Ubi Petrus

The English translation of Spe salve is here, the Latin “official” here. Guess I have my weekend reading set out for me. Be sure to print your own and get reading. Hopefully I’ll find a way to work this in to this weekend’s RCIA class. Viva il Papa!

James Kushiner said it, so I didn’t have to. One thing we all need more of, particularly in this day and age, is silence. With that, I’m going to go enjoy some silence. Or, at least try to.

Yes, it’s a bad play on his blogging moniker, but hey – everyone needs bad jokes now and then. In responding to a comment in his combox Bear-i-tone hits the mark and really gives us a solid statement on what it means to be a Catholic in this modern world. In part:

Even so, I realize my endeavors will most likely end in failure. Such is the way. So be it. I take comfort in the wisdom of my betters, and here Mother Theresa’s words come to me: “I was not called to be successful, but to be faithful.” St. John of the Cross wrote: “We must do not that which is easy, but that which is difficult.” Being Catholic is always difficult, but even so, I will not change.

I’m going to have to travel up to Canada just to shake the man’s hand – this has been my position for years – as good as I think I am or others say I may be there are those who are far better than I in their faith and it is my duty and my honor to take their example. Life is not easy – it was not intended to be so. Our goal is not to live an easy or leisurely life but to follow the example of our Master, for we are told, “[i]f the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” (Jn 15:18)

It is amazing how, when a door is left slightly opened and people come barging through the ensuing tensions last for a very long time. For many people the question of receiving Communion in the hand versus on the tongue seems to be a thoroughly settled one. Fr. Tim Finigan reminds us quite well that such is not the case. This is a stern reminder that just because we do something and the Vatican has said it is possible in theory, those facts do not necessarily make it a good idea. See also the controversy over Mass said versus populum and ad orientem. We do make fine messes for ourselves.

…then I’d just get in the way of the video. Beautiful!

The strangest thoughts come to me after I’ve shut down my computers (yes, the ’s’ is intentional) for the night. Last night for some reason it came to me that, in a way, there is a lesson to be learned about evangelization from how I’d turned my wife into a red-blooded baseball-lover. Your likely reaction mirrors mine – baseball … church … eh?

Way back when my wife and I were dating she came to realize that I am a huge fan of baseball – not just of the Red Sox, but of baseball as a game in and of itself. She, shall we say, had no use for the game. But being the good woman she is, she watched a few games with me. It was never like a switch audibly clicked or her attitude suddenly changed – no, she still couldn’t stand the game. Too boring, too slow, too nuanced for her – give her a good ol’ game of knock-em-around high-speed football and a bowl of queso and chips and she’d be happy. Baseball, though, is a game that is best understood slowly. The nuances, the quirks, the hidden corners, the nooks-and-crannies are what separate the sandlot guys from the pros and the pros from the future Hall-of-Fame types. It’s that little extra thing that makes the difference- avoiding the in-between-hop, seeing the shortstop move just before the pitch, remembering how the pitcher got you out last time. And the time before. And the time before that. Baseball watchers like to say that anyone can hit a straight fastball if they know it’s coming – but what about the cutter, the slider, the curve, splitter, changeup, two-seamer, sinker… And the more you know about those things, the more you internalize them, the better you are as a player – and as a fan. Baseball makes no sense as a game – until you know it.

I’ve found Catholicism to be so much the very same. All the small things – the devotions, the prayers, the almost-never-heard-of Saints, why the priest wears black and the Cardinal red, the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation and transignification… Each one of them, if you look at them from the outside without any basis for understanding, seems to reach the hight of picking at nits. Nothing, simply, could be further from the truth. The trick, however, is in picking up those bits when the question arises and helping that question to arise without forcing it. Fides quarens intellectum can also occasionally start with intellectum quarens fide (please, correct my grammar – my Latin book is still waiting for me) – sometimes there are those who in learning come to have faith.

You see, my wife never saw the beauty of baseball until she came to understand the intricate nuances of each play and how, when played well, it almost has an orchestral feel to it. If you’re not looking for the notes though, it’s just a bunch of overpaid guys whacking around a ball to appease their testosterone. Oh, and a lot of standing around. The Church, the Faith handed down from the Apostles, is much the same. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’s just a bunch of disinterested people doing what their parents did and ignoring a bureaucratic, patriarchal and misogynist hierarchy that hasn’t been “in-touch” with anything in hundreds of years. Learn a little bit though – feed that infant fides with a little intellectum and vice versa – and they scales fall off and that bread-thingy is never again a “cookie” but Christ the Son of the Living God brought to us at the hands of a priest acting in persona Christi as Heaven and Earth touch. It is, in short, the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven.

To get there though takes small steps. Perhaps that is why St. Augustine took so long to convert – one does not run a marathon in ten easy steps, but in hundreds and thousands of slowly progressing sometimes arduous movements forwards. Does my wife like baseball now – you’d better believe it. She even knows what a “magic number” is and what it means to “work the count”. She sees the beauty of the minutiae. So it is with the Church – the more you learn, the more there is for you to love. Each step, taken on its own and explained with proper and due care, bring the soul that one step closer. It’s our job, as much as we are capacitated to it by the Spirit, to help facilitate each of those steps for any and every one who needs it. Hey, if I can help my wife to come to love baseball … “[A]ll things are possible to him who believes. (Mk 9:23)”

There are many things going wrong in the state of Connecticut, the state of my youth, but there are many good things happening as well. Like a class for seminarians on Gregorian chant:

Gregorian chant has been a part of the Catholic Church’s heritage for over a millennium, written in a Latin text with tones that rise and fall to a cadence formed before the ninth century. There are enclaves in Connecticut where it is still practiced regularly.

But classes in the ancient art are rare. Yale has held them and plans to again next year. Specialists traveling in the state sometimes host chant seminars.

The class at Holy Apostles is unique in that it trains future priests both how to chant and how to teach it to the laity. Students learn to conduct and compose. This year’s midterm, for instance, asked students to write their own chants.

H/T to Deacon Greg.

Just in time for the Christmas season, both as gifts and as therapy for the stresses caused by searching therefore, comes news of The Catholic Music Shop, an online site specializing in the best of Catholic music. Far better than just typing “gregorian chant” into an Amazon search, the selections listed have been chosen by two people who clearly know how to offer the best. With categories ranging from “Advent and Christmas” and “Blessed Sacrament” to “Gregorian Chant” and “Renaissance Polyphony” you can easily find what you’re looking for. Shawn Tribe at NLM has their full press release if you’re curious enough to find out more.

Wow, according to Blogger this will make my 500^th post. I suppose it’s probable that at least some of them are still stuck as likely-never-to-be-published drafts, but I won’t quibble. That aside, I’d not expected when I started this little endeavor to have this much to say, nor that anyone would really be all that interested anyway. Pleasant surprises are the best kind. But enough about me.

Today is the 60^th anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s Encyclical Mediator Dei, on the Sacred Liturgy. I just pulled my copy off of the printer so that I might finally remedy the fault of my never having read it. I am simply amazed both at the language (we just don’t write that way any more!) and the insight of this document.

Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer’s body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See. (paragraph 62).

Shawn Tribe’s review at NLM, from whence I snipped the above quote, points out that what can often be seen as prophetic in Mediator Dei can also be seen rather as insightful, given that much of what it speaks out against was already in practice or in the trajectory of the Liturgical Movement. Even if not purely prophetic, however, it provides rich insight that we, at a time of great moment in the history of liturgy in the Church, would do well to familiarize ourselves with. So, in the waning hours of this day or in the full of the day to come do yourself, the Church and the world a great favor and start reading.

Fr. Z has posted a partial translation of an interview with Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, the Secretary of the CDWDS that has already been making the rounds of St. Blog’s. Unfortunately my reading the whole of it is foiled by my utter lack of knowledge of Italian – it’s on the list, I assure you. Has anyone seen a full translation into English? This man clearly has much keeping him busy these days, and from what I’ve seen he seems to be a friend of the reform-of-the-reform. It is in reading people like this that I realize how much I still have to learn.