Ubi Petrus

That’s one of the first questions, and the hardest to answer, whenever someone is thinking about undertaking a new experience. For those life-changing experiences, that question is often followed quickly by “how does it work”; these two questions then usually repeat in varying order over and again due to the intensity of the questioning. If you know anyone who is contemplating a vocation to the priesthood, Fr. Jay Toborowsky at Young Fogeys (I guess, by definition, I’d probably be one of them) has some beautiful reflections on the nine-year-anniversary of his ordination and his first Mass.

I think his analogy of the process to Holy Orders to courting, engagement and marriage is a very good one (at least from the “never been close to Holy Orders” perspective) because it approaches the subject from an angle most people are at least fairly familiar with. One other reason to point those contemplating The Jump here: his obvious love of his vocation. It provides a good opportunity to point out the fact that recent surveys have shown the priesthood to have the highest job satisfaction. Certainly, those surveys is no reason to jump for the collar, but they do give the lie to the meme that priests are always disgruntled. Anyway, enough of my rambling. Go. Read.

Whew, it feels like forever since I’ve had a chance to sit down and blog. Okay, it’s been over a week – no wonder I was starting to twitch… Anyway, over at RCP a couple of days ago there was an exquisite post examining the hermeneutic of continuity (the hermeneutic itself, not the blog). At times educational, insightful and inspirational, it deserves your attention even if it is on the long side. I’ll start with the conclusion and let you re-start at the beginning.

I ask you: What paths do we have before us on which we can choose to move forward? We can dismiss his plan as naïve and ineffective, making snide remarks behind his back. We can distrust him, essentially labeling him as a deceiver who is using this idea of harmonizing Vatican II with the rest of Tradition as a means of leading the flock astray. Or we can follow his lead as our spiritual father, putting our trust in him and putting into action his hermeneutic.

Mike Aquilina has a portion of an interview with Carl Sommer, author of We Look for a Kingdom: The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians up here. The book indeed looks rather interesting – a look into the lives of the early Christians, but not just from an ecclesiological or theological or apologetic perspective but rather one which reconstructs their very daily lives without the filter of what is important to us now. The whole interview looks rather interesting, but being a liturgical nit like I am, thi sin particular caught my attention.

The anti-liturgical bias, which manifests itself outside Catholicism in the more charismatic forms of worship, and within Catholicism in the spirit of experimentation that has prevailed in the past thirty years, has had a more subtle, but nonetheless real, effect. The assumption that the words of Scripture that we read in the Liturgy of the Word, and the salvific act of Christ that we memorialize in the Liturgy of the Eucharist need somehow to be packaged and marketed have led to a trivialization of the Gospel message itself. I recently heard Donald Trump assert on TV that “Nothing sells itself.” That may be true of the products of this world, about which Mr. Trump knows more than I. But the Gospel can and does sell itself every day. We need to get out of the way, and let the ancient Liturgy speak for itself.

Indeed, if Christ Himself does not “sell” to someone, how self-important must we feel if we think we can add something to Him out of whole cloth? Certainly we are His hands and feet in this world, as it were, but that only works when what we give comes from our unity with Him, not from outside or solely from within ourselves. Indeed, “get out of the way, and let the ancient Liturgy speak for itself.”

I know there are some out there who dislike stained glass windows in churches. Even after hearing the “but they make the church so dark” explanation it still makes absolutely no sense to me. But hey, I have quite the capacity to be obtuse, so I’ve generally left it alone as an effort to be nice. Until today.

Through some as-yet unverified miracle my kids and I were able to leave early enough this morning to make it to Mass before school. I’ve always wanted to do this more with them, but school starts very early and Mass therefore even earlier so it’s just never happened. For almost the entire time nothing out of the ordinary happened (it strikes me now just how … obtuse … that sounds) – until Mass was over and we were gathering our things. My daughter looked up at one of the stained glass windows in the church and asked, “Daddy, what is that picture about?” Needless to say, I panicked until I recognized it as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. So I explained told them the story of the Good Samaritan, explained its meaning to them as best I could to kids their ages and then told them that all the windows in this church are made like that, to tell a story that we can and need to learn from.

Far from making the church dark, that window opened a ray of light on the minds of both of my children and provided me a teaching moment I may never have otherwise had. In that one moment, two childrens’ minds were expanded and I was challenged both to display my faith and to make it understandable to others. To be blunt, show me how to do that with a clear pane of glass. If you think stained glass makes the church too dark, ask my kids about the Good Samaritan. If you think it’s too dark maybe it’s because you’ve been staring at the pane too long and not taking in what is going on all around it. Our churches can and should, indeed must, speak to us – there is far too much to revelation to leave it just to words.

Yesterday the New Hampshire Union Leader had this story (emphasis mine):

Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and Assistant Attorney General Will Delker will speak on the state audit of the Diocese of Manchester’s sexual abuse policy Thursday, May 24, at Millette Manor, directly behind St. Louis de Gonzague/St. Aloysius Church, 48 West Hollis St. Nashua.

The talk, sponsored by the Greater Nashua affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, will take place, at 7PM

Ayotte and Delker will review the diocese’s actions to fulfill its obligation to cooperate with the state in establishing effective child protection policies and procedures. The second annual audit was released earlier this month, in the midst of tensions between the state and the church that could end up in court.

Yes, that wonderfully Church-friendly and ever-helpful VoTF. The same one you can get excommunicated for being a member of in some dioceses. If the AG intends to use this to show how impartial the audit was, chumming it up with VoTF is not exactly the best way to do it. And people wonder why I cast a suspicious eye towards this AG and these audits…

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has reached a settlement on 46 of its pending sexual abuse cases. CNA has the info:

Los Angeles, May 16, 2007 / 08:52 am (CNA).- Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles announced yesterday that the archdiocese will have to sell its headquarters so that it can meet its financial obligations to “the alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse.”

I’m not really sure where to go with this. Selling the Chancery is a very interesting symbolic move if nothing else. According to the Cardinal, no parishes or parish schools will be affected by the property sales to cover the expenses. Diogenes, however, notes that there are still hundreds of cases left. There are only so many ways all this will work out, and the ones that don’t hurt other innocent people keep getting further and further away. Satan certainly has gotten his pound of flesh out of this whole situation…

Fr. Dwight Longenecker asks the very good, and oft-repeated, question – why move Ascension to the nearest Sunday instead of leaving it alone where it belongs. He proffers a possible answer and repudiates it all in one felled swoop:

I guess the decision is utilitarian, and utilitarianism is surely one of the least Christian philosophies going. Utilitarianism is not only dull, it’s deathly. How can all that is beautiful and deep down true exist when the number counters come in? Who cares if nobody comes to your Ascension Thursday Mass? Why appease them by switching to a Sunday? They’ll smell your weakness and then stop going to Mass on Sunday too.

As I’ve said before, people expect to be challenged by their religion if they intend to follow it. And again this is evidenced by the saying, “people will not die for a question mark”. Fortunately, we’ll be celebrating Ascension Thursday properly here, and the kids will be going to Mass with the school just like they should. I should write the Bishop and thank him for getting this right, don’t you think?

Leticia at causa nostrae laetitiae just made my day. And my list of modern-day unsung heroes. Any time people these days directly confront their representatives in government and offer the unadulterated Gospel one has to take notice, and she’s done it in spades here. It’s one thing to write an anonymous letter, another to write a signed letter, and entirely another to make a public stand. May we all learn from her example…

Dom has posted, some live-blogging reflections on this past weekend’s Theology of the Body seminar with Christopher West held at the Marian Community Center in Medway, Mass. I wish I could have made it down there but, of course, other commitments intervened. I’ve been reading, on and off as I try to keep up with all my other reading, the new translation of Theology of the Body, edited by Michael Waldstein; I was heartened to find Dom’s notes from the seminar largely match my own personal take on what I’ve read thus far. As for what he suggests in his wrapup (that the Boston Archdiocese may be the center of a renewal of interest in all things ToTB-related), I only hope he’s right. And that he remembers his neighbors up here to his north.

Dom’s writeups are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Wrapup

Fr. Finigan posts about a story in the Catholic Times where two schools have been chastised for allowing students to serve at Mass during school hours. Mind you, of course, this is a venerable tradition that goes well back in history.

When I was a small boy, we took it in turns to walk round from school to serve Mass. It was actually a very educational experience. We learned about being given the responsibility to get ourselves there and back without messing around: going to serve Mass was a privilege we didn’t want to lose. We learned to respect the different priests of St Mary’s in Croydon. And of course, we learned to love the Mass and the care of the altar and the sacristy. I thank God that the “curriculum” was not such an idol then.

Exactly. It is high time we restore some sanctity and reverence to and for those who serve at the altar. I find absolutely nothing wrong with allowing kids who are doing well already in school and who properly fulfill their roles as altar servers to periodically scoot over to the church to serve. Particularly in the case of schools attached to parishes or sufficiently close to them as to not pose a safety risk. Our parish and kids’ school would be a prime opportunity for this – a quick jaunt from the school to the church across the parking lot and the children could be available to serve for funerals or any other mid-day need.

By tying their opportunity to serve Mass to their attaining and maintaining good grades, the children would also see serving as a rewarding experience, which can help build respect for the task required in those who need it and reinforce it for children who already understand the great gift that is serving at the altar. And just maybe a few of them would see the gift that serving at the altar is and just maybe it would tickle in them an interest in the priesthood. It would, in a way, be a Catholic variant of the “senior privilege” many schools offer to seniors who maintain a certain GPA – they can come in late, leave early, leave the campus or any variety of other treats. This treat just happens to come with a spiritual uplift as well – the opportunity to serve at the altar and receive Christ in the Eucharist. And learn some responsibility along the way as well. I wonder what our pastor thinks about this…