Tridentine Community News - Book Review: Phoenix from the Ashes; Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (April 14, 2019):

April 14, 2019 – Palm Sunday

Book Review: Phoenix from the Ashes


Much Catholic media attention has been given to the 2017 book The Dictator Pope, written by British historian Henry Sire under the pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna. It was one of a number of books published over the past two years critical of the current pontificate. Somewhat eclipsed by this book was Sire’s previous book, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition, published in 2015. It is appropriate to devote some attention to this publication, especially during Holy Week, as the book describes what might be thought of as a Passion of the Church.

A good portion of the book is devoted to esoteric and distant history, which won’t be of interest to every reader, yet which establishes Sire’s grasp of the various epochs in which the Church has existed. To this reviewer less interested in academic history, the book really picks up steam when it describes the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII and onward.

A tremendous amount has been written over the past fifty years about the work of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, the architect of the New Rite of Mass. In this book, however, previously not well-known details are presented about how Bugnini operated, how he manipulated his colleagues, his superiors, and to some extent Pope Paul VI to achieve his objective of a dramatically different Mass experience for the Catholic faithful. Two paragraphs summarize the evidence presented succinctly:

“In the introduction of the new rite, Msgr. Bugnini, confident in the favour of the pope, again showed his astounding contempt for legal process. He had shown the text of the Mass, together with the instruction that preceded it, to the pope, who told him to submit the instruction to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while he himself would examine the rite. Msgr. Bugnini simply disobeyed the order, and when the constitution Missale Romanum was submitted to the pope the latter signed it without reading the General Instruction. This doctrinal statement discarded the traditional eucharistic teaching and presented the Mass as a supper, a memorial, a meeting of the faithful. The betrayal of doctrine provoked reaction from those who had not yet despaired of orthodoxy. A Critical Study composed by a number of theologians was presented to the pope in September 1969 by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, objecting on twenty-seven counts to the new rite and especially its doctrinal prologue. Pope Paul VI was informed of Msgr. Bugnini’s act of disobedience and the scandal it caused, and when he heard it was seen by Cardinal Journet to weep with shame and anger. As a result of the intervention, the General Instruction, though already issued with the pope’s signature, was withdrawn and amended to reaffirm the orthodox doctrine of the Mass. The rite itself remained unreformed and came into use in the ecclesiastical year 1969-70. ...

The story of how the liturgical revolution was put through is one that hampers the historian by its very enormity; he would wish, for his own sake, to have a less unbelievable tale to tell. The partisanship in choice of agents, the contempt for law and consultation, the blind support given by Paul VI despite every abuse, the silencing of the Church’s official organisms for the liturgy, the spirit of conflict in which the reform of the most sacred possession of the faithful was carried out, the advance of irreverence and impiety, the prompt discarding of principles that had been declared essential only a few years before, the discrediting and sudden departure of both the men to whom Paul VI had entrusted the reform of the liturgy, all these challenge belief. Moderation seems to demand rejection of such a story; but moderation is the wrong lens through which to judge immoderate events. That the reform of the Church’s liturgical life should have been bound up with such violations seems too hard to accept, but it can be explained by two facts: the first is the initial decision of Paul VI to hand over the reform to the most extreme wing of liturgical iconoclasts, and the second is the background of Modernist clamour that existed at the time. However they chose to act, the pope and his nominees needed never to fear criticism for actions that made for change, but only for laggardness in promoting it. This noisy chorus, claiming to be the voice of the faithful, represented a milieu filled with arrogance toward the sacred and towards Christian tradition. At their demand the religious treasure house of centuries was destroyed, while the ordinary laity, under the flood of innovation, lapsed from the Church in their millions. One day it will be necessary for the Church to study with honesty the way in which its liturgical heritage was done away with and to pass the judgment that it has pronounced in the past on grave deviations from its true nature and duty.”

One would have to do a fair amount of sleuthing to find objective evidence contrary to Sire’s. Those who defend the Ordinary Form usually cite a vague Vatican II / people’s drive for these changes but fail to acknowledge the protocol-defying means and intellectually questionable engine driving the Consílium, the Vatican body charged with creating the New Mass. Has anyone actually been a true, objective apologist for Bugnini and his methods? With the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, we must judge the new liturgy by its fruits. Meanwhile the Traditional Mass – resurgent in the midst of amazing opposition – continues to gain ground and speak to younger as well as older generations. Sire’s book goes on to document the decline in orthodoxy following Vatican II, then becomes optimistic as it describes the resurgence of tradition which many readers of this column observe and live every week.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Tue. 04/16 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (Tuesday in Holy Week)
• Thu. 04/18 7:00 PM: High Mass at Oakland County Latin Mass Association/Academy of the Sacred Heart Chapel, Bloomfield Hills (Holy Thursday)
• Sat. 04/20 8:00 PM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy (Easter Vigil)
• Fri. 04/19 1:30 PM: Chanted Service at OCLMA/Academy (Good Friday)
• Fri. 04/19 5:30 PM: Chanted Service at Holy Name of Mary (Good Friday)
• Sat. 04/20: No Mass at Miles Christi
• Sat. 04/20 8:00 PM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy (Easter Vigil)
• Sun. 04/21: No Mass at OCLMA/Academy

[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 April 14, 2019. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Tridentine Community News - St. Mary of Redford Assigned to the Franciscans of the Holy Spirit; The Communion Rail and Complementarity; The Wooden Clapper; Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (April 7, 2019):

April 7, 2019 – Passion Sunday

St. Mary of Redford Assigned to the Franciscans of the Holy Spirit

Along with St. Florian in Hamtramck, St. Mary of Redford is one of two local churches designed by famed Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram. Located on Grand River Ave. east of the Southfield Freeway, its now modest attendance gives little hint of its stellar past: During the 1950s St. Mary’s was one of the best-attended parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit, with 4,455 registered parishioners, 10,000 in attendance at Sunday Masses, and 2,289 enrolled in the parish schools. In 1951 Msgr. Edward Hickey was assigned as Pastor, and he remained there past his retirement, living in an apartment in the bell tower. An avid sailor, art collector, and founder of the Cloister Gallery at Gratiot and East Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Msgr. Hickey was known for celebrating a clandestine, private Tridentine Low Mass in the 1980s at 6:00 AM weekdays at the church’s High Altar [1980s photo below]. In recent years, the occasional visiting priest has celebrated private Low Masses at a Side Altar of the still-grand edifice.


During the 1990s the church was semi-wreckovated. The High Altar was separated into pieces, its mensa now serving as the freestanding altar.

The Archdiocese of Detroit recently appointed Fr. Athanasius Fornwalt, FHS, as Administrator of St. Mary of Redford, effective in July. He will continue his role as Formation Director for the Franciscans of the Holy Spirit, whose brothers study at Sacred Heart Major Seminary; they will now reside at St. Mary of Redford. Readers of this column know that priests of Fr. Athanasius’ order celebrate the Ordinary Form ad oriéntem and have become regular celebrants of the Extraordinary Form as well. We hope to hear of good things happening at St. Mary’s, where the Franciscans will have the opportunity to rejuvenate this once-proud parish.

The Communion Rail and Complementarity

This column has many times noted the return of Communion Rails to many churches across the globe. Both construction of new Altar Rails and the putting of long-neglected existing rails back into use for their original purpose are on the upswing. On March 16, Fr. Jerry Pokorsky published an article in which he made several points in favor of bringing back the use of Communion Rails.

He argues that receiving Holy Communion while standing in a line makes the act individualistic, whereas the sight of the faithful kneeling at the rail is communal and does not encourage a hurried departure back to one’s seat.

One quote from the article stands out: “A priest senses the Communion rail and feels he is set apart from the assembly, even as he engages the faithful in prayer. He is more aware of his role as a mediator in Christ in prayer and worship.” How much more do these words apply if Holy Mass is offered ad oriéntem.


It is noteworthy that while Fr. Pokorsky offers the Ordinary Form in Latin at his parish of St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, Virginia [brand new stone Communion Rail there pictured above], the Traditional Mass is not offered there, so these arguments carry even more weight. The full article may be read here:

www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/03/16/the-communion-rail-and-complementarity/

The Wooden Clapper


A notable reduction of the Sacred Liturgy during the Sacred Triduum is the suppression of bells. Where hand bells would ordinarily be rung, a wooden clapper called the crotálus is used instead. Bells denote joy, a sentiment which must be set aside as we recall our Lord’s Passion. The clapper instead produces a severe and somewhat startling sound, quite appropriate in light of our Lord’s sufferings. The bells are rung for the last time at the beginning of the Glória on Holy Thursday and will not be heard again until the Glória on the Easter Vigil; instead during that time period we will hear the stark crack of the crotálus.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Tue. 04/09 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (Tuesday in Passion Week)
• Sat. 04/13 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (Saturday in Passion Week)

[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 April 7, 2019. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

“And Paul VI wept”. More fascinating notes about the Pope and the liturgical reform.

Fr. Z, “And Paul VI wept”. More fascinating notes about the Pope and the liturgical reform. (Fr. Z's Blog, April 19, 2018):

Today, Sandro Magistero offers some information about Paul VI’s true attitude about the liturgical reform sparked by “experts” such as Annibale Bugnini well before the Council, during the Liturgical Movement, and carried out through and after the Council by the same.

Read more >>

A bit of history: Fr. Perrone, Detroit, Music

Looking back: William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" on Vatican II

How the Catholic Faith went underground for centuries in Japan and was preserved by the lay faithful

Sandro Magister, "The 'Hidden Christians' of Japan ..." (Settimo Cielo, October 17, 2017):

Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his admiration for the “hidden Christians” of Japan, who miraculously reappeared with their faith intact in the second half of the nineteenth century, after two and a half centuries of centuries of ferocious annihilation of Christianity in that country.

But few know the real story of this miracle on the brink of the incredible. It was reconstructed on Thursday, October 12 in a fascinating conference in the aula magna of the Pontifical Gregorian University, by the Japanese Jesuit Shinzo Kawamura, professor of Church history at Sophia University in Tokyo and an author of the most up-to-date studies on the issue.

The complete text of his conference, given at the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Holy See, is reproduced on this other page of Settimo Cielo:

>> Pope Pius IX and Japan. The History of an Oriental Miracle

An extensive extract from this is published below. From reading this - which is a must - it can be gathered that what allowed the intact transmission of the Catholic faith, from generation to generation, among those Christians devoid of priests and entirely cut off from the world was essentially an oral tradition made up of a few decisive truths concerning the sacraments and in the first place confession, according to what was taught by the Council of Trent.

It is “Tridentine” Catholicism, therefore, that nourished the miracle of those “hidden Christians.” With its doctrine of sin and of sacramental forgiveness, anticipated in them by repeated acts of perfect contrition, in the absence of a confessor but also in the prophetic vision that one day he would finally arrive.

These were acts of contrition that followed, at times, the sin of apostasy, which involved publicly trampling on the “Fumie,” the image of Jesus, as they were forced to do by their persecutors in order to prove that they abjured the Christian faith, on pain of death....

"HIDDEN CHRISTIANS" IN JAPAN. THE HISTORY OF AN ORIENTAL MIRACLE
by Shinzo Kawamura, S.J.

On January 8, 1867, His Holiness Pope Pius IX dispatched a special message to Fr. Bernard Petitjean of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, who at the time was involved in missionary work in the city of Nagasaki. The purpose of His Holiness was to personally bless an event, which he exuberantly described as a “Miracle of the Orient.”

What he referred to as a “Miracle of the Orient,” was the fact that three years before this message was dispatched, that is, on March 17, 1865, an incident had occurred within one of Japan’s oldest churches, namely the “Oura Tenshudo" of Nagasaki, which is also known as the Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan.

A group of approximately 15 people, descendants of the Hidden Christians of Nagasaki Urakami, visited the Oura Tenshudo that had just been built, and engaged in a dialogue with Fr. Petitjean.

They spoke to Fr. Petitjean saying: “We are of the same faith as you. Where can we find the image of Saint Mary?”.

No sooner had these Hidden Christians ascertained the fact that Catholic priests had entered Japan, more and more of them began to come out of hiding, and their numbers in course of time exceeded ten thousand.

After having duly confirmed the fact that the faith of these priests was the same as that which had been adhered to by their ancestors 400 years ago, these Hidden Christians returned to the Catholic Church.

Three keywords

These Hidden Christians had endured about 250 years of persecution, due to the prohibitions imposed upon them by the Tokugawa government. Even so, they faithfully continued to preserve their faith, and when they eventually felt that the time was appropriate to do so, they rejoined the Catholic Church. This was indeed a miracle, but my question is, what was it that made this miracle possible?

I now wish to present three keywords that I consider most vital, with regard to the possibility of this Oriental Miracle....

Kawamura goes on to discuss in detail the "three keywords" to understanding the survival of the underground faith in Japan. Essentially, they come down to (1) lay communities that had been organized for the governance of the Catholic faithful in diverse territorial regions of the country since the time of St. Francis Xavier's mission in Japan; (2) the prophecy of a martyred catechist that after seven generations, black ships would arrive and Catholic "confessors" with the authority to forgive sins would return to Japan; and (3) hope of forgiveness in the absence of sacramental Confession through the Tridentine provision that "reconciliation between the individual and God can be attained by true contrition."

In these far-from-ideal conditions, how these Japanese "hidden Christians" were able to preserve and sustain their faith at all is indeed an "Oriental Miracle."

[Hat tip to JM]

Bibles

From one of my readers, worth reading:

VERY interesting ...

A Jew in the court of King James...

"...more than any other English translation of Scripture, the KJV is driven by an 'idea of majesty' whose 'qualities are those of grace, stateliness, scale, [and] power.'"

Also, Leland Ryken's "What Makes the King James Version Great?" (Reformation 21, January 2011) ...

"Schuyler Canterbury KJV" (Lectio, January 10, 2017).

Meanwhile there is also this ... Alex Blechle, "A Millennial's thoughts on Bible Translation" (Catholic Bibles, September 12, 2017).

The comments are interesting.

[Hat tip to JM]

"A priest's face ..." Reflection on Fr. McGivney

Fr. Michael J. McGivney (1852-1890) was the founder of the Kights of Columbus. Here is a snippet about his personality from a contemporary who knew him, which I found in my copy of Columbia magazine, which arrived today. Fortunately, it's also online and thus linked below:

Fr. Joseph G. Daley, "The Personality of Father McGivney," Columbia (August 2017), pp. 21-22 (extract):

I remember meeting with Father McGivney in New Haven in 1883, the year after the first incorporation of the Knights. He was then in the prime of his vigor, entrusted by a good but delicate pastor, Father Lawlor, with the management of St. Mary’s, a parish lying close under the towers of Yale College and at that time the most aristocratic parish in Connecticut. Father McGivney himself was anything but aristocratic; he was a man of extreme grace of manner in any society, but without any airs, without any “lugs,” if you will pardon the expression. I saw him but once and yet I remember his pale, beautiful face as if I saw it only yesterday; it was “a priest’s face,” and that explains everything. It was a face of wonderful repose; there was nothing harsh in that countenance, although there was everything that was strong; there was nothing sordid, nothing mercenary, nothing of the politician, nothing of the axe-grinder. Guile and ambition were as far from him as from heaven. To meet him was at once to trust him; children actually loved him; and the very old people of the neighborhood, whom he hunted up and who got part of his time even on busiest days, called him a positive saint and meant it....

New Detroit Archdiocese coat of arms design

Do any of you have an opinion about the new Coat of Arms of the Archdiocese of Detroit? Some people seem quite upset by it, like the website that calls it an "Epic Fail," and a logo rather than a coat of arms. I think the archbishop's post-synodal letter will help the viewer to understand some of the imagery in the new design, though whether you like it or not is another question. (Here are images of the designs, old on the left, new on the right.)

Catholic Herald: Is there really an Old Mass revival?

Well look for yourself and see. For starters, here is Fr. Z's analysis of the question (Fr. Z's Blog, June 9, 2017).

The epiclesis - a later addition?

Fr. Hunwicke, "The epiclesis of the Roman Rite" (Fr. Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment, September 2, 2010) writes:

Dear old Fortescue's The Mass records the long debates of liturgists a century ago about where the epiclesis of the Roman Rite originally was before it ... er ... "dropped out". Their assumption, of course, was that the epiclesis was original to Christian liturgy and that the Oriental rites which preserve it were more 'primitive' than the Roman Rite. Now, happily, we know better. We see the Oriental epiclesis as a comparatively late fad in the evolving liturgical tradition. Rather than seeking traces of a lost epiclesis in the Canon Romanus, we realise that the prayer Supplices te rogamus, in which we pray that our offerings be taken to the Heavenly Altar, represents an earlier and lovelier expression of the linkage between our offering and the eternal oblation of the Eternal Son at the Heavenly Altar. Patrimony liturgists such as E C Ratcliffe played a large role here, not to mention Dom Gregory. Read more >>

In "Consecration in the Roman Mass 2" (Fr. Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment, March 15, 2015), Fr. Hunwicke adds:

Why this Gadarene preoccupation, in the 1960s, with epicleses asking the Spirit to be sent to change Bread into Body? The answer is embarrassingly simple. Pretty well all rites except the Roman had an epiclesis. Therefore it must be 'Primitive'. Therefore it was desireable. The alternative possibility, that Rome lacked an epiclesis because it was older than those other rites, occurred to very few. So, for a hundred years or more, the question had been (not why did the other rites add an epiclesis, but) Whatever Happened to the Roman Epiclesis ... deemed to have existed originally but, for some mysterious reason, to have gone missing. Readers who still have on their shelves The Mass by Adrian Fortescue can still find page after page describing the ingenious pursuits, by entire generations of clever and erudite men, of this particular invisible (well, to be frank, mythical) fox. The conviction was bolstered by an inclination to believe that all the existing rites of Christendom must have descended from an Original Liturgy which, at least in its dominant features, was fairly uniform, and could therefore, in principle, be reconstructed from a comparison of existing liturgies. This assumption, as the pendulum swings, is currently highly unfashionable; an Anglican liturgist called Paul Bradshaw has spent most of his life rebutting it. Read more >>

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Think you know anything about the Gift of Tongues?

Take Charles A. Sullivan's two quizzes, and think again!

Fr. Rutler: Pentecost was not an occasion for 'Enthusiasm'

Fr. George W. Rutler's article, "Pentecost Was Not An Occasion for 'Enthusiasm'" (Crisis Magazine, June 1, 2017), has all the appearance of being timed in anticipation of the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal's celebration of it's Golden Jubilee on Pentecost Sunday.

After meandering through a number of typically learned and eloquent distractions, the irrepressible Fr. Rutler comes round to his thesis: how the Catholic Charismatic movement, like the Montanist enthusiasms of the ancient Church, is a heretical distortion. While "not unsympathetic toward the noble integrity of John Wesley," he writes, Monsignor Ronald Knox, in his masterwork entitled Enthusiasm, "holds up the spiritist movements from the second century Montanists to the latter day Quakers, Jansenists, and Quietists as examples of how people go to extremes to confuse themselves emotionally with the Holy Spirit."

Turning his attention to Phrygia of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey during the second century, Rutler writes:

A convert priest named Montanus stirred up a lot of excitement when he confused himself with the Holy Spirit and proclaimed various “prophecies” while in a trance like a sort of divine ventriloquist. In the manner of a typical fanatic so defined, he was confident that God would agree with him if only God had all the facts. In a languid and dissolute period, the local churches already having become formalistic and arid (contrary to romantic depictions of the uniform zeal of all early Christians, and not unlike the motivation of John Wesley to stir up the dormant Church of England), the ardor of Montanus attracted many as far as North African and Rome itself, not all of whom were innocent of neurosis. Even the formidable mind of Tertullian welcomed it. Sensational outbursts of emotion were thought to be divinely inspired, and the formal clerical structure of the Church was caricatured as the sort of rigidity that quenches the spirit. Avowing that prophecy did not end with the last apostles, new messages were pronounced, false speaking in tongues pretending to be actual languages was encouraged, and women like Priscilla and Maximilla left their husbands and decided that they could be priestesses and prophetesses.

In the twentieth century, the Montanist heresy sprung up again. The Pentecostal sects, and even many Catholics were attracted to “re-awakenings” that gave the impression that the Paraclete promised by Christ who never lied had finally come awake having slumbered pretty much since the early days of the Church. While its extreme forms were bizarre, such as dancing in churches and uncontrolled laughter and barking like dogs while rolling on the floor, any quest for novelty quickly grows bored, for nothing goes out of fashion so fast as the latest fashion.

... Heresies are fads. The estimable Servant of God Father John Hardon, whose talks would never be called ecstatic, bluntly said that the modern Charismatics are Montanists. It is true that the Charismatic movement in the Catholic Church wisely was blessed insofar as it not denigrate from or add to authentic dogma. But in the second century the pope Eleutherius was inclined to condone the Montanists too, until the anti-Tertullian theologian Praxeas explained its problems.

More to it, of course, but that seems to be intended nub of something like a warning shot across the bow of the unbridled ubiquitous ebullience of the present season.

"What makes Bach so successful among the Japanese?"

Uwe Siemon-Netto, "J. S. Bach in Japan" (First Things, June 2000). What an amazing article! Here are a few teasers ...

Twenty-five years ago when there was still a Communist East Germany, I interviewed several boys from Leipzig’s Thomanerchor, the choir once led by Johann Sebastian Bach. Many of those children came from atheistic homes. “Is it possible to sing Bach without faith?” I asked them. “Probably not,” they replied, “but we do have faith. Bach has worked as a missionary among all of us.” During a recent journey to Japan I discovered that 250 years after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world....

... “In their frenetic pursuit of production, speculation, and consumption,” Repp said, “the older Japanese have provided their offspring exclusively with materialistic values. But the youngsters are yearning for something more. The result is an enormous gap between the generations; they are no longer able to communicate with one another.”

... ”What people need in this situation is hope in the Christian sense of the word, but hope is an alien idea here,” says the renowned organist Masaaki Suzuki, founder and conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan. He is the driving force behind the “Bach boom” sweeping Japan during its current period of spiritual impoverishment. “Our language does not even have an appropriate word for hope,” Suzuki says. “We either use ibo, meaning desire, or nozomi, which describes something unattainable.” After every one of the Bach Collegium’s performances Suzuki is crowded on the podium by non-Christian members of the audience who wish to talk to him about topics that are normally taboo in Japanese society—death, for example. “And then they inevitably ask me to explain to them what ‘hope’ means to Christians.” ...

Japan’s Bach boom does, however, have one baffling aspect: how is it possible that melodies and rhythms from eighteenth-century Germany should please people of an entirely alien culture thousands of miles to the east? Tokyo musicologists have come up with an astonishing answer: Bach’s appeal to today’s Japanese is directly linked to a Spaniard’s first attempt to evangelize their ancestors 450 years ago.

... Believers were crucified, burned at the stake, tortured to death, or hanged upside-down over cesspools to intensify their suffering. Few Japanese were aware of this sinister aspect of their history until last year, when the Tobu art gallery in Tokyo commemorated the 450th anniversary of Francis Xaviér’s arrival with a massive exhibition spread over three floors.

The enormous crowds filing through this show were horrified by the cruelties its images portrayed. But there was one thing they did not learn at the Tobu Gallery: Western music managed to survive the persecution. The Jesuits had introduced Gregorian chant to Japan and built organs from bamboo pipes.... By the time Christianity was totally outlawed in Japan in the early seventeenth century, elements of Gregorian chant had infiltrated Japan’s traditional folk music. That influence remained strong enough to help Johann Sebastian Bach’s music sweep across the island nation more than four centuries later.

This explains the amazing success of Bach’s collected works, which were published by Sogakukan, a Tokyo company, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. This collection of fifteen volumes, including 156 CDs accompanied by books with the original lyrics in German and Latin plus their Japanese translations, cost a staggering $3,000 each. Within weeks the first edition of five thousand copies was sold out.

The collection’s editor, Tesuo O’Hara, described himself as one of Christianity’s sympathizers, though not a believer. He could have fooled me. “What makes Bach so successful among the Japanese?” I asked him. O’Hara replied, “Bach gives us hope when we are afraid; he gives us courage when we despair; he comforts us when we are tired; he makes us pray when we are sad; and he makes us sing when we are full of joy.”

[Hat tip E. Echeverria]

"What, then, remains of Luther?"

In the early part of the twentieth century there were prominent Protestant theologians like Reinhold Seeberg of Berlin and Wilhelm Braun of Heidelberg who lamented the bitter fruits of the Reformation. Fr. Joseph Husselein, S.J., writing in "What, Then, Remains of Luther?" in America, Vol. IX, No. 14 (July 12, 1913), p. 320, suggests that nowhere is this Protestant chagrin over the bitter fruit of the Reformation more faithfully reflected than in an article written by the Protestant theologian Braun for Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, March 30, 1913. Braun, upon reading the historical and theological exposés of Luther by Father Heinrich Denifle, O.P. [photo below left], in Luther und Luthertum and by Fr. Hartmann Grisar, S.J., in Luther, asked "What, then remains of Luther?" After candidly admitting the superior facilities possessed by the Dominican and Jesuit authors over Protestant theologians and historians in the field of Luther research (p. 169), Braun draws up the following remarkable summary of his impressions:

The reading of Grisar should afford food for reflection to us Evangelical theologians. With strips cut from our own skin the Catholic author has pieced together his 'Luther.' How small the Reformer has become according to the Luther studies of our own Protestant investigators! How his merits have shrivelled up! We believed that we owed to him the spirit of toleration and liberty of conscience. Not in the least! We recognized in his translation of the Bible a masterpiece stamped with the impress of originality -- we may be happy now if it is not plainly called a 'plagiarism'! ... Looking upon the 'results' of their work thus gathered together, we cannot help asking the question: What, then, remains of Luther?

Considering the bitter legacy of the Reformation -- a Christendom shattered into a thousand pieces -- these eminent Protestant scholars considered that it would be more appropriate for Protestants, rather than celebrate the fourth centenary of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, should do penance in sack-cloth and ashes. But then, that was a century ago.

Important: Review of Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, by Rod Dreher, Sentinel Press, 2017, 262 pp. Reviewed by Sacerdos Romanus at Rorate Caeli, April 24, 2017:

We would not usually be inclined to read a formal schismatic’s thoughts on how Christians should comport themselves in the secular world. But two things persuaded us make an exception for Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. The first was a favorable mention of the book by the Rt. Rev. Abbot Philip Anderson of the traditionalist Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek. The second was the bitter dismissal of the book by many mainstream Catholic pundits. And we were not disappointed. While we would agree with the criticisms of some tradition-minded writers, we find that overall Dreher’s analysis of the current situation in Western Europe and North America is accurate, and his suggestions for a practical response to the situation sensible. In fact, Dreher’s insights can very easily be developed into an argument for Catholic Traditionalism and against the anti-traditionalism of the Catholic mainstream since Vatican II. Read more >>

A faithless retired Episcopal priest's demythologized Easter 'homily'

Harry T. Cook, "On Easter, an alternative approach to resurrection" (Detroit Free Press, April 15, 2017):

The Easter story is not the work of journalists. No good can come from torturing it into news, good or otherwise. It is a story with meaning. What is its meaning? It cannot be that a convicted revolutionary who was executed on a Friday walked out of his grave on Sunday to the profound amazement of his followers. Is it possible that the meaning of the story is that while you can kill a human being, you cannot kill what he or she has been or done?

Pitiful. Pitiful that good people ever come to believe such complete nonsense. Pitiful in the way St. Paul says that we would be of all people most to be pitied if Jesus hadn't been raised from the dead as claimed (providing an intricate logical syllogism to that effect in 1 Corinthians 15).

Even on empirical grounds, how pitiful is it to believe that miracles "can't happen" because, well, just because "miracles don't happen." Even if all the stars in the heavens arranged themselves so as to spell "Jesus saves," such individuals would probably respond: "Why, goodness me! What a remarkable coincidence! It almost looks as if someone has played some sort of optical trick on us."

There are accounts of other resurrected deities? Like Dionysus? Yeah, so what? Where have they left a paper trail of witnesses and martyrs like Jesus has? The Apostles must have been deceived about Jesus' resurrection? You think? One can be deceived about lots of things, but some things are just too big to be deceived about. A resurrected man is one of these. I doubt one could be anymore deceived about a man being resurrected from the dead than be deceived into thinking that exactly 37 pink pigs with wings are hovering in the air like hummingbirds just outside one's window.

But it could have been in the Apostles' self-interest to believe the Jesus rose from the dead. True. But it could also be in your own self-interest to believe that exactly 37 pink pigs with wings are hovering in the air like hummingbirds just outside your window if I offered you $1 million to believe that. Trouble is, our honest beliefs aren't quite under our control the way our ordinary choices are. I can't really bring myself to believe something just because someone offers to pay me money to believe it.

If course, I could say I believed it, even if I didn't. So maybe the Apostles conspired to lie about Jesus' resurrection? You think? When each of them (except for John) went to his martyrdom knowing that all he'd have to do is refuse to go along with the lie anymore, to just break and tell the truth and admit that Jesus didn't rise from the dead? Furthermore, each of these conspirators would have known that each of his fellow conspirators was lying through his teeth in the face of terrible persecution, torture, and the threat of death, and all that would have to happen if for one of them to break and tell the truth, and the whole resurrection story would go down in flames as a failure not worth being martyred for.

So we have a story people just can't be mistaken about of someone rising from the dead, and a story that the Apostles' couldn't possibly have conspired to lie about, given the fact that each of them (except John), knowing that it is human nature to break under torture, nevertheless willingly gave his life as a martyr for the authenticity of the story with not one of them throwing in the towel and denying its authenticity. Not to mention centuries of martyrs and witnesses to lives changed, relationships redeemed, bodies and souls healed in expectation of life eternal.

Pray for Harry T. Cook. Poor man. Pitiful.

Intimations of transcendent beauty, holiness, salvation

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[Hat tip to Rorate]

Signposts in the historical erosion in French and Québécois Catholicism

Jean Louis Clement:

"The French bishops in the interwar years have favored the elaboration of a political theology which up to 1930, they rooted in the sovereignty of God, Creator of the Universe, and which later on, they built on the idea of the human person, at the service of which stand both society and State. They endeavored to promote that theology since 1919, but very specially in the thirties, in the thick of the parliamentary crisis. In the hope of countering the blossoming of political doctrines scorning the concept of 'person' the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops offered the faithful a political catechism drafted by the Abbe Daniel Joseph Lallement under the Daladier government. The episcopate entered into negotiations for a project that aimed at rooting in the conscience obedience to the Authority."

Anthony Sistrom:

Prior to the forties Cardinal Louis Billot, SJ spoke for the bishops. Vide his scathing article, "Liberalism" online in English. In the wake of the condemnation of Action francaise, personalism became the philosophy of the moment. No one has more eloquently critiqued personalism than Charles de Koninck (the only lay peritus at Vatican II). His article "On the primacy of the Common Good against the Personalists" (1943) is online. The date is important because the Quebec bishops had just introduced a marriage preparation program based on personalism that would spell the end of the Quebec traditional family.

"Cantate Domino Canticum Novum": A Statement on the Current Situation of Sacred Music

"A Statement on the Current Situation of Sacred Music," Altare Dei: Velociter Currit Sermo Eius, in nine languages with a list of signatories. If you're interested in and concerned about sacred music, you might want to read this.