Fr. Perrone on the Crib, the Cross, and the Altar (Nativity, Passion, and Mass)

Father Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, December 27, 2015):

The two liturgical calendars in use in our parish for both the new and old forms of the liturgy yield diverse celebrations for this Sunday after Christmas. So instead of ‘taking sides’ in my reflections here, I want to consider something that’s often crossed my mind but which I have not written about before–at least, so I believe, memory being among those elusive, ‘passing things’ of life. It’s the relation of Christmas to the Passion, sometimes referred to as Crib and Cross, that I want to examine. It seems that the entire Christmas story is but a preparation for a greater understanding the of Christ’s redemption. Interpreting Christmas through the sufferings of Christ can lend a dimension of depth and maturity for our minds to the Nativity story. It is about this that I wish to write.

There are many points of convergence in the two events, the beginning and the (presumed) end of our Lord’s earthly life. In both our Lord was naked, a condition that means much more than the want of clothes. It signifies that He permitted Himself to be exposed to cold, to be scorned, to be without material comforts, and to be, in effect, unattached to anything. In both crib and cross He had the sole clothing of the swaddling bands (which were a kind of bondage) or the loin cloth (the nails serving effectively to restrict His free movements). The lesson to be got for us from this is to see in Christ a model for us to renounce our desire for lawless freedom from restriction, and to place ourselves voluntarily under the gentle yoke of His commandments.

The onlookers in each are similar. Holy Mary is present in both scenes as a mother–of Christ, or of Saint John. Virgin and Child is the familiar representation of the Mother with Her Infant Son on Her lap, and of the Pietá, the Mother of Sorrows holding the dead body of Christ, also on Her lap. Around the crib, besides Mary and Joseph, were dumb, uncomprehending beasts, the ox and ass. Around the cross, besides Mary and John, were the mocking Jews and soldiers–bystanders ignorant of the Reality before them. At both events nature gave witness to the prodigies taking place: angelic choirs in the sky and the great luminous Star at the nativity; or the darkened sun and the earthquake upon Christ’s death. In both, wood (of the manger and of the cross) held the precious body of Christ: the one wood being a receptacle for the nourishment of animals, the other an instrument of suffering and death: both ‘woods’ thus signify the Holy Eucharist either as spiritual food or bloody sacrifice. Other smaller points: Christ in both is evidently King: the magi bear Him regal gifts; the cross’s inscription bear witness to His identity, the King of the Jews. Both locations were not His home place: Bethlehem (made a necessity by the census) and Golgotha (a contemptible place outside the city). Herod who sought the death of Christ in vain was succeeded by the ultimately successful Pilate.

I write only a few of the many possible points of similarity between the crib and the cross to make you think of some of the ways you can draw a richer meaning from the circumstances of our Lord’s nativity than the mere recollection of the historical events presented to us in the scriptures. I believe that the Christmas story is in fact a divinely willed anticipation of the Passion, a case of what we call typology. Whenever we celebrate Holy Mass in the Christmas season, the two events of Bethlehem and Calvary are united by a new ritual act which makes relevant for us here and now the two events of times long ago. Christ is sacrificed in the Mass: the body taken from and born of Holy Mary is the same body immolated on the cross which is the body now offered to God in expiation for the sins we continue to commit. In what are now three events (crib, cross, altar) we have the redemptive purpose of Christ being fulfilled: in preparation (nativity), in consummation (Passion), in prolongation or application (Mass).

I must bring my reflections to an abrupt stop with a timely admonition: Do not forget that Friday is a holy day of obligation, and not just New Year’s Day. Masses are by anticipation Thursday at 4:00 and 11:00 p.m. and on the very day at 6:30, 9:30 and noon.

May God grant us a year of grace!

Fr. Perrone

Christmas and Hell, from Fr. George W. Rutler

Fr. George W. Rutler, "From the Pastor" (December 20, 2015):

It would seem odd that as Christmas draws closer, the Church makes a point of reminding us of Hell. There is no need of reminding if one is awake to the manifestations of great sadness and suffering along the city streets. The whole world is a hodgepodge of things we instinctively call “Hellish” and “Heavenly” and is rather like our own parish neighborhood that, years ago, was named “Hell’s Kitchen” but now is becoming a most glittering part of Manhattan. So long as we are in time and space, Hell and Heaven will be like opposites repelled by each other and nonetheless dancing together. Only in eternity will they be distinct forever, which is why Christ warns and consoles, with his loving admonitions and promises, that he would have none lost and all saved.

The Light of Christ pierces the soul’s vision most vividly in the darkest times, just as a city’s lights seem brightest at the Winter Solstice. As the late Yogi Berra said in his typical diction, which makes great sense in spite of itself: “It is getting later earlier.” In the same way, when “the days are waxing late” there is an intuition of something new coming into the world. That newness is the enfleshment of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.

So if bad things happen at the time of festival, the feast becomes more powerful. Sometimes, those who mourn the death of loved ones at this time can hear more clearly than the giddy, the Voice that says, “So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” Likewise, just as the glory of Christ became most vivid in contrast to his crucifiers, so is the splendor of his Body, the Church, brightest in contrast to those who deface it. Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote to Lady Chatterton: “Our Lord distinctly predicted these scandals as inevitable; nay further, He spoke of His Church as in its very constitution made up of good and bad, of wheat and weeds, of the precious and the vile. One out of His twelve Apostles fell, and one of the original seven deacons.”

The brightness of Christmas is not the reflection of tinsel, for it is “Light from Light” rooted in reality and not fantasy. Paul Claudel said that “everything must be illusion or allusion.” Thus, superficial Christmases are illusory while the real Feast of the Incarnation alludes to Heaven in contrast to Hell.

The true Christian is not the harmless ingénue Pippa in Browning’s poem . . . “God’s in His heaven – All’s right with the world!” There are dark things wrong with the world, but the celebration is even greater for that, since the Divine Light has come from heaven, and “the darkness has never overcome it.”

Tridentine Community News - 2015 Year in Review: significant developments; thanks to our volunteers; TLMs schedule

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (December 27, 2015):

December 27, 2015 – Sunday in the Octave of Christmas

2015 Year in Review – Significant Developments

Ordination of Dom John Tonkin, CRNJ: The second priestly ordination of a native son of our local Tridentine communities.

Mainstreaming of the Extraordinary Form: The EF is becoming more of a mainstream part of Catholic life in our region. Examples of the sort of events taking place with increasing frequency: A second Mass at Detroit’s Blessed Sacrament Cathedral (with front page coverage in The Michigan Catholic newspaper), two Masses (one including Confirmations) celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Donald Hanchon, and monthly Masses quietly taking place at Our Lady of the Scapular in Wyandotte.

Special Masses: Special Tridentine Masses continue to be held at more churches. In 2015, the Traditional Liturgy was held at the below sites for the first time ever, or in decades. Masses organized by Juventútem Michigan are so designated.

1. St. Stanislaus Kostka, Jackson (J)
2. St. Anthony, Temperance (J)
3. St. Patrick, Brighton (J)
4. St. Augustine/St. Monica, Detroit (J)
5. Felician Sisters’ Convent Chapel, Livonia
6. Colombiere Center, Clarkston (J)
7. Old St. Mary’s, Detroit (J)
8. Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit (J)

Extraordinary Faith: Audience response has continued to be strong for our locally produced television series focusing on the Extraordinary Form and classic Catholicism, Extraordinary Faith, and its associated priest training program. 19 episodes have been shot, and seven episodes have aired so far. EWTN has begun to re-run episodes, a development for which thanks is due to those who have written the network at viewer@ewtn.com to express their support for the program.

Thanks to Our Volunteers

The thriving Extraordinary Form scene we enjoy in metro Detroit is in large part due to the consistent effort put forth by a dedicated team of volunteers. Those listed in bold deserve special credit for volunteering at multiple sites across metro Detroit and Windsor.

Oakland County Latin Mass Association

Altar Servers: Jim Eatmon, Riley LaMendola, Tyler LaMendola, Kieran McDonnell, Liam McDonnell, Edward Schmick, Elliott Schmick, Vincent Schmick, Charlie Shane

Volunteer Choir Members: Joe Baldiga, Maggie McCourt, Jill McDonnell, Anne Shane

Ushers: Chris Batts, Pete Higgins, Jon McDonnell

Board Members: Chris Batts, Rick Kempa, Cecilia Lakin (Chair), Sanford Lakin, Sal LaMendola, Jon McDonnell

Receptions, Vestments, & Altar Linens: Diane Begin, Julie Eatmon, Judit Wittbrodt

Rosary leader: Mary Strahorn

St. Benedict Tridentine Community

Altar Servers: Gabriel Ang, Matthew Bombardier, Matthew Charbonneau, Damien Cincurak, James Cincurak, Benjamin McKinley, James Murphy, Jonathan Ozorak, Barry Rafferty, John Tome, Mitchell Witteveen

Volunteer Choir Members: Laura Hurajt, Michel Ozorak

Parish Council: Ted Jankowski, Sharon Moody (late Treasurer), Charlotte Parent (current Treasurer), Ron Parent, Barry Rafferty

Ushers: Alex Foley, John Foot, Ted Jankowski, Frank O’Reilly

St. Albertus, St, Hyacinth, & Other Sites

Altar servers: Michael Alvarez, Tommy Alvarez, Luke Rzeczkowski, Paul Schultz

Volunteer organist/cantor: Joe Balistreri

Ushers: Bob Kujawa, Ismael Lebron

Please also keep in your prayers our priest celebrants of the Extraordinary Form: Fr. Lee Acervo, Fr. Ryan Adams, Fr. Ross Bartley, Fr. David Bechill, Fr. Patrick Bénéteau, Fr. Mark Borkowski, Msgr. Ronald Browne, Fr. Peter Hrytsyk, Fr. David Jenuwine, Fr. John Johnson, Fr. Ben Kosnac, Fr. Louis Madey, Fr. Robert Marczewski, Fr. Clint McDonell, Fr. Danny Santos, Fr. Michael Suhy, Fr. Greg Tokarski, and Fr. Joe Tuskiewicz.

- Alex Begin, Tridentine Community News editor

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 12/28 12:00 Noon: High Mass at St. Mary of the Angels, Chicago (Holy Innocents) – Celebrant: Fr. Joe Tuskiewicz. All are welcome to attend this and the Mass at St. John Cantius; participation in the Prayer Pilgrimages Bus Tour is not required.
• Mon. 12/28 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Holy Innocents)
• Tue. 12/29 2:30 PM: High Mass at St. John Cantius, Chicago (Day V in the Octave of Christmas) – Celebrant: Fr. Joe Tuskiewicz.
• Tue. 12/29 7:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary (Day V in the Octave of Christmas)
• Fri. 01/01 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Octave of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision)
• Fri. 01/01 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Octave of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision)
• Fri. 01/01 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Alphonsus, Windsor (Octave of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Albertus (Detroit), Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills), and St. Alphonsus and Holy Name of Mary Churches (Windsor) bulletin inserts for December 27, 2015. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Tridentine Masses coming this week to metro Detroit and east Michigan

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Sunday


• Sun. 12/27 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 45 minutes before and after Masses) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 8:00 and 10:30AM Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
• Sun. 12/27 3:00 PM High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
  Monday
  
  
• Mon. 12/28 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Holy Innocents - 2nd class)
• Mon. 12/28 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Holy Innocents - 2nd class)
• Mon. 12/28 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Holy Innocents - 2nd class)
• Mon. 12/28 7:00 PM: High Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Holy Innocents - 2nd class)
  
  Tuesday
  
  
• Tue. 12/29 7:00 AM High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (5th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/29 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (5th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/29 7:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada (5th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/29 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (5th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
  Wednesday
  
  
• Wed. 12/30 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (6th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Wed. 12/30 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (6th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Wed. 12/30 7:00 PM: High Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (6th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
  Thursday
  
  
• Thu. 12/31 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (7th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Thu. 12/31 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (7th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Thu. 12/31 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (7th Day in the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
  Friday
  
  
• Fri. 01/01 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision - 1st class)
• Fri. 01/01 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision - 1st class)
• Fri. 01/01 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision - 1st class)
• Fri. 01/01 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada (Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision - 1st class)
• Fri. 01/01 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision - 1st class)
• Fri. 01/01 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision - 1st class)

Saturday


• Sat. 01/02 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Saturday of Our Lady - 4th class, or Immaculate Heart of Mary - 3rd class)
• Sat. 01/02 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Saturday of Our Lady - 4th class, or Immaculate Heart of Mary - 3rd class)
• Sat. 01/02 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Stephen - 2nd class)
• Sat. 01/01 6:00 PM Tridentine Mass at SS. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church, Sterling Heights (Saturday of Our Lady - 4th class, or Immaculate Heart of Mary - 3rd class)
  
  Sunday
  
  
• Sun. 01/03 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 45 minutes before and after Masses) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
• Sun. 01/03 8:00 and 10:30AM Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
• Sun. 01/03 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
• Sun. 01/03 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
• Sun. 01/03 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
• Sun. 01/03 2:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
  
• Sun. 01/03 3:00 PM High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint (Holy Name of Jesus - 2nd class)
  
  * NB: The SSPX chapels among those Mass sites listed above are posted here because the Holy Father has announced that "those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins." These chapels are not listed among the approved parishes and worship sites on archdiocesan websites.

A Christmas Reflection: What if the Biblical narrative were true?

It's time to reconsider the reason for the season and the challenges offered by the drive-by "experts" of the day who intend to cast the entire Biblical narrative concerning the Blessed Nativity into doubt. Consider again the Biblical narrative:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pas, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter Two, Verses 13-20)

Here we are again, on the first day of the Christmas season. It has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to engage the following text by C.S. Lewis in connection with the above quoted Scriptures. The reason will be obvious.

Nearly every Christmas, it seems, NEWSWEEK or TIME or some television special will feature the "latest scholarship" questioning the "authenticity" of the Christmas story. I am not concerned with the question about whether the Nativity of our Lord occurred on December 25th. That's a matter of Church tradition and incidental to my concerns here. What concerns me is how the Biblical narrative itself is invariably called into question or even dismissed as mere "myth" -- the account of the shepherds, the Angelic host, the Christ Child in a manger, the Star and the Magi from the East, Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the flight of Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child into Egypt, etc.

The scholarly authorities typically interviewed, whether Catholic or Protestant, are consistently and incorrigibly one-sided, quite thoroughly corrupted by the Humean and Kantian philosophical presuppositions undergirding the historical-critical reading of the Biblical narrative. Typical is the About.com website, where Internet browsers frequent to learn "the facts" about this or that -- a site where one finds this sort of thinking gone to seed in an article by Austin Cline, "Nativity vs Gospels: Are the Gospels Reliable About Jesus' Birth?" (About.com), where the partisan skepticism of such historical critical assumptions is abundantly evident in his suggestions that all the key ingredients of the Nativity story in the Gospels were concocted fictions of various kinds.

The lack of critical circumspection, if not patent fantasy, in all of this would be amusing if it were not so destructive. The upshot is always the same: that the Gospel writers are unreliable and not to be trusted, and certainly not to be taken at face value. Just how ludicrous this all is, however, can be seen easily by anyone with a modicum of familiarity with literature, mythology, and history. One of the best examples of a powerful antedote to this kind of foolishness -- and one I keep using because it is simple -- is a little essay by C.S. Lewis entitled "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," which is available in a collection of essays by Lewis entitled Christian Reflections (1967; reprinted by Eerdmans, 1994). The following are some excerpts from Lewis' essay, which begins on p. 152 and contains four objections (or what he calls "bleats") about modern New Testament scholarship:

1. [If a scholar] tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour...

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one [of the stories in the Gospel of John, for example] is like this... Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative...

2. All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars... The idea that any... writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.

3. Thirdly, I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur... This is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'if miraculous, unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing.

4. My fourth bleat is my loudest and longest. Reviewers [of my own books, and of books by friends whose real history I knew] both friendly and hostile... will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; the method shows a record of 100 per cent failure.

The 'assured results of modern scholarship', as to the way in which an old book was written, are 'assured', we may conclude, only because those who knew the facts are dead and can't blow the gaff... The Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.

However... we are not fundamentalists... Of course we agree that passages almost verbally identical cannot be independent. It is as we glide away from this into reconstructions of a subtler and more ambitious kind that our faith in the method wavers... The sort of statement that arouses our deepest scepticism is the statement that something in a Gospel cannot be historical because it shows a theology or an ecclesiology too developed for so early a date...

Such are the reactions of one bleating layman... Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar; he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more...

Lewis, of course, was hardly a naive ignoramus. He knew all the critical objections to Christianity because for the first part of his life he was himself a confirmed agnostic. He was anything but "soft-minded," to use the Jamesian idiom. He taught philosophy at Oxford briefly before going on to teach Medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and conclude his prolific academic career teaching at Cambridge. An account of his conversion can be found in his Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,in which we find the following quotation:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (emphasis added)

Lewis, an Anglican, was a man of deep Catholic habit of mind, probably because of his immersion in medieval literature; and many have wondered why he never himself crossed the Tiber. Walker Percy even compared him to Moses, who led many others to the Promised Land, though never himself crossing over. A number of books have been written about this, like Joseph Pearce's C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church,and Christopher Derrick's C.S.Lewis and the Church of Rome.The most probable reason is cultural: his father was an Ulsterman. Whatever the reason, his common sense criticisms of those Biblical "experts" who attempt to dismantle the entire Biblical narrative under the influence of Enlightenment prejudices, can be accepted with gratitude.

For further reading:

• Jesus Seminar critically examined (edited by Pertinacious Papist)
• C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections,edited by Walter Hooper.
• If you're interested in reading the relevant chapter from Lewis's book online, click on: "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (Lewis on Biblical Criticism, posted June 10, 2005)
• Hurd Baruch, "The Crisis in Biblical Scholarship" (New Oxford Review, December 2014).
• Mark Giszczak, "The Early Responsa of the Pontifical Biblical Commission" (Catholic bible Student, March 20, 2008)

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Benedict XVI retrospective

Peter Kwasniewski, "10th Anniversary of the Hermeneutic of Continuity Speech" (RC, December 22, 2015):

Has it already been a decade since Pope Benedict XVI gave one of the most important addresses of his pontificate (and, we may say without fear of contradiction, of the past fifty years)? On December 22, 2005, not long after his election to the Chair of St. Peter, Pope Benedict set forth the fundamental principle of his pontificate: reform in continuity, rather than discontinuity and rupture. 

[New Catholic: for Rorate, the Hermeneutic of Continuity address was a major game-changer. The blog, as you may recall, had been founded just two days earlier, and the Pope stunned the Catholic world with this address. We were the first venue to provide English translations of the main excerpts of the address for over a week (at that time, the Vatican seriously neglected the language, and the Curia always boycotted Pope Benedict).] 

We saw this in the sphere of the liturgy: Gregorian chant and polyphony suddenly reemerged at the Vatican; beautiful classic vestments and vessels were brought forth from the sacristy; holy communion was given to the faithful kneeling and on the tongue; the entire ceremonial became more solemn, formal, and Roman. It was noticed in papal preaching and Vatican documents. The long season of pitting the modern or post-conciliar Church against the pre-modern or pre-conciliar Church began to look foolish, short-sighted, shallow, tendentious, incoherent, and untenable. We knew it would be a long climb back to sanity and normalcy, but the Christmas address in 2005 undeniably afforded grounds for hope. 

At the same time, the past ten years have exposed some of the weaknesses, logical and practical, that are contained in the hermeneutic of continuity approach. The new edition of The Great Façade, with 250 new pages by Christopher Ferrara on Popes Benedict and Francis, has probed the issues with great insight, as has Henry Sire's Phoenix from the Ashes. What exactly counts as continuity or rupture? Where do we look for either of them? How do we know when we have found it? If there has been rupture, how should it be repaired -- do we discard the novelty and return to the preceding phase, or attempt to incorporate a reinterpreted novelty into the next phase? Is continuity something to be assumed or something to be demonstrated? How easy is it to postulate (as Pope Benedict did) different "levels" of continuity and discontinuity in magisterial teaching or church discipline, such that apparent contradictions or tensions can be resolved? So numerous and weighty are such questions that one may safely say the proposal generated as many questions as it resolved. 

Still, it was an historic, groundbreaking, provocative, and fruitful address that made it seem possible, for the first time, to begin to ask difficult questions that so many had refused to ask, and to seek real solutions that did not involve jettisoning centuries of doctrine and practice.

Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia 

Thursday, 22 December 2005

Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Presbyterate,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“‘Expergiscere, homo: quia pro te Deus factus est homo’—Wake up, O man! For your sake God became man” (St. Augustine, Sermo, 185). With the Christmas celebrations now at hand, I am opening my Meeting with you, dear collaborators of the Roman Curia, with St. Augustine’s invitation to understand the true meaning of Christ’s birth. I address to each one my most cordial greeting and I thank you for the sentiments of devotion and affection, effectively conveyed to me by your Cardinal Dean, to whom I address my gratitude.  

God became man for our sake: This is the message which, every year, from the silent grotto of Bethlehem spreads even to the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth. Christmas is a feast of light and peace, it is a day of inner wonder and joy that expands throughout the universe, because “God became man.” From the humble grotto of Bethlehem, the eternal Son of God, who became a tiny Child, addresses each one of us: He calls us, invites us to be reborn in him so that, with him, we may live eternally in communion with the Most Holy Trinity. 

Our hearts brimming with the joy that comes from this knowledge, let us think back to the events of the year that is coming to an end. We have behind us great events which have left a deep mark on the life of the Church. I am thinking first and foremost of the departure of our beloved Holy Father John Paul II, preceded by a long period of suffering and the gradual loss of speech. No Pope has left us such a quantity of texts as he has bequeathed to us; no previous Pope was able to visit the whole world like him and speak directly to people from all the continents. In the end, however, his lot was a journey of suffering and silence. Unforgettable for us are the images of Palm Sunday when, holding an olive branch and marked by pain, he came to the window and imparted the Lord’s Blessing as he himself was about to walk toward the Cross. Next was the scene in his Private Chapel when, holding the Crucifix, he took part in the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum, where he had so often led the procession carrying the Cross himself. Lastly came his silent Blessing on Easter Sunday, in which we saw the promise of the Resurrection, of eternal life, shine out through all his suffering. With his words and actions, the Holy Father gave us great things; equally important is the lesson he imparted to us from the chair of suffering and silence. 

In his last book Memory and Identity, he has left us an interpretation of suffering that is not a theological or philosophical theory but a fruit that matured on his personal path of suffering which he walked, sustained by faith in the Crucified Lord. This interpretation, which he worked out in faith and which gave meaning to his suffering lived in communion with that of the Lord, spoke through his silent pain, transforming it into an important message. Both at the beginning and once again at the end of the book mentioned, the Pope shows that he is deeply touched by the spectacle of the power of evil, which we dramatically experienced in the century that has just ended. He says in his text: “The evil ... was not a small-scale evil. ... It was an evil of gigantic proportions, an evil which availed itself of state structures in order to accomplish its wicked work, an evil built up into a system.” Might evil be invincible? Is it the ultimate power of history? Because of the experience of evil, for Pope Wojtyla the question of redemption became the essential and central question of his life and thought as a Christian. Is there a limit against which the power of evil shatters? “Yes, there is,” the Pope replies in this book of his, as well as in his encyclical on redemption. The power that imposes a limit on evil is Divine Mercy. Violence, the display of evil, is opposed in history—as “the totally other” of God, God’s own power—by Divine Mercy. The Lamb is stronger than the dragon, we could say together with the Book of Revelation. 

At the end of the book, in a retrospective review of the attack of 13 May 1981 and on the basis of the experience of his journey with God and with the world, John Paul II further deepened this answer. What limits the force of evil, the power, in brief, which overcomes it—this is how he says it—is God’s suffering, the suffering of the Son of God on the Cross: “The suffering of the Crucified God is not just one form of suffering alongside others. ... In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love. ... The passion of Christ on the Cross gave a radically new meaning to suffering, transforming it from within. ... It is this suffering which burns and consumes evil with the flame of love. ... All human suffering, all pain, all infirmity contains within itself a promise of salvation; ... evil is present in the world partly so as to awaken our love, our self-gift in generous and disinterested service to those visited by suffering. ... Christ has redeemed the world: “By his wounds we are healed’ (Isaiah 53:5).” 

All this is not merely learned theology, but the expression of a faith lived and matured through suffering. Of course, we must do all we can to alleviate suffering and prevent the injustice that causes the suffering of the innocent. However, we must also do the utmost to ensure that people can discover the meaning of suffering and are thus able to accept their own suffering and to unite it with the suffering of Christ. In this way, it is merged with redemptive love and consequently becomes a force against the evil in the world.

The response across the world to the Pope’s death was an overwhelming demonstration of gratitude for the fact that in his ministry he offered himself totally to God for the world; a thanksgiving for the fact that in a world full of hatred and violence he taught anew love and suffering in the service of others; he showed us, so to speak, in the flesh, the Redeemer, redemption, and gave us the certainty that indeed, evil does not have the last word in the world.

I would now like to mention, if briefly, another two events also initiated by Pope John Paul II: They are the World Youth Day celebrated in Cologne and the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, which also ended the Year of the Eucharist inaugurated by Pope John Paul II. The World Youth Day has lived on as a great gift in the memory of those present. More than a million young people gathered in the city of Cologne on the Rhine River and in the neighboring towns to listen together to the Word of God, to pray together, to receive the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist, to sing and to celebrate together, to rejoice in life and to worship and receive the Lord in the Eucharist during the great meetings on Saturday evening and Sunday. Joy simply reigned throughout those days. Apart from keeping order, the police had nothing to do—the Lord had gathered his family, tangibly overcoming every frontier and barrier, and in the great communion between us, he made us experience his presence. 

The motto chosen for those days—“We have come to worship him!”—contained two great images which encouraged the right approach from the outset. First there was the image of the pilgrimage, the image of the person who, looking beyond his own affairs and daily life, sets out in search of his essential destination, the truth, the right life, God.This image of the person on his way toward the goal of life contained another two clear indications. First of all, there was the invitation not to see the world that surrounds us solely as raw material with which we can do something, but to try to discover in it “the Creator’s handwriting,” the creative reason and the love from which the world was born and of which the universe speaks to us, if we pay attention, if our inner senses awaken and acquire perception of the deepest dimensions of reality. As a second element there is a further invitation: to listen to the historical revelation which alone can offer us the key to the interpretation of the silent mystery of creation, pointing out to us the practical way toward the true Lord of the world and of history, who conceals himself in the poverty of the stable in Bethlehem.

The other image contained in the World Youth Day motto was the person worshipping: “We have come to worship him.”Before any activity, before the world can change there must be worship. Worship alone sets us truly free; worship alone gives us the criteria for our action. Precisely in a world in which guiding criteria are absent and the threat exists that each person will be a law unto himself, it is fundamentally necessary to stress worship.

"Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?"

Nabeel Qureshi, "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?" (RZIM, December 22, 2015). Here, from a Muslim convert to Christianity, is the more nuanced sort of answer I wish I would see more often from Catholics.

[Hat tip to JM]

Fr. Eduard Perrone: The meaning of the biblical Ecce! ("Behold!") in the Incarnation narrative

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [Temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, December 20, 2015):

Details are important. In the former translation used for Mass the prophetic text referring to Holy Mary who, as a virgin, would bear a child, omitted the first word, Behold, and so the phrase dryly ran, “The virgin will be with child and bear a son.” The omission, you say, is a trifle and one should not quibble about such things. In general I’d agree, but that single word (now restored in the newer version) conveys both the imperative to take notice and the wonder over something that’s marvelous to tell. Thus it is that the Latin text begins with the word Ecce! and now we, even in our language, and made to stand up and take notice about what’s being said. “Behold! The Virgin will be with child and bear a Son.” Saint Matthew here is quoting Isaiah of the Old Testament showing how he foretold the marvel of the virgin-mother bearing the infant Christ in Her womb. (Observant hearers will note that this text is used today on the Fourth Sunday of Advent for the Communion Chant.)

One may ponder why it was that God should have willed a virgin-mother for Himself in order to come into the world, and why Mary was at the time of His conception only betrothed (a true legal act) to Joseph but not yet married to him. One may speculate that had our Lady conceived before the betrothal She may have been thought–abhorrent even to mention it–a sinner. Had She conceived our Lord after her marriage, Her Son may have been thought the natural offspring of Joseph. By divine providence, however, it was in this intermediate state of betrothal (our “engagement” bears only a pale semblance to it) that the Son of God was united to humanity and had legal, though not physical, sonship through Joseph’s public commitment to Mary. Thus the wonder: Ecce, behold! Just as Christ unites divinity and humanity in Himself, so Mary unites in Herself both virginity and motherhood.

When some non-Catholic Christians postulate that Holy Mary, after the birth of Christ, may have had other children (basing this presumption on a misunderstanding of those called in the New Testament the “brethren” of Jesus), they bear both Her and God an insult. One must try to imagine what it means to be the Mother of God! Is it thinkable that after donating Herself body and soul to God for the purposes of God to become man that She would have borne ordinary human children? Should someone hold to a notion false as this, he would be thinking too little of Christ the infinite God, forming a down-sized concept of Him whose miraculous conception and nativity would be quite ordinary.

And the birth of Christ from Mary was as wondrous as His conception: God passing through the Virgin in some unknown miraculous manner, analogous to light shining through a glass. She placed Her newborn in a manger and–Ecce!–the mother adored Her literally adorable child. Nothing before or since has equaled the noumena (far beyond mere ‘phenomena’) of the mysteries set before us in the Christmas story.

You will need to spend some quiet moments before the creche this Christmas and let your eyes pass from Virgin to Child and back again to imagine the interior conversation of souls that must have taken place on Christmas. Saint Joseph could scarcely have been less in awe over the sight of his spouse and the child given over to his care. Mary and Joseph certainly knew as much as the shepherds: “a Savior has been born to you.” The word savior conjures up a mighty warrior, a deliverer from enemy forces. This baby was indeed such a savior. Mary knew the more precise sense of this word. He would “save His people from their sins.” Mysteries thus abound and become more complex the longer we dwell on the scene at Bethlehem.

Would that we could re-engage the wonderment of our childhood–often dissipated on holiday frivolities–and focus them on the Incarnate Son of God born of the Virgin Mother. We would not thus be regressing to our youth but advancing towards the maturity of a deeper faith and a greater comprehension of divine things, having become “like little children to enter the kingdom of God.”

Christmas is not for kids, but for child-like souls who see the divine light of the Infant Christ and His reflection shining upon the face of Mary–that brightness ‘round yon Virgin Mother and Child.’ The liturgy of the Church speaks of all this as a magnum mysterium, a great mystery. We need to get into that spirit which alone can make sense of all the fuss we make in celebrating Christmas. Ecce!

Fr. Perrone

Tridentine Community News - Christmas Masses in the Extraordinary Form; Christian Caubet, RIP; Photos of Jackson Pontifical Mass; TLM Mass schedule

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (December 20, 2015):

December 20, 2015 – Fourth Sunday of Advent

Christmas Masses in the Extraordinary Form

We are pleased to announce that a number of options exist for those who wish to attend Tridentine Masses on Christmas Day:

Christmas Eve:

• Midnight Mass at St. Joseph, Detroit Choir and chamber orchestra will perform Missa Jesu, Salvátor Mundi by Vito Carnevali. Prelude begins at 11:00 PM.
• Midnight Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit Choir and orchestra will perform Mozart’s Mass in C, K. 258

Christmas Day:

• 9:30 AM Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit
• 9:30 AM Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit No choir
• 9:45 AM Mass at Oakland County Latin Mass Association, Academy of the Sacred Heart Chapel, Bloomfield Hills - Celebrant: Fr. Clint McDonell Choir will sing Missa Secúnda by Hans Leo Hassler
• 2:00 PM Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor - Celebrant: Fr. Peter Hrytsyk Choir will sing Mass in Honor of St. Joseph by Flor Peeters

Christian Caubet, RIP

Your prayers are requested for the repose of the soul of Christian Caubet, who passed away earlier this month. Christian was a long-time member of Windsor’s St. Benedict Tridentine Community Choir, where he sang bass. Originally from Paris, Christian had been a member of the Assumption Church Parish Choir before beginning to sing for the Latin Mass. His was a familiar, resonant voice throughout our region, as he traveled around the area to sing for special occasions at St. Josaphat and Flint’s All Saints Church, among other places. Requiéscat in pace.

Photos from Jackson Pontifical Mass

Over 270 of the faithful attended the Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form on December 6 celebrated by Bishop Earl Boyea of the Diocese of Lansing at Jackson, Michigan’s St. Mary Star of the Sea Church. St. Mary is one of Michigan’s best-preserved historic churches, grand in scale and ideally outfitted for the Traditional Latin Mass. Bishop Boyea is an experienced and enthusiastic celebrated of the Tridentine Mass, having started to offer it in 2005 at St. Josaphat Church while an Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit.

Altar servers from Windsor’s St. Benedict Tridentine Community and the Oakland County Latin Mass Association were privileged to have been invited to serve at this Mass.

One of the most impressive discoveries at this Mass was the recently formed quasi-professional choir. Under the direction of Bill Price, Jr. and including long-time Tridentine Mass organists Jeff Mausolf and Sipkje Pesnichak as members, the new Jackson Tridentine choir sings polyphony at every Mass. Not surprisingly, the combination of the move to St. Mary’s and the newfound commitment to sacred music has resulted in a doubling of the Sunday Mass attendance at the Jackson Latin Mass. Bishop Boyea deserves thanks for encouraging the move to this lovely church, as well as the recent move of the Flint Tridentine Community to the comparable St. Matthew Church.

Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form is offered at 12:15 PM each Sunday at St. Mary Star of the Sea.



The entire album of photos taken by Roger MacZura is available here: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABJ3ZDoMR2Q9s50&id=2F2DE5C39534F69B%212637&cid=2F2DE5C39534F69B

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 12/21 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Greater Feria of Advent)
• Tue. 12/22 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary (Windsor) (Greater Feria of Advent)
  
  See above for Christmas Day Masses

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Albertus (Detroit), Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills), and St. Alphonsus and Holy Name of Mary Churches (Windsor) bulletin inserts for December 20, 2015. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Tridentine Masses coming this (Christmas) week to metro Detroit and east Michigan

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Sunday


• Sun. 12/20 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 45 minutes before and after Masses) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
• Sun. 12/20 8:00 and 10:30AM Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
• Sun. 12/20 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
• Sun. 12/20 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
• Sun. 12/20 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
• Sun. 12/20 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
  
• Sun. 12/20 3:00 PM High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint (4th Sunday of Advent - 1st class)
  
  Monday
  
  
• Mon. 12/21 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Thomas - 2nd class)
• Mon. 12/21 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (St. Thomas - 2nd class)
• Mon. 12/21 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (St. Thomas - 2nd class)
• Mon. 12/21 7:00 PM: High Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Thomas - 2nd class)
  
  Tuesday
  
  
• Tue. 12/22 7:00 AM High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/22/ 7:30 AM Low Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular, Wyandotte (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/22 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/22 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
• Tue. 12/22 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
  
  Wednesday
  
  
• Wed. 12/23 7:00 AM: High Mass at St. Matthew, Flint (Greater Feria of Advent) - Rorate Mass (Mass by candlelight at dawn)
• Wed. 12/23 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
• Wed. 12/23 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
• Wed. 12/23 7:00 PM: High Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Greater Feria of Advent - 2nd class)
  
  Thursday [See Midnight Mass schedule below for First Masses of Christmas Day]
  
  Friday [The Nativity of Our Lord]
  
  
• Fri. 12/25 12:00 Midnight: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (First Mass of Christmas Day - The Nativity of Our Lord - 1st class) - Choir will sing Mozart's Mass in C, K. 258.
• Fri. 12/25 12:00 Midnight : High Mass at St. Joseph's Church, Detroit (First Mass of Christmas Day - The Nativity of Our Lord - 1st class) - Choir will sing Missa Jesu, Salvator Mundi by Vito Carnevali; Prelude begins at 11:00 PM.
• Fri. 12/25 9:30 AM: High at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Third Mass of Christmas Day, The Nativity of Our Lord - 1st class)
• Fri. 12/25 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Third Mass of Christmas Day, The Nativity of Our Lord - 1st class) - No choir
• Fri. 12/25 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Third Mass of Christmas Day, The Nativity of Our Lord - 1st class) - Guest celebrant: Fr. Clint McDonell; members of Windsor’s St. Benedict Choir will join the OCLMA choir in singing Hans Leo Hassler’s Missa Secunda; Prelude begins at 9:35 AM.
  
• Fri. 12/25 2:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada (Third Mass of Christmas Day, The Nativity of Our Lord - 1st class) - Choir will sing Mass in Honor of St. Joseph by Flor Peeters; Prelude begins at 1:50 PM.
  
  Saturday
  
  
• Sat. 12/26 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (St. Stephen - 2nd class)
• Sat. 12/26 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (St. Stephen - 2nd class)
• Sat. 12/26 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Stephen - 2nd class)
• Sat. 12/26 6:00 PM Tridentine Mass at SS. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church, Sterling Heights (St. Stephen - 2nd class)
  
  Sunday
  
  
• Sun. 12/27 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 45 minutes before and after Masses) at St. Joseph's Church, Richmond [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 8:00 and 10:30AM Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
• Sun. 12/27 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
• Sun. 12/27 3:00 PM High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint (Sunday within the Octave of Christmas - 2nd class)
  
  * NB: The SSPX chapels among those Mass sites listed above are posted here because the Holy Father has announced that "those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins." These chapels are not listed among the approved parishes and worship sites on archdiocesan websites.

The Da Vinci Aqualung Code: Hilarious!

The connection between Pope Francis and the rock band Jethro Tull's 1971 album, Aqualung. This explains everything.


"The Aqualung Code" (St. Corbinian's Bear, December 19, 2015). Excerpt: 

The song "My God" featured prominently in Father Bergoglio's discussions, according to our sources. 

People what have you done?

Locked Him in his golden cage.

Made Him bend to your religion,

Him resurrected from the grave.

"We imprison the divine with doctrine!" Father Bergoglio would often say vehemently. "Yes, making Him bend to our religious rules instead of letting Him be free among the people! Where is the joy in this?"

Another part of the same song inspired a term he came up with one night while listening to "My God." Self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagians.

"I remember it like it was yesterday," our source recalled. "Father Bergoglio came to my room in an excited state and asked me to accompany him. We went to his room and he played some verses from a rock and roll song on a phonograph. As soon as they were finished, he would turn the record back and play them again. 'Listen!,' he said. His eyes were burning. 'This is telling me something. It's talking about... I don't know. About self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagianism!"

Our source continued. "At first I did not understand. Father Bergoglio turned off the record player and looked at me in silence for a moment. Then he repeated it slowly, almost as if he had had a revelation. Perhaps he had."

Here are the lyrics that so gripped the imagination of Father Bergoglio in 1971.

Confessing to the endless sins,
The endless whining sounds.
You'll be praying till next Thursday,
To all the gods that you can count.

To Father Bergoglio, these lyrics meant that people rely on their own religious efforts and correctness to save themselves. The lyrics also reminded him of excessive, repetitive, traditional prayers, which he began to call "rosary counting" after listening to the song repeatedly.

[Hat tip to L.S.]

"A Presbyterian, his wife, and an Archbishop walk into a bar ..."

The Archbishop was Charles Cardinal Chaput! Seriously!

Carl Trueman, "A Presbyterian, his wife, and an Archbishop walk into a bar ..." (Postcards From Palookaville, December 15, 2015):

In one of those surreal twists of fate that sounds like the start of a corny joke ('A presbyterian minister, his wife and an Archbishop walk into a bar....), the present Mrs Trueman and I recently found ourselves having dinner in a Philly pub with Charles Chaput, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia.  Separated by a fair amount of theology, we are yet very much united by concerns over religious freedom and the chaos that is contemporary sexual identity politics.

At one point in the meal, I thanked the Archbishop for the difficult stands he has taken on a host of matters in Philadelphia, especially those on LGBTQ issues.  He paused, looked me in the eye and then commented 'You know, Carl, it is never difficult to do the right thing.  It can be very tiring. But it is never difficult.'

I thought of that comment when I read Todd's post of yesterday and wondered why there is such chaos and indifference in so much of Christian higher education.  It is never difficult to do the right thing.  Only tiring.  That's all.

[Hat tip to JM]

Have you ever considered the words of Good King Wenceslas?

"How many archbishops of Paris have been saints? St. Bruno was a subdeacon who realized he was failing in his piety and took to seclusion. Was St. Anthony of Egypt even a priest or was he just a man overcome by the need for penance? My favorite post-Apostolic saint, Philip Neri of Rome, only became a priest after seventeen years praying at San Girolamo in Rome. The pope did not ordain him to be archpriest of St. Peter's; an auxiliary bishop ordained him to serve a small following of twenty of so people—the primitive Oratory—and hear their Confessions. As Christmas approaches we will be hearing about how "Good King Wenceslas looked down on the feast of Stephen." Wenceslas was a duke who had a simple piety and a strong sense of charity towards his subjects, which is epitomized in the song. The saint used to fashion the bread and wine for Mass himself and present them at the offertory, as was the custom. The saints were different yet still accessible to us who follow and simply "embrace the Cross."

"Where are these saints today? Philip Neri and several other Roman saints of repute would not even get a look from a modern bishop or religious order. If obedience is a virtue unto itself then there is no need for Catherine of Sienna or Teresa of Avila. These men and women still exist in our midst, invisible for bishops looking to cultivate profitable pilgrimages to pay homage at the tomb of "St. John Paul the Great." Canonizations now do what they have never done: they confirm the establishment.

"The saints are still among us, but we must pray that they be raised above us."

[Hat tip to L.S.; source; Disclaimer: Rules 7-9]

New Vatican document on Judaism provokes controversy

Under the signatures of Cardinal Kurt Koch, Rev. Brial Farrell, and Rev. Norbert Hofmann, SDB, respectively the President, Vice-President and Secretary of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, the new document has been just released on December 10, 2015), entitled: "The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable" (Rom 11:29) - A Reflection on the Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of "Nostra Aetate" (NO.4)

The New York Times immediately ran a headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews" (December 10, 2015), reporting: "Catholics should not try to convert Jews, but should work together with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a far-reaching document meant to solidify its increasingly positive relations with Jews. John L. Allen Jr. posted an article on Crux the same day, entitled: "Vatican document on Jews proves that revolution is the new routine." Catholic News Service, like most other mainstream Catholic outlets, tiptoed around the issues without shedding much light (See New Vatican document reflects on relations between Catholics, Jews") -- um, yawn .... Not much help.

If you want to see what things look like in the klieg lights, turn from the "Everything is Awesome" cheerleaders to the "Everything is Damned to Hell" doomsayers, and you just might get a clear fix: According to John Vennari, "Blind Guides: Conciliar Vatican Announces 'No Mission' to Convert Jews" (Catholic Family News, December 12, 2015), the document claims:

• The New Covenant does not supersede the Old Covenant;[2]
• The Catholic Church, in principle, should have no mission to convert Jews;[3]
• The Word of God is present to todays Jews by means of the Torah (and equates this to the Word of God being present to Christians through Jesus Christ);[4]
• Modern Jews are in an acceptable position before God regarding salvation;[5]
• “The term covenant, therefore, means a relationship with God that takes effect in different ways for Jews and Christians”;[6]
• “It does not follow that Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and the Son of God.”[7]

... and that's just the beginning of his long, long article.

No less interesting is conservative Protestant Peter Helland, on his talk show "Israel," interviewing E. Michael Jones on the recent document:


Why do I think here of the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"??? Seems to me that pretty soon those most guilty of being Messias-deniers may not be the Jews, but certain spokesmen for the contemporary Catholic Church.

Incarnation: why matter matters in theology

S.M. Hutchens, "Jesus Christ Come in the Flesh" (Touchstone, November 30, 2015):

If the old stories are true, what offends and angers Satan more than anything else is the act of God wherein spirit becomes incarnated.  He hated the creation of man not as a mere animal, but in no less than the image and likeness of God, who treacherously breathed the nephesh chayyah into this thing of dust.  The Serpent had his way with the first Adam in Eden, thinking to destroy him.  Most of all he hates the second Adam, that vessel of clay that has the spirit without measure, with whom he had his way at Calvary, once again thinking to destroy him, and through him all mankind.  The spirit clothed in flesh must be execrable filth to the rebellious who are in substance fastidiously pure spirit, and the Incarnation of God so inexplicable, so hateful, and so enraging, that they cannot bring themselves to confront it as reality, thus providing a way that their loyalties, and those of their followers, can be tested right through the veil of their deceit and self-representation as angels of light.  (Do not look for mere hatred of the West at the deepest spiritual stratum of Islam, but of what the West stands for in the offended mind of its Principalities.)

We can easily understand the old and rather simple heresies–Gnosticism, Docetism, and the like–where a denial was clear, but have difficulty seeing those of our own day because they are more subtle and indirect.  Classical liberal theology, for example, does not deny outright the Incarnation or the Passion or the bodily resurrection of the flesh of Jesus, but treats these as stories for those with a pre-scientific view of reality (that is, who believe they really happened), and regards these beliefs about the flesh of Christ not as referring to actual events with cosmic and eternal significance, but mere symbols of abstract virtues like hope, courage, patience and renewal.  To identify the articles of the Creed, however, as “pre-scientific” is another way of calling them false when presented as statements of historical truth. 

Likewise the egalitarians, in their preoccupation with the equality of the sexes, eliminate the cosmic and eternal significance of the sex of Christ by consistently emphasizing that it was his generic humanness and not his male humanness–that is, the actual flesh of his incarnation–that signifies, thus identifying their ideology as another Satanic attack on Jesus Christ come in the flesh.  Both egalitarianism and theological liberalism refuse to make the required positive confession of the whole truth of the reality.  The First Epistle of John tells us an actual denial is not necessary for identification of the spirit of Antichrist, only an inability or refusal to confess.  The most effective ways to do this require the assistance of religion.

If the old stories are true, what offends and angers Satan more than anything else is the act of God wherein spirit becomes incarnated.  He hated the creation of man not as a mere animal, but in no less than the image and likeness of God, who treacherously breathed the nephesh chayyah into this thing of dust.  The Serpent had his way with the first Adam in Eden, thinking to destroy him.  Most of all he hates the second Adam, that vessel of clay that has the spirit without measure, with whom he had his way at Calvary, once again thinking to destroy him, and through him all mankind.  The spirit clothed in flesh must be execrable filth to the rebellious who are in substance fastidiously pure spirit, and the Incarnation of God so inexplicable, so hateful, and so enraging, that they cannot bring themselves to confront it as reality, thus providing a way that their loyalties, and those of their followers, can be tested right through the veil of their deceit and self-representation as angels of light.  (Do not look for mere hatred of the West at the deepest spiritual stratum of Islam, but of what the West stands for in the offended mind of its Principalities.)

We can easily understand the old and rather simple heresies–Gnosticism, Docetism, and the like–where a denial was clear, but have difficulty seeing those of our own day because they are more subtle and indirect.  Classical liberal theology, for example, does not deny outright the Incarnation or the Passion or the bodily resurrection of the flesh of Jesus, but treats these as stories for those with a pre-scientific view of reality (that is, who believe they really happened), and regards these beliefs about the flesh of Christ not as referring to actual events with cosmic and eternal significance, but mere symbols of abstract virtues like hope, courage, patience and renewal.  To identify the articles of the Creed, however, as “pre-scientific” is another way of calling them false when presented as statements of historical truth.

Likewise the egalitarians, in their preoccupation with the equality of the sexes, eliminate the cosmic and eternal significance of the sex of Christ by consistently emphasizing that it was his generic humanness and not his male humanness–that is, the actual flesh of his incarnation–that signifies, thus identifying their ideology as another Satanic attack on Jesus Christ come in the flesh.  Both egalitarianism and theological liberalism refuse to make the required positive confession of the whole truth of the reality.  The First Epistle of John tells us an actual denial is not necessary for identification of the spirit of Antichrist, only an inability or refusal to confess.  The most effective ways to do this require the assistance of religion.

- See more at: http://touchstonemag.com/merecomments/2015/11/jesus-christ-flesh-2/#sthash.7OouvMvS.dpuf

If the old stories are true, what offends and angers Satan more than anything else is the act of God wherein spirit becomes incarnated.  He hated the creation of man not as a mere animal, but in no less than the image and likeness of God, who treacherously breathed the nephesh chayyah into this thing of dust.  The Serpent had his way with the first Adam in Eden, thinking to destroy him.  Most of all he hates the second Adam, that vessel of clay that has the spirit without measure, with whom he had his way at Calvary, once again thinking to destroy him, and through him all mankind.  The spirit clothed in flesh must be execrable filth to the rebellious who are in substance fastidiously pure spirit, and the Incarnation of God so inexplicable, so hateful, and so enraging, that they cannot bring themselves to confront it as reality, thus providing a way that their loyalties, and those of their followers, can be tested right through the veil of their deceit and self-representation as angels of light.  (Do not look for mere hatred of the West at the deepest spiritual stratum of Islam, but of what the West stands for in the offended mind of its Principalities.)

We can easily understand the old and rather simple heresies–Gnosticism, Docetism, and the like–where a denial was clear, but have difficulty seeing those of our own day because they are more subtle and indirect.  Classical liberal theology, for example, does not deny outright the Incarnation or the Passion or the bodily resurrection of the flesh of Jesus, but treats these as stories for those with a pre-scientific view of reality (that is, who believe they really happened), and regards these beliefs about the flesh of Christ not as referring to actual events with cosmic and eternal significance, but mere symbols of abstract virtues like hope, courage, patience and renewal.  To identify the articles of the Creed, however, as “pre-scientific” is another way of calling them false when presented as statements of historical truth.

Likewise the egalitarians, in their preoccupation with the equality of the sexes, eliminate the cosmic and eternal significance of the sex of Christ by consistently emphasizing that it was his generic humanness and not his male humanness–that is, the actual flesh of his incarnation–that signifies, thus identifying their ideology as another Satanic attack on Jesus Christ come in the flesh.  Both egalitarianism and theological liberalism refuse to make the required positive confession of the whole truth of the reality.  The First Epistle of John tells us an actual denial is not necessary for identification of the spirit of Antichrist, only an inability or refusal to confess.  The most effective ways to do this require the assistance of religion.

- See more at: http://touchstonemag.com/merecomments/2015/11/jesus-christ-flesh-2/#sthash.7OouvMvS.dpufIf the old stories are true, what offends and angers Satan more than anything else is the act of God wherein spirit becomes incarnated.  He hated the creation of man not as a mere animal, but in no less than the image and likeness of God, who treacherously breathed the nephesh chayyah into this thing of dust.  The Serpent had his way with the first Adam in Eden, thinking to destroy him.  Most of all he hates the second Adam, that vessel of clay that has the spirit without measure, with whom he had his way at Calvary, once again thinking to destroy him, and through him all mankind.  The spirit clothed in flesh must be execrable filth to the rebellious who are in substance fastidiously pure spirit, and the Incarnation of God so inexplicable, so hateful, and so enraging, that they cannot bring themselves to confront it as reality, thus providing a way that their loyalties, and those of their followers, can be tested right through the veil of their deceit and self-representation as angels of light.  (Do not look for mere hatred of the West at the deepest spiritual stratum of Islam, but of what the West stands for in the offended mind of its Principalities.)

We can easily understand the old and rather simple heresies–Gnosticism, Docetism, and the like–where a denial was clear, but have difficulty seeing those of our own day because they are more subtle and indirect.  Classical liberal theology, for example, does not deny outright the Incarnation or the Passion or the bodily resurrection of the flesh of Jesus, but treats these as stories for those with a pre-scientific view of reality (that is, who believe they really happened), and regards these beliefs about the flesh of Christ not as referring to actual events with cosmic and eternal significance, but mere symbols of abstract virtues like hope, courage, patience and renewal.  To identify the articles of the Creed, however, as “pre-scientific” is another way of calling them false when presented as statements of historical truth.

Likewise the egalitarians, in their preoccupation with the equality of the sexes, eliminate the cosmic and eternal significance of the sex of Christ by consistently emphasizing that it was his generic humanness and not his male humanness–that is, the actual flesh of his incarnation–that signifies, thus identifying their ideology as another Satanic attack on Jesus Christ come in the flesh.  Both egalitarianism and theological liberalism refuse to make the required positive confession of the whole truth of the reality.  The First Epistle of John tells us an actual denial is not necessary for identification of the spirit of Antichrist, only an inability or refusal to confess.  The most effective ways to do this require the assistance of religion.

[Hat tip to JM]

"Weimar America madness": a spiritual warfare that mere politics cannot win (Dreher on Transparent's creator, Jill Soloway, as a contemporary exhibit)

Rod Dreher, "The Next Culture War Front" (The American Conservative, December 14, 2015), writes:

Jill Soloway [the culture-war gladiator for the radical left and creator of the TV series Transparent] is an increasingly influential culture creator — and she has powerful media institutions like The New York Times on her side. What’s going on in our culture is far, far beyond politics, but it will drive politics and law, and not in a direction that bodes well for religious liberty. At the very least.

And Transparent, in which Jeffrey Tambor portrays an elderly man who transitions into life as an elderly woman, cannot be regarded as a fringe show; this year, it had 11 Emmy nominations and five wins, making it one of the most honored programs in the industry.

From Ariel Levy’s fantastic New Yorker profile of Jill Soloway, we learn (among many other things) that Soloway, Transparent's creator, has just left her husband and their seven-year-old son, and taken up with a lesbian poet, "who is over the moon about how nothing binds our behavior except our own will." But the end of the article hits us like a thunderbolt, telling us exactly what we are dealing with here:

I asked Myles [the protégé of Allen Ginsberg’s on whom the character Ali Pfefferman is modelled] if, as a poet, she struggled to refer to an individual person as “they.” She said, “It’s not intuitive at all. But I’m obsessed with that part in the Bible when Jesus is given the opportunity to cure a person possessed by demons, and Jesus says, ‘What is your name?’ And the person replies, ‘My name is legion.’ Whatever is not normative is many.” She liked the idea of a person containing more than one self, more than one gender.

“Part of it is just the fiction of being alive,” she said. “Every step, you’re making up who you are.”

Dreher concludes:

This is not primarily a culture war over political power. This is spiritual warfare, as the Soloway piece makes plain for those with eyes to see. A political response is necessary, but a political response alone is radically insufficient, in part because it’s nothing but a delaying action. This Weimar America madness has to run its course. We religious conservatives had all better do everything we can to protect our institutions and our families from it. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s not going to get any easier as the years go by, no matter who sits in the White House, and we had better prepare ourselves.

[Hat tip to JM]