Commentary on Archbishop Ranjith interview

Luc Perrin, "A broad liturgical program for the Hermeneutic of Continuity?" (Rorate Caeli, April 29, 2007) -- Luc Perrin, professor of Church History at the Faculté de Théologie Catholique of the University of Strasbourg 2-Marc Bloch, presents a selection, with comments, of the main aspects of the recent interview of the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW), Archbishop A. M. Ranjith, published by the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN).

Rorate Caeli's concluding observations offer context for the Archbishop's (and Perrin's) very interesting observations:

The fact this interview is given in a somewhat discreet mode, the other fact that this broad and wise interpretation is, for the moment, expressed only by the secretary of CDW, and pretty much ignored by the episcopal college – both considerations show there is much work to do, either in Rome to provide proper workers to the Lord's vineyard or in our various communities to promote the need for a «correction of course».

The repeatedly postponed «motu proprio» freeing the Traditional Roman Rite, which is not mentioned in Sacramentum caritatis, is also a proof that not everyone has understood, as the Archbishop did, the dynamics of «new trends emerging universally, one of which is a fresh appreciation of the Church's bi-millennial Latin heritage ».

An interview on Limbo

An exclusive interview with a member of the Pontifical Theological Commission on the controversial topic of original sin, baptism, salvation, and the doctrine of limbo -- Andrew Rabel, "Limbo: In or Out?" (Inside the Vatican).

[Hat tip to S.F.]

Related: "Vatican panel consults Bernard Realist, nixes Limbo" (Musings, April 23, 2007).

Shea: "There are no second-class liturgies ... Period"

Mark Shea continues his earlier diatribe (Motu Propu Mania, April 25, 2007) against obsessing over "nitnoid details of liturgy" with a new post, "Why Liturgical Obsessives Don't Have Any Friends" (April 27, 2007), raising the question whether he isn't beginning to obsess a bit over the liturgical question.

He ends his piece thus: "There are no second-class liturgies and there are no second-class Catholics. Period. End of story." His argument seems to boil down to something like this: The Mass is the Mass is the Mass. The Eucharist is the Eucharist is the Eucharist. Externals are externals are externals. There is a whole dissertation there waiting to be written and a whole hornets' nest of assumptions begging to be challenged. I would personally start at a gentle distance with a pleasant book like Tom Howard's Chance, or the Dance? My positivist friends won't read it because they think it's probably irrelevant poetic fluff. In fact, it blows the head of the fact-value dichotomy clean off its shoulders. And that's a good place to start if you want to talk about objective standards of beauty and liturgical fittingness.

Of related interest:

"Mark Shea yawns over the motu whazzit?" (Musings, April 27, 2007)

The controversial apostolate of Opus Dei

Many Catholics and Catholic converts -- myself included -- have considered ourselves immeasurably enriched by the spirituality, apostolate and prelature of St. Josemaria Escriva. As some of you may recall, Scott Hahn came out with an appreciative book on his experience of Opus Dei from his early years with the work in Milwaukee while he was finishing his graduate studies at Marquette University (Scott Hahn, Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace: My Spiritual Journey in Opus Dei).

Yet the work, ethos, spirituality and even theology of Opus Dei continues to evoke controversy. Most of the controversy is from the proverbial 'left', which, like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, paints Opus Dei as a clandestine haven for albino monk hit men for the murky Vatican underworld. But not all of the opposition is left-wing. Some can be found from the radical right of Catholic traditionalism as well.

For example, a traditionalist reader recently wrote me (and keep in mind this was email, which lends itself, at times, to unqualified statements):

I fear that many Protestant converts since Vatican II have failed to appreciate the spiritual formation of Catholics. There are few priests today even qualified to be either adequate confessors or spiritual fathers. An exception is the Eastern Catholics. Ukrainian writers like Adam A.J. deVille and Fr. Myroslaw Tataryn have a sure grasp of Catholic spirituality. DeVille's excursus on St. Maximus the Confessor (online) is the clearest exposition of this saint I have ever seen.

Many turn to Opus Dei ... seeking spiritual direction. Unfortunately Opus Dei diverges from authentic Catholic tradition in significant ways. Vide Pastoral Look at Opus Dei on Angelus online. [Nicolas Dehan, OPUS DEI: A STRANGE PASTORAL PHENOMENON, English translation by Suzanne Rini from Le Sel de la Terre (No. 11).]

Pere Francois Vallet and Padre Escriva de Balaguer appeared in Spain at the very same time. Vallet was exiled by the bishops who feared his influence, while Escriva was embraced because he flattered them.

Most Protestant converts have some acquaintance with Newman's writings. Indeed many call themselves Newmanists. But they fail to appreciate Newman's teaching on Holiness. It was living saints that drew Newman to Catholicism. No such persons existed in Anglicanism. That is why the work of Fr. Stanley Jaki is so essential. Especially his Apologetics as Meant by Newman. The speculative writing of Newman is intoxicating (neoKantian, subjectivist) but the real Newman was trying to be a saint by following the simplest examples close to him.

Thoughts?

Mark Shea yawns over the motu whazzit?

Mark Shea writes (Motu Proprio Mania, April 25, 2007):

Got word yesterday from a well-spaced plource [sic.] that the long-awaited motu proprio will be out in May. I mention this, not because I care about this, but because so many at St. Blog's do--passionately.

Me: I haven't even bothered to find out what a motu proprio is, nor have I much been interested in the subject of this one.

Shea says his eyes start to cross when St. Blog's begins obsessing over the "nitnoid details of liturgy," and so he has habitually skipped over motu proprio discussions except for this one.

Shea says that he shares with Tom Kreitzberg a profound disinterest in liturgical policing. His own attitude, he says, is "Just give me my lines and my blocking"; and then he will endeavor to learn and forget about them in precisely the same way he endeavors to break in his shoes. "The point of shoes is not to notice them, but to walk in them. Shoes you constantly notice are Bad Shoes. Liturgy you obsess over is liturgy that's not doing it's job, which is to refer us to God, not to itself."

I'm not sure whether Shea is alluding here to the well-known analogy C.S. Lewis once made between liturgy and dance, suggesting that a dance succeeds only when one can forget about his steps and enjoy focusing all of his attention upon his Partner. Of course, that cannot happen if the steps of the dance are constantly being changed. It's a good point.

But this point tends to get lost in Shea's dismissiveness of traditional Catholic liturgical concerns -- concerns of the kind that (as anyone familiar with the former Cardinal Ratzinger's writings on the subject of liturgy may suspect) might even motivate the Holy Father's eventual publication of a motu proprio liberalizing the Traditional Latin Mass.

Shea writes:

There are two basic reasons you focus on liturgy instead of God, just as there are two reasons a man will focus on his shoes. It may be that the shoes or the liturgy hurt. But it may also be that the man is a hypochondriac who imagines pain where there is none or who grossly exaggerates small irritations into great ones. I've no doubt that there's lots of little and big liturgical abuse out there (which is the fault of the abuser, not the liturgy, and I doubt a motu proprio will stop such people). But I also know there are an awful lot of Liturgical Police in the pews who spend far more time obsessing over nitnoid details of liturgy and grumbling than actually praying. Far better to "look along" the liturgy at God than to spend all one's time looking at it.

First, while Shea makes an important point here about the importance of focusing on God, this is too facile. He is too dismissive of the first option. Not only can shoes pinch. Some shoes are incapable of ever being broken in. They deserve to be scrapped and replaced.

Second, when abuses have become an institutionalized part of our liturgy, it's too facile to absolve the 'liturgy' and blame the 'abusers' of the liturgy. The problem is that so many mainstream Catholics have grown so accustomed to the way things are that they've lost any sense of historical drift. Part of the reason for familiarizing oneself with the Traditional Latin Mass is to get his bearings and see where he stands today. In fact, the most frightening situation is where people have gotten so inured to the numbing pinch in their shoes that they don't feel the damage they may be doing to their feet.

Third, while I know that Shea understands that liturgy is intended as an means of focusing on God, there is just a hint of a possibility -- in his disjunction between focusing on liturgy vs. focusing on God -- of seeing one's relationship to God as separable from liturgy, ritual, priesthood, sacraments, and the Church -- as in Protestantism. But as he points out, good liturgy draws our attention to God and is thus precisely our means to focusing upon God, whereas bad liturgy draws attention to itself, hampering our efforts to find and focus upon God. In the sacramental outlook of Catholicism, worship is embodied in liturgy -- the two are inseparable; and I know Shea wouldn't disagree.

More helpful, I think, if more painful, is the suggestion of Zippy Catholic in "For Christ's Sake" (April 11, 2007):

Personally I think it would be wonderfully healthy for the Mystical body of Christ if the majority of Catholics who presently attend Novus Ordo masses were required to attend exclusively the Tridentine Rite for the next twenty years; and likewise, if the majority of those who presently attend the Tridentine Rite were required, for the next twenty years, to attend a Novus Ordo guitar mass exclusively. And kneel at the rail and keep your hands to yourself/sing along if you want Communion, respectively.

The reason this occurs to me isn't, by the way, because I think the particulars of the liturgy are unimportant. The reason this occurs to me is because I think the particulars of the liturgy are extraordinarily important.

Zippy, by the way, describes his own orientation (in Liturgical Codependence, April 10, 2007) thus:

My politics are almost medieval; my liturgical and cultural orientation is arch-traditional; I don't think much of modern democracy (in fact I think voting for anyone in many races is probably a sin); I think the Inquisition was mostly a good thing that got out of hand in some isolated cases because of political corruption; I believe in objective standards of beauty; I disagree profoundly with my friend Mike Liccione about embracing the label "neo-Catholic" as a positive thing (I think "traditionalist" needs to be restored to its rightful linguistic status as high praise), and my most common visceral disagreements with the things written by my other friend Mark Shea arise when what he says comes off to me as too modern and conciliatory. He is just too much of a punch-pulling lovable teddy bear and a coddler of modernist attitudes, the big wuss.

Mark Shea, my friend, just so you know: I would never, like Zippy, call you "a wuss." Nor even a "knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing liturgical troglodyte." That would just be so ... philistine. Love, peace, and happiness.

Postmodern dysfunctional humor at its best

Don't watch this movie if you can't stomach significant familial dysfunction and some foul language. But Little Miss Sunshine (2006) is not only the funniest film that I've seen in some years, but one of those rare contemporary comedies in which the director permits genuine human bonds of affection to surface in the most unexpected if quirky ways amidst the angst-ridden absurdity of their postmodern lives. The following is from the commercial plot synopsis:

Olive [Abigail Breslin] is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive's father Richard [Greg Kinnear] is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother [Toni Collette]. Olive's uncle Frank [Steve Carell], a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne [Paul Dano], a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive's grandfather [Alan Arkin] is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.

The comic denouement of the story involves an ironic indictment of the beauty pageant industry's premature sexualization of little girls -- ironic because the contestant most innocent of such sexualization is Olive, who ends up scandalizing the audience in a most endearingly innocent way. The story as a whole, postmodern product that it is, lacks any kind of overarching meta-narrative to give it ultimate coherence or meaning. Yet unlike films such as Crash or House of Sand and Fog, which seem intent on telling us that there is something unsalvageably lost or corrupt in each of us, this film seems intent on showing us how even the most hopelessly unsalvageable lives may have humanly redeemable qualities. Bear in mind, though, when all is said and done and the laughter ends, it remains a thoroughly postmodern story. If this sounds like something you can stomach and you're tired of seeing Brideshead Revisited for the 30th time, this may be worth seeing.

New Liz vocals online

Some of you may remember my musical niece, Elizabeth, who though gifted in classical music, ventured off in the direction of electro pop with some productions and performances of her own last year. We posted a link about her, "Liz goes solo" (Musings, May 23, 2006). My favorite song from the earlier online selection of her downloads (no longer available online) was entitled "Lament," a wistfully beautiful piece.

Well, Liz has hauled off and done it again. My sister in Philly just sent me the link to three of her pieces available on Liz's Myspace Music site (she goes by the winsome name 'Ghhrfy'). This is not Palestrina, obviously, but there's little question Liz is a very talented young lady. If you're interested, check out her music. If you like it, she has an EP for sale.

Liz is presently completing her undergraduate education at Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois. She is engaged to be married in Portugal next summer. Yes, the young man is a Catholic. She is not, although I know her to be a committed evangelical Christian. Your prayers are solicited.

Homosexual socialization of school children

In Massachusetts, the homosexual socialization of children in schools proceeds apace, Part I and Part II.

[Hat tip to M.F.]

Vatican: gay marriage 'evil', abortion & euthanasia 'terrorism'

Philip Pullella, "Vatican official calls gay marriage 'evil'" (www.iol.co.za, April 24, 2007):

Vatican City - The Vatican's second-highest ranking doctrinal official on Monday forcefully branded homosexual marriage an evil and denounced abortion and euthanasia as forms of "terrorism with a human face".

The attack by Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was the latest in a string of speeches made by either Pope Benedict or other Vatican officials as Italy considers giving more rights to gays.

He denounced a number of "evils that remain almost invisible" because the media presented them as "expression of human progress." Among these he listed abortion clinics, which he called "slaughterhouses of human beings", euthanasia, and "parliaments of so-called civilised nations where laws contrary to the nature of the human being are being promulgated, such as the approval of marriage between people of the same sex..."

Sex slave co-eds & high school playmates

[Advisory: While this post does not contain any explicitly offensive language, it does deal with a topic that some may find offensive.]

The word is that coital sexual intercourse is down among teens and college students (at least relatively) and that oral sex is up -- even among early teens and pre-teens.

This observation, indeed, is a 'relative' one: according to the Guttmacher Institute, at least three-quarters of teenagers in the developed world have sexual intercourse by age 20, and teenagers in the U.S. are more likely to have sexual intercourse before age 15 and shorter and more sporadic sexual relationships -- and therefore more partners -- than teenagers in Canada, France, Great Britain and Sweden.

The new twist: teenagers seem to be waiting longer to have intercourse. For example, the percentage of U.S Grade 12 students who reported having had intercourse declined from 66.7% in 1991 to 60.5% in 2001.

But before you start applauding the victory of wait-until-marriage chastity ring set, read this: teens are replacing intercourse with more alternatives they perceive as safer. For example more than 50% of U.S. teens ages 15 to 19 have engaged in oral sex. This number increases to almost 70% for those who are 18 and 19. In a 2002 study of males and females aged 15-19, 11% of both reported having engaged in anal sex at least once. But the big spike is in oral sex. ("Teen Sex Statistics," About: Sexuality; see also Laura Sessions Stepp, "Study: Half of All Teens Have Had Oral Sex" (Washington Post, September 16, 2005).

One reason for the shift is likely the false assumption (perhaps even promoted by school guidance counselors) that oral sex lacks the health risks that come with coital sex ("Teens and Oral Sex...There are Risks," About: HIV/AIDS). Another reason may be that the disassociation of oral sex from coital sex allows the partners to indulge the fantasy of not being sexually active at all (Lisa Remez, "Oral Sex Among Adolescents: Is It Sex or Is It Abstinence?" Family Planning Perspectives, December, 2000).

Teens and college students today have evolved a new form of relationship -- the sex-only relationship, described in their philistine parlance as "friends with benefits" -- the multiple partners with whom they "hook up" for usually unprotected and mostly oral sex. I know these students. Some are enrolled in my classes. I have had students tell me about such encounters in journaling exercises. I have had students tell me more than I ever wanted to know about their experiences -- one of them about thirteen partners that semester, and so on.

Two things strike me about this phenomenon. On the one hand, the mind-molders who promote this sort of libertinism and promiscuity, and the students who buy into their mealy-mouthed justifications, parrot the confident language of self-mastery and liberation. On the other hand, the students who succumb to a life-style of uncommitted recreational sex invariably seem to end up in exploitive relationships with jaded outlooks on life -- victims either of their own eviscerating and dehumanizing predatory attitudes or of the predation of others.

I wonder especially what's in it for girls and young women.

Oral sex.

Now there's a rip-roaring, sexually free-thinking, good time for your little girl! A real enlightened future for women's liberation in that!

They say you reap the whirlwind. This whirlwind is the yield of the sexual revolution of the sixties, the self-indulgence of the seventies, the affluence of the eighties, the recreational sex culture of the nineties, the "hook up" culture of today . . . and the pervasive indulgence of predatory males.

This is pathetic. Women, wake up! You have nothing but your Monica Lewinsky stains to lose.

If you have children, teach them well. The barbarians are at the gates -- on the inside looking out.

Pope's pastoral visit to Vigevano and Pavia

For Pope Benedict's pastoral visit to Vigevano and Pavia, visit American Papist for excellent coverage: "Sticky: AmP coverage of the Pope's pastoral visit to Vigevano and Pavia" (April 22, 2007).

Prayer request

I solicit your prayers for our family, as we deal with a number of serious concerns affecting our future. I will keep you posted over the weeks and months ahead as possible.

Vatican panel consults Bernard Realist, nixes Limbo

Vatican panel condemns limbo to eternal dustbin (LA Times, April 21, 2007). However, when advisory group concluded that unbaptized babies may go to heaven, Mr. Realist (Formerly known as Convergent) was reported to have been dismayed, protesting that 'heaven' itself was a ridiculous mythological notion as well.

Related: "An Interview on Limbo" (Musings, April 29, 2007).

Rehabilitation of Romano Amerio's writing backed by Rome

In “La Civiltà Cattolica” Breaks the Silence – On Romano Amerio (www.chiesa, April 23, 2007), Sandro Magister writes:

ROMA, April 23, 2007 – In “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed with the prior scrutiny and authorization of the Vatican secretaiat of state, a review has been published that signals the end of a taboo.

The taboo is the one that has obliterated from public discussion, for decades, the thought of the most authoritative and erudite representative of criticism of the twentieth century Church in the name of the great Tradition: the Swiss philologist and philosopher Romano Amerio ..., who died in Lugano in 1997, at the age of 92.

Amerio, although he was always extremely faithful to the Church, condensed his criticisms of it in two volumes: “Iota unum: Studio delle variazioni della Chiesa cattolica nel XX secolo [Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century],” begun in 1935 and finalized and published in 1985, and, and “Stat Veritas. Séguito a Iota unum [Stat Veritas: Sequel to Iota Unum],” released posthumously in 1997, both issued by the publisher Riccardo Ricciardi, of Naples.

Iota Unum, between 600 and 700 pages in length, was reprinted three times in Italy, according to Magister, for a total of seven thousand copies, and was translated into French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. It thus reached many tens of thousands of readers all over the world. But despite this, Amerio fell into eclipse as an effectively blacklisted writer within in the Church, both during and after his life. Magister writes, "The review in “La Civiltà Cattolica” thus signals a turning point. Both because of where and how it was published – with the authorization of the Holy See – and because of what it says."

Cardinal Paul Poupard on the Benedict pontificate

Wlodzimierz Redzioch, "The First Two Years: A conversation about Benedict and his pontificate with Cardinal Paul Poupard" (Inside the Vatican, April, 2007):

Pope Benedict XVI was elected two years ago on April 19, 2005, and installed as Pope two years ago on April 24, 2005, so we thought it appropriate to reflect now, in April 2007, on these first two years of Benedict's pontificate with one of his closest advisors, Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture.

[Hat tip to S.F.]