Ubi Petrus

Or probably any of the major networks, for that matter.

Santa Ana, CA – A pro-life man was violently attacked by an abortionist on a public sidewalk outside a Santa Ana abortion clinic on Saturday, August 2, 2008. The man, who wants only to be known as Tim, was first shoved, then battered, punched and choked by the abortionist who objected to his attempts to photograph him. Tim sustained lacerations and muscle pain that impaired his ability to conduct his normal activities as a result of the attack.

Go check out the rest of the story at Catholic Fire. Just remember, the Pro-Life folks are the ones who are constrained as to where they may walk and talk because they’re the “dangerous” ones. Or something…

I cannot begin to describe how happy I was when I saw Fr. Daren Zehnle point to the copy of the new Order of Mass as recently given recognitio by the Holy See. I took a brief few moments to scan it while on lunch and from what I can see two things come to mind.

1. There is an awful lot of new learning to do – which is good because so many people just repeat prayers they’ve learned by rote without contemplating what the words they’re saying mean. This gives everyone, particularly the clergy, a built-in opportunity to catechize on the Mass and the prayers therein. So often the only thing stopping this is the lack of an “opening” to start the discussion. Well, my friends, this is a wide-open door with “Please Enter” in large letters.
2. The prayers are much more beautiful than what we have now. Yes, some seem a touch sticky right now but that owes at least as much to familiarity as to any real problems. It is not just the particular word choices of which I speak that to me brings this to the front – it is also the depth of meaning and a nearly emotional character to the terminology. Perhaps it is overstating it, but perhaps it is not, to say I sense a greater amount of agape in these prayers rather than the filios one can sometimes sense in the current translation.

Again, as I said, these are only a couple of reflections based on a review of but a few minutes, so if I’m wildly off base do feel free to say so. Whatever you do, start reading the new Order prayerfully and don’t wait for another offer – do it now so you can have all the time you need with these new prayers.

From The Spirit of the Liturgy:

Of course, external actions – reading, singing, the bringing up of the gifts – can be distributed in a sensible way. By the same token, participation in the Liturgy of the Word (reading, singing) is to be distinguished from the sacramental celebration proper. We should be clearly aware that external actions are quite secondary here. Doing really must stop when we come to the heart of the matter: the oratio. It must be plainly evident that the oratio is the heart of the matter, but that it is important precisely because it provides a space for the actio of God. Anyone who grasps this will easily see that it is not now a matter of looking at or toward the priest, but of looking together toward the Lord and going out to meet him. The almost theatrical entrance of different players into the liturgy, which is so common today, especially during the Preparation of the Gifts, quite simply misses the point. If the various external actions (as a matter of fact, there are not very many of them, though they are being artificially multiplied) become the essential in the liturgy, if the liturgy degenerates into general activity, then we have radically misunderstood the “theo-drama” of the liturgy and lapsed almost into parody. True liturgical education cannot consist in learning and experimenting with external activities. Instead one must be led toward the essential actio that makes the liturgy what it is, toward the transforming power of God, who wants, through what happens in the liturgy, to transform us and the world. In this respect, liturgical education today, of both priests and laity, is deficient to a deplorable extent. Much remains to be done here.

I was just going through old unpublished posts and found this quote. Even though I originally grabbed it over a year and a half ago I can’t say that much has changed on the ground; likewise, much has changed strategically. My subsequent exposure to the Mass in the Extraordinary Form has served only to reinforce my long-held impression that there is a wide disparity between what we see every weekend and what we could see every weekend.

I should rather say the disparity, depending on your intersection with Providence at this point, varies point-for-point between close to what could be hoped and far from it. I personally have seen what impact a new Pastor with an interest in beauty can have and conversely how even someone who knows what must be done can be slowed down by considerations external to the liturgy.

But more to the point of the quote, I’ve been thinking lately about the intersection of beauty qua beauty and properly understood active participation in the liturgy. A beautiful liturgy may not, I am coming to believe, in and of itself be enough to bring people to that true interior personal involvement in the liturgy so desperately desired by the Church. Certainly a Mass beautifully prayed with ceremony befitting the King of Kings can awe and impress and perhaps even shock some into finding the beauty of the Love that is at the core of that celebration. But a Monet is just paint if you can’t understand its beauty.

What I am asking is this: how do we find a way to move hearts and souls in a way that can be comprehended by the uninitiate and those not prepared to or desirous of finding beauty? Is there a kind of aesthetic beauty that is sufficiently universal to encapsulate those with every level of theological and liturgical formation? Answers of “Latin” or “ad orientem” are but minute slices of the picture I’m trying to form here.

Let me also ask the contrary question. Is the possibility of a universal beauty an impossibility in this world because that beauty is in fact only found in God Himself? Let us not forget that God is, as the perfection of all Good, the perfection of beauty to the point we capitalize it as “Beauty”. Is the problem perhaps that since grace builds upon nature this quest for a beauty to be apprehended by all is simply quixotic? Should that be the case, then let me ask an even further leading question: is it possible that the decision of the Council of Trent to require only one form of Mass in the Latin Church actually impeded in some way the quest for universal beauty, that beauty that brings all to understand what truly unfolds before them in their hearts? Discuss, if you would be so kind.

Well, okay, maybe not all. Curt Jester pointed out the new Catholic social bookmarking site PickAFig. No service is perfect when it starts but it looks like they’ve ironed out a couple of initial bumps so I’ve added a button for each post. So, if you like something I’ve written (and I just know you do … right?) you can submit and/or vote for the post. Let me know if it causes problems; either way, be sure to help out the folks at PickAFig who are trying to help us all talk to each other in new and better ways.

Jeff Vehige of Thursday Night Gumbo tagged me for the Six Quirks meme. It’s taken me a while to narrow the list down to just six because I am simply the most quirky person I’ve ever known. Familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps? Regardless, here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. I start everything possible on my right side. Walking starts with my right foot, chewing on the right side of my mouth, I line things up almost always from right to left. Suffice it to say baseball is nasty when it comes to starting habits like this.

2. I have a peculiar form of photographic memory. I can tell you exactly what a page on a book I’ve read looks like down to the minutest detail. Sometimes that’s how I’d pass tests in high school and college – I’d literally re-read the page in my mind.

3. I can never start a conversation; once someone gets it going I can talk for hours but I’m terrible at getting started. This makes RCIA sessions interesting to say the least.

4. Until I had a Sirius subscription I would never listen to any music when driving. I could drive for hours with only road noise and not be bothered in the slightest. Now I alternate between blessed silence and either EWTN or the Catholic Channel.

5. If I spend more than two days anywhere I pick up the local accent. Unintentionally. I can then pull it back even years later – I still whip out my West Virginia accent twenty years after I visited those beautiful hills.

6. I notice every last verbal peculiarity of anyone I talk to within minutes. It’s kind of annoying, even to me.

If you want to be tagged, you are. This has been out for a while so I’m not going to be tagging people who’ve already done it. Is that a cop out?

According to Curt Jester several popular Catholic blog writers have been locked out from updating their blogs. The one commonality discovered so far? They all wrote against everyone’s favorite hate-filled atheist.

The folks at CMR note that the same thing recently happened to many popular blogs that were opposed to Barak Obama’s candidacy. So while it’s possible this abusive behavior is caused by people within Google (remember, Google owns Blogger) it’s also possible people have figured out how to coordinate abuse of the Flag button on Blogger.

As with every other time things like this happen, I’m sure we’ll never really know what happened. All I can say is something smells rather ripe with all this…

Update: The Blogger folks say this was in fact a software error. If so, then a mea culpa for insinuating otherwise. At this point we’ll never entirely know for sure, but ’tis better to believe them for now methinks. Working in the software field I can empathize with bugs that are mistakes that just look intentional. We occasionally have bugs that make things work by accident when they shouldn’t – fixing those bugs always is an interesting experience. Anyway, back to blogging for all involved we hope!