel Comics (based on his actual life, not, like, Superman in a habit).  The professors owned that they were not well-acquainted with the fine points of what makes a comic book a specially good one, but this one sold half a million copies (is that a lot, Peter?), and they enjoyed reading it, for what it's worth.

St. Francis again

Someone told me that he was suspicious of the Knights of Columbus because they (we) promote violence with our talk of spiritual knighthood and prayer as our sword etc.  In order to be consistent, he would have to disapprove equally strongly of St. Francis, who is the one of the main ones from whom we get this sort of tradition from.  You may or may not know that before he entered the religious life, he had a great ambition to be a knight, and afterwards, he did not abandon the ideal.  Now, a knight always has his lady, and you don't have to guess to hard to figure out who that was.  Just so you realize that he saw it this way explicitly and I am not just reading history backwards, he used to write songs in the style of minstrels' songs of the courtly love of a knight for his lady about our Lady and sing them.

Extreme?

If you're uncomfortable with a layman, religious, or priest who is devoted to Christ above all else to the point where you think he is weird and extreme, if you had met St. Francis of Assisi, you would have thought he was weird and extreme.

Just so you know, whenever I complain about something on the blog, it's usually motivated somehow by some experience I've had recently.  You might not see how because you might not follow me around 24/7.  But when I find myself about to get on a hobby horse of mine just because I don't have anything else to write, I think I usually catch myself. With that in mind, I'd like to blather about things that get on my nerves.  But the reasons these things get on my nerves are very rational.  So if you are interested in that sort of thing, go ahead.  If not, scroll up to the next post.

I really can't seem to make my parents understand why it bothers me so much when priests try to force the Holy Mass to fit the procrustean bed of their personal preferences instead of doing it the way the Church tells them.  After all, isn't still a valid Mass?  Doesn't it fulfill your Sunday obligation?  Yes, but believe me, if it was really true that worshipping God was about doing whatever you wanted, whatever I wanted would certainly not involve bothering with Fr. whoever's personal custom designer liturgy (I've seen this in action, too).  Now granted, the disobedience not as extensive bad there as it is in some places - I met a priest who substituted non-biblical readings and omitted the Gospel reading in favor of a homily and more besides (it wasn't in Baltimore, in case you were going to ask).

But really.  So Sunday two weeks ago (not here; I was visiting my parents) I was like, oops, looks like Father forgot the Gloria.  And he was so busy with his introductory remarks he forgot the Sign of the Cross.  Ok, it's tough when you're in front of all those people.  I know an elderly priest who had to start using an altar card because he'd forget whether he'd said the Agnus Dei or not.  But then a different priest at the same parish did it again.  That's odd.  Why would you not want to say the Gloria on Sunday?  Even if your music guys don't have any music prepared to sing it to, just recite it (chances are it would be a relief to most people anyway since the music director is as tasteless as he is talented [very]).  Oh, and don't forget not saying the Creed for the 11 bajilionth Sunday in a row.  I know that on Sunday though you're supposed to say the Creed, the GIRM says you can omit it if baptismal vows are renewed or "for pastoral reasons," but every Sunday?  Why would you not want to say the Creed on Sunday?  Are you ashamed of it?  Unfortunately, these are not the only things I have to object to.  The pastor has instructed the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion to receive communion as though they were concelebrating priests; now they don't wait to be given the Blessed Sacrament, they just jump right in and help themselves during the fraction (why not?).  The rest are the sort of little thing that each by itself isn't some big offense, but altogether one can't help but think they make a sort of a pattern: tabernacle out of sight, no crucifixes anywhere, juice glass-looking things for chalices, Mass has that social meeting feel, doing things that wouldn't really matter except that the rubrics or the bishop say that you should do otherwise like have the congregation stand for the consecration, wear the stole over the chasuble, consecrate the wine in a big flagon, etc., etc., etc.

Hey, ever wonder why Baltimore has so very few vocations?  Could it be that even the people who don't memorize the GIRM nevertheless still sense a spirit of ungenerosity toward the Church and follow the lead, and the people who are devoted enough to the Church and the Mass to think about being priests are dis-encouraged and dis-inspired?  There probably aren't any Baltimore vocations directors reading this (and even if they did, why should they listen to me) but I know three or four men who grew up in Baltimore and didn't fully realize a vocation to the priesthood until they came to Washington, and they're not applying to Baltimore.  That's as men many as you ordained last year, wasn't it?  There's a way to fix that, and it's not a better PR campaign.

Paging Dr. Frankenstein

Have you ever had the nightmare where you're running from a pack of undead canines only to be torn to pieces right before you make it home.  Well neither have I, but I think I'll be having it soon because scientists have successfully killed, drained the blood, and then re-animated a dog! 
Read more here.  Unless you're Peter, in which case you better not click that link, in fact it might be safer for your sanity to just pretend you never read this post.

Fr. Bill: Can you guys re-point the bricks?
[Grand Knight] Alan: We're Knights, Father, not Masons.

Announcing the Society of Pope St. Pius I

     Welcome to the fledgling website of the Society of St. Pius  I (SSPI). Unlike  other so-called “traditionalist” Roman Catholic groups, we adhere to the  ORIGINAL Roman Catholic Mass of A.D. 40-200, and described by St. Justin Martyr and   the Apostolic Constitutions, and used by Pope St. Pius I of happy memory.               

  Don’t be fooled by PHONY “Vulgate” neotraditionalists, who claim to protect tradition, and yet still defend the RADICAL and totally UNCATHOLIC reforms of the 4th century A.D.

  So-called “trads” pretend to be against the modernism of the  last hundred   years, but where were they when the original Rite of Rome, the  Greek rite   USED BY ST. PETER AND THE APOSTLES was being totally gutted and  revised by unknown scholars and translated into the vernacular language of  Latin?                 

  Unlike other wimpy neotraditionalist groups who attach themselves to    various other Piuses, we at the SSPI make absolutely ZERO compromises with    modernism. We reject not just one, but BOTH “Novus Ordos”—the Novus Ordo   of 1970 promulgated by Paul VI, and the Latin Vulgate Mass of 400 A.D. promulgated by Innocent I and Pope Gregory I, which we call the “Vulgar Mass.”             

  Thanks to the miracle of the internet, we can now spread the TRUTH  about the REAL Roman liturgical tradition which is being kept alive only by a brave remnant of faithful Catholics: myself and whoever else wants to join.

  --Klaudios Philadelphou, Archon and Caesaropapist of the SSPI

I'm sure glad someone is getting the word out about that faddish Latin.  This is probably one of the funnier parodies I've seen in a while.