The Rock at the funeral

A reader writes:

Attended a Catholic funeral today.

The family, typical American Catholic, which means I have no idea where they stand. The closest friend there is essentially what I would now pejoratively call an Episcopalian.

Anyway, I was happily surprised. The deceased was not canonized, and the priest said, "All the Church maintains is the historical reality of Jesus' resurrection, and the hope that we also may rise."

I would nitpick, but times as they are, I thought, Wow! Truth! The Church is not the best looking girl at the ball. She is the Rock.

The latest TLM developments in Metro Detroit

Tridentine Community News (February 14, 2010):

Gregorian Chant Workshop Scheduled

A day-long class in Gregorian Chant will be held on Saturday, March 20 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM at Detroit’s St. Joseph Church. (St. Josaphat is unavailable that day.) Assumption-Windsor and St. Josaphat Tridentine Mass Music Director Wassim Sarweh will lead the class, which will cover music theory as well as practice. Topics will include:

• The Eight Modes of Gregorian Chant
• Understanding rhythms
• A brief history of chant
  
• Singing and conducting chant
• Understanding the many methods of chant

A sung Tridentine Mass will be held at 2:00 PM in St. Joseph Church; participants will serve as the choir for that Mass. The class will be held in the Social Hall of St. Joseph Church, and lunch will be served. Registration costs $30 per adult; students $15 each; seminarians, priests, and religious are free.

To register, please e-mail info@stjosaphatchurch.org or call (248) 250-2740. Registration fees must be paid in advance to St. Joseph Church and may be mailed to the St. Joseph Parish Office, 4440 Russell St., Detroit, MI 48207. You may also drop a clearly designated check into the Tridentine Mass collection baskets at Assumption-Windsor, St. Josaphat, or St. Joseph Churches.

St. Theresa Thursday Mass Now Held Every Week

Thanks to a strong turnout during the trial period, Fr. John Johnson has decided to hold the Thursday 7:00 PM Extraordinary Form Mass at Windsor’s St. Theresa Church every Thursday from now on. As with St. Josaphat’s Monday evening Mass, this will usually be a Low Mass, with High Masses scheduled for major feast days. St. Theresa is located at 1991 Norman Road, near Tecumseh and Pillette Roads on the east side of Windsor, approximately six miles from the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

Assumption Church Restoration Project Meeting

On Sunday, February 28 at 3:30 PM, there will be a reception in the basement Social Hall at Assumption Church. We will have a guest speaker: John LaFramboise, the President of Assumption Heritage Trust, the diocesan-appointed entity which is heading the design of and fundraising for the restoration of Assumption Church. Refreshments will be served.

In order to gain more widespread civic and community support, the Assumption restoration project has been expanded to include the creation of an improved campus surrounding the church. As Ontario’s oldest parish and Southwestern Ontario’s oldest church building, Assumption has historical significance beyond its role as a Catholic church.

Because the Extraordinary Form Mass Community has a vested interest in Assumption’s future, including the preservation of its historic architectural features, this meeting will provide an opportunity to learn more about the plans for the church, and to express any questions or concerns about how the restoration project will affect the Latin Mass. Certain items we care about, such as the Communion Rail doors, need particular attention.

The fundraising campaign is targeting major donors to meet the majority of the project cost, as the parish cannot raise the approximately $10,000,000 required on its own. Some significant contributions have already been pledged, including $250,000 from the City of Windsor. As users of Assumption Church’s historic features, the Latin Mass Community may be able to assist the campaign in unique ways, and we will learn what those may be.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for February 14, 2010. Hat tip to A.B.]

Lenten reading

Shawn Tribe, in "Lenten Reading Plans" (New Liturgical Movement, February 9, 2010), reminds us that with the beginning of Lent just over a week away, this is a good time to begin considering one's Lenten exercises. He writes:

For those of you who take up the practice of daily spiritual reading during Lent, you may be interested to know that Fr. Bryan Jerabek has set up a website where he provides three different Lenten Reading Plans.

These readings plans include a Fathers of the Church reading plan, a Cardinal Newman and Father Faber reading plan, and finally a Lives of the Great Medieval and Renaissance Saints reading plan -- based on the discourses of Benedict XVI.

In view of the patronage of this our site, I am considering the Newman/Faber reading plan linked above, which looks to be quite good.

By the way, Fr. Jerabek's site also includes a St. John Vianney Lenten Reading Plan, which could be of special interest to priests and seminarians in this Year of the Priest.

Marini: Concilium "dealt with doctrine"

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, in "The Consilium revisited" (WDTPRS, February 11, 2010), says that in his recent reading, he happened upon a passage in the small but interesting volume that came out a couple years back under the name of the former long-time papal master of ceremonies, Archp. Piero Marini (Piero Marini, not Guido Marini, the present MC). The book in question is A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal, 1963-1975(Liturgical Press, 2007), written largely, according to Fr. Z, by Jesuit liturgist Keith Pecklers and Mark Francis, CSV. The book, says Fr. Z,

purports to tell the story of the glorious work of the Consilium, the entity established during the Second Vatican Council to implement the liturgical reform mandated in Sacrosanctum Concilium. The Consilium was headed up by Annibale Bugnini and Card. Lercaro.

The authors set out to defend the work of the Consilium and Bugnini against the dangerous encroachment of Pope Benedict’s vision, and the retrograde force he is exerting on the Spirit of Vatican II.

In presenting their uplifiting story, the authors produce an unintended consequence: they expose clearly what the liturgical reforms were actually trying to accomplish.

But enough of that.

Here is the passage I wanted to share. Context: The Consilium has just just taken a major step in moving from an informally meeting group to an officially and formally established body. They have their first plenary session.

"They met in public to begin one of the greatest liturgical reforms in the history of the Western church. Unlike the reform after Trent, it was all the greater because it also dealt with doctrine." (p. 46)

Fr. Z adds:

They succeeded. The work of the Consilium, in revising the Missale Romanum, did indeed change the Church’s doctrine. Change they way you pray and you change what you believe… and vice versa.

Change the liturgy, change the world.

Whether this was a good change or not is a matter of discussion.

Well, ... anybody's guess as to what Fr. Z thinks.

Catholic Campaign for Human Development: Enough already

February 11, 2010 - RCN Coaltion Press Release: CATHOLIC COALITION PETITIONS BISHOPS TO END PRO-ABORTION GRANTS

Catholic Advocate - Is it Time for a Catholic Tea Party?

February 10, 2010 - LifeSiteNews - Bishop Vasa Cautiously Concerned Over USCCB Membership in Pro-Abortion Coalition

Renew America - At War with the USCCB II: the Followup

February 9, 2010 - National Catholic Register - USCCB Still Refuses to Comment on Carr Allegations

Renew America (Matt Abbott) - At War with the USCCB

February 8, 2010 - Inside Catholic - Why Did the USCCB Join this Civil Rights Organization?

February 5, 2010 - LifeSiteNews - CCHD Scandal Picks up Steam as Bishops React

February 3, 2010

Town Hall (Brent Bozell) - A New Abortion Scandal (also at Human Events)

OneNewsNow - Bishops' Contrary Ties Come to Light

The American Thinker - Top Exec with Conference of Catholic Bishops Has Conflict of Interest

LifeSiteNews - U.S. Bishops' Media Director Who Exonerated Exec Admits to Not Reading Key Report

February 2, 2010

ALL Press Release - USCCB Exec John Carr Fails to Address Findings in Report on Pro-Abortion, Gay Marriage Group

Inside Catholic (Deal Hudson) - More Disturbing News About the CCHD

Catholic News Agency - CCHD clarifies connection to activist network that opposed Stupak Amendment

LifeSiteNews - U.S. Bishops' Exec Responds to Charges of Cooperation with Pro-Abortion, Homosexualist Group

Spero Forum (Stephanie Block) - The Scandal of John Carr and the USCCB

Spero Forum (Mary Ann Kreitzer) - Catholic Bishops and Abortion: Connecting the Dots

February 1, 2010 -

LifeSiteNews - U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Exec Chaired Pro-Abortion, LGBT Rights Group

LifeNews - Pro-Life Group Says Catholic Bishops' Official Had Post in Pro-Abortion Group

Patrick Madrid - "A systemic pattern of cooperation with evil"

Inside Catholic - More Evidence that the USCCB Supports Pro-Abortion Groups

Catholic Advocate (Matt Smith) - A Case of Cafeteria Catholicism at the Bishops' Conference

Catholic Advocate (Press Release) - Bishops Must Immediately Suspend All Grants from Catholic Campaign for Human Development Program

Our Sunday Visitor - John Carr Responds to "Unfair Criticism"

January 11, 2010 - Inside Catholic (Deal Hudson) - Catholic Campaign for Human Development Still Funding Abortion Promoter

January 5, 2010 - LifeSiteNews - San Francisco Archdiocese Reinvestigates, Approves Pro-Abortion CCHD Grantee

November 30, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - Sixth Bishop Didn't Take Up CCHD Collection

November 25, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - Three More Bishops Look for CCHD Reform

November 25, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - Fifth Bishop Didn't Take Up National CCHD Collection

November 23, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - Four Bishops Did Not Take Up Collection for Embattled CCHD

November 24, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - Bishop Bruskewitz on CCHD: Bishop Morin Was a "Bit Too Dismissive" of Concerns

November 20, 2009 - Catholic News Agency - Archbishops Nienstedt and Chaput Defend CCHD as Criticisms Continue

November 20, 2009 - Spero Forum - Lay Catholic Coalition Scores Bishops on CCHD

November 20, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - CCHD in Archdiocese of Chicago Says it is Working to Solve Problems

November 19, 2009 - Catholic Exchange - A Time to be Heard

November 19, 2009 - The Washington Post - Conning the Conservatives

November 19, 2009 - Inside Catholic - CCHD Responds to its Critics, Chicago Responds to its Own

November 17, 2009 - Pewsitter.com - CCHD Funding Debacle Continues to Grow

November 17, 2009 - Catholic News Agency - Coalition Calls for Reform of CCHD as Annual Collection Nears

November 17, 2009 - Catholic News Service - Bishops: No CCHD Funds Go to Groups That Oppose Catholic Teaching

November 17, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - CCHD Responds to Reform Movement

November 17, 2009 - LifeSiteNews - Chicago CCHD Accuses Critics of "Partisan Politics", "Deceit", and "Hate"

November 16, 2009 - ALL Press Release: CCHD Scandal Continues

November 13, 2009 - RenewAmerica.com - Church Officials, Critics Clash Over Catholic Campaign for Human Development

November 12, 2009 - Spero Forum - Money Laundering and the CCHD

October 26, 2009 - Human Events - Leftwing Radicalism in the Church: CCHD and ACORN

October 21, 2008 - National Catholic Register - ACORN's Collection Plate Money

October 15, 2009 - Wall Street Journal - HealthCare Reform and the President's Faithful Helpers

September 23, 2009 - LifeNews.com - Catholic Campaign for Human Development Criticized, Funded Pro-Abortion Groups

September 22, 2009 - LifeSiteNews.com - USCCB's Social Justice Arm Caught Funding Pro-Abortion/Prostitution Groups: Takes "Decisive" Action in Response

September 2009 - Capital Research - Leftwing Radicalism in the Church

Bellarmine Veritas Ministry - National Campaign: Addressing the CCHD

Finally, some serious news ...

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/02/08/tiffen.nz.antarctic.whiskey.tvnz?iref=allsearch

[HT to S.K.]

V-II: Napoleon's council?

A reader sent the following, provocatively juxtaposed paragraphs:

"Times have changed -- times have changed! The Church must adapt and be reconciled with the Revolution." (Napoleon Bonaparte haranguing Pope Pius VII, whom he held prisoner in France. See Pope Pius VII, 1800-1823: His Life, Times, and Struggle with Napoleon in the Aftermath of the French Revolution,Robin Anderson, TAN Books, 2001, page 131).

"Let us recognize here and now that Gaudium et Spes plays the part of a Counter-Syllabus insofar as it represents an attempt to officially reconcile the Church with the modern world as emerging since the French Revolution of 1789." (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology)

Related (opposing interpretations):

• I. Shawn McElhinney, The 'Counter-Syllabus' Canard
• Gaudium et Spes is a "counter-Syllabus" (TIA site: extended quotation from Cardinal Ratzinger's book)
• Bernard Fellay, FSSPX Superior General's Letter to Friends and Benefactors (June 7, 2002).

[HT to F.R.]

Tempest brewing over Catholic social teaching

Thomas Woods, co-author with Christopher Ferrara of The Great Façade(2002), has apparently defected from traditional Catholic social teaching to the laissez faire “Austrian school” of economics associated with Ludwig von Mises and represented by neo-conservative Catholics such as Michael Novak, author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism(1982).

This, at least, is the message couched in no uncertain terms by Christopher Ferrara in his open letter to Tom Woods, "Ludwig von Mises versus Christ, the Gospel and the Church" (Remnant, February 15, 2010), where he writes:

When we wrote The Great Façadetogether back in 2002, I was one of the most ardent supporters of your work. Indeed, I saw you as a big part of the future of the “traditionalist” movement in America. But I did not anticipate your public dissent from the Church’s social teaching in favor of the radically laissez faire “Austrian school” of economics, whose pretensions range far beyond economics to a comprehensive “philosophy of liberty” that cannot be reconciled with the teaching of the Magisterium on the duties of men and societies toward Christ and His Church, or even the duties of men toward each other on the level of natural justice. Nor did I anticipate that you would become a “scholar in residence” for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a radical libertarian cult dedicated to the thought of von Mises and his “anarcho-capitalist” disciple, Murray Rothbard, both agnostic liberals who utterly rejected the role of the Church and the Gospel in the constitution of social order.

Your dissent from the social teaching has spawned a host of articles against you by reputable Catholic commentators, such as those found here, here, here, here, here, and here, the last being a just-published five part series in Chronicles magazine under the title “Is Thomas Woods a Dissenter?” At this point, by my count, no fewer than a dozen Catholic scholars have denounced your dissent from Magisterial teaching on such basic principles as the just wage, the moral primacy of labor over capital, the evil of usury and price-gouging, the immorality of the so-called “absolute right” of private property, and the necessity of government, guided by divine and natural law, for the rule of fallen men. (You have even taken recently to advancing Rothbard’s “anarcho-capitalist” fantasy of the abolition of all government and the creation of a “stateless society.”)

Critics of the vernacular souldn't read this

Arlene Oost-Zinner has a thought-provoking piece over at New Liturgical Movement, entitled "Critics of the Vernacular Shouldn't Read This" (NLM, February 8, 2010). While I anticipate that her piece will provoke many of the usual qualifications about the meaning of active participation and the role of Latin in traditional liturgy, she raises some good questions and offers some constructive suggestions for the ordinary form liturgy. She writes:

How about we turn things on their heels? Up the ante just a bit? How about instead of just the new translations, we print the Latin, too, right next to the new responses. The way we do with the English now – for transparency purposes. People may gain some sense that the changes are not just a result of the desire to update things for our times. It might show them that language is serious business, and that the language we use at Mass carries with it an obligation to tradition.

Ignatius Insight gives 'airtime' to Vatican II debate

Carl Olsen, "Was Vatican II a triumph of naïve optimism?" (Ignatius Insight Scoop, February 4, 2010):

Two Ignatius Press authors have an engaging conversation in the pages of The Catholic Herald about that question; the conversation has been going on with an exchange of letters going back to last summer (see links below). The two authors are Moyra Doorly, who wrote No Place for God: The Denial of Transcendence in Modern Church Architecture(Ignatius Press, 2007), and prolific author and theologian Aidan Nichols, O.P., whose books include Looking at the Liturgy (1996), Hopkins: Theologian's Poet(2006), Lovely, Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church(2007), and Rome and the Eastern Churches: A Study in Schism(2010).

Readers may remember our posts on the earlier portions of this exchange in "Moyra Doorly and Aidan Nichols on the Novus Ordo" (Musings, October 30, 2009), and "The Meaning of Fidelity to Tradition: more from Moyra Doorly and Aidan Nichols" (Musings, January 1, 2010). Carl Olsen lists the prior exchanges between Fr. Nichols and Doorly back to July 3, 2009, in his Ignatius Insight Scoop post linked above.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy by Msgr. Guido Marini, Part 2 of 6

Tridentine Community News (February 7, 2010):

January 6, 2010 a landmark speech was given by Msgr. Guido Marini, the Pontifical Master of Liturgical Ceremonies, at the Year For Priests Clergy Conference in Rome. There is no need to speculate on what Rome believes is suitable liturgy when clear direction such as this is given. Msgr. Marini was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to reform papal liturgies according to our Holy Father’s thinking. We believe Msgr. Marini’s words speak for themselves, and so we are presenting his speech in its entirety.

What, then, do we mean by the sacred liturgy? The East would in this case speak of the divine dimension in the Liturgy, or, to be more precise, of that dimension which is not left to the arbitrary will of man, because it is a gift which comes from on high. It refers, in other words, to the mystery of salvation in Christ, entrusted to the Church in order to make it available in every moment and in every place by means of the objective nature of the liturgical and sacramental rites. This is a reality surpassing us, which is to be received as gift, and which must be allowed to transform us. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council affirms: “...every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others...” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n.7)

From this perspective it is not difficult to realise how far distant some modes of conduct are from the authentic spirit of the liturgy. In fact, some individuals have managed to upset the liturgy of the Church in various ways under the pretext of a wrongly devised creativity. This was done on the grounds of adapting to the local situation and the needs of the community, thus appropriating the right to remove from, add to, or modify the liturgical rite in pursuit of subjective and emotional ends. For this, we priests are largely responsible.

For this reason, already back in 2001, the former Cardinal Ratzinger asserted: “There is need of, at the very least, of a new liturgical awareness that might put a stop to the tendency to treat the liturgy as if it were an object open to manipulation. We have reached the point where liturgical groups stitch together the Sunday liturgy on their own authority. The result is certainly the imaginative product of a group of able and skilled individuals. But in this way the space where one may encounter the “totally other” is reduced, in which the Holy offers Himself as gift; what I come upon is only the skill of a group of people. It is then that we realise that we are looking for something else. It is too little, and at the same time, something different. The most important thing today is to acquire anew a respect for the liturgy, and an awareness that it is not open to manipulation. To learn once again to recognise in its nature a living creation that grows and has been given as gift, through which we participate in the heavenly liturgy. To renounce seeking in it our own self-realisation in order to see a gift instead. This, I believe, is of primary importance: to overcome the temptation of a despotic behaviour, which conceives the liturgy as an object, the property of man, and to re-awaken the interior sense of the holy.” (from ‘God and the World’; translation from the Italian)

To affirm, therefore, that the liturgy is sacred presupposes the fact that the liturgy does not exist subject to the sporadic modifications and arbitrary inventions of one individual or group. The liturgy is not a closed circle in which we decide to meet, perhaps to encourage one another, to feel we are the protagonists of some feast. The liturgy is God’s summons to His people to be in His presence; it is the advent of God among us; it is God encountering us in this world.

A certain adaptation to particular local situations is foreseen and rightly so. The Missal itself indicates where adaptations may be made in some of its sections, yet only in these and not arbitrarily in others. The reason for this is important and it is good to reassert it: the liturgy is a gift which precedes us, a precious treasure which has been delivered by the age-old prayer of the Church, the place in which the faith has found its form in time and its expression in prayer. It is not made available to us in order to be subjected to our personal interpretation; rather, the liturgy is made available so as to be fully at the disposal of all, yesterday just as today and also tomorrow. “Our time, too,” wrote Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, “calls for a renewed awareness and appreciation of liturgical norms as a reflection of, and a witness to, the one universal Church made present in every celebration of the Eucharist.” (n. 52)

In the brilliant Encyclical Mediator Dei, which is so often quoted in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Pope Pius XII defines the liturgy as “...the public worship... the worship rendered by the Mystical Body of Christ in the entirety of its Head and members.” (n. 20) As if to say, among other things, that in the liturgy, the Church “officially” identifies herself in the mystery of her union with Christ as spouse, and where she “officially” reveals herself. What casual folly it is indeed, to claim for ourselves the right to change in a subjective way the holy signs which time has sifted, through which the Church speaks about herself, her identity and her faith!

The people of God has a right that can never be ignored, in virtue of which, all must be allowed to approach what is not merely the poor fruit of human effort, but the work of God, and precisely because it is God’s work, a saving font of new life.

I wish to prolong my reflection a moment longer on this point, which, I can testify, is very dear to the Holy Father, by sharing with you a passage from Sacramentum Caritatis, the Apostolic Exhortation of His Holiness, Benedict XVI, written after the Synod on the Holy Eucharist. “Emphasising the importance of the ars celebrandi,” the Holy Father writes, “also leads to an appreciation of the value of the liturgical norms... The Eucharistic celebration is enhanced when priests and liturgical leaders are committed to making known the current liturgical texts and norms... Perhaps we take it for granted that our ecclesial communities already know and appreciate these resources, but this is not always the case. These texts contain riches which have preserved and expressed the faith and experience of the People of God over its two-thousand-year history.” (n. 40)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for February 7, 2010. Hat tip to A.B.]

Brideshead oblivion

Thomas Howard, "'Brideshead Revisited' Revisited" (Inside Catholic, February 6, 2010):

Three years ago, my wife gave me the boxed DVD set of the British television series Brideshead Revisited. No doubt most readers of Inside Catholic will have long since read Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece and seen the filmed version. The great Catholic fiction writers of the 20th century were not particularly happy to be thought of as "Catholic novelists" -- that tag might seem to call into question the seriousness of their art: Was it really a sort of crypto-proselytizing? Hence Graham Greene (who left us all wondering just where he might wish to locate himself with regard to Catholic notions), Waugh, François Mauriac, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy, to name only a few, tended to think of themselves as novelists "with Christian concerns," not primarily as "Catholic novelists."

In any event, a reader would have to be especially untutored in the art of reading if he were to miss the central point of Waugh's tale of the Flyte family in Brideshead. It is a story about sin and grace. Contemporary vocabulary can only speak of that family as dysfunctional. If this is the case, then Adam and Eve's family was dysfunctional -- as were Noah's, Abraham's, Isaac's, Jacob's, Eli's, and David's.

One of the DVDs in the box contains filmed comments by a whole galaxy of contemporary critics, commentators, journalists, and pundits of all stripes. And yet, none of them appeared to be at all familiar with the moral vision that Waugh assumed in his story, and which would be assumed by every traditional Jew and Christian, and probably by most ancient Greeks. Or, if these critics were thus familiar, they thought of the vision as at best quaint, and certainly outdated. They all descanted happily about the apparently erotic nature of Charles Ryder's fascination with Sebastian. It's a fashionable category now, and one displays one's bright contemporary colors by speaking of the matter with the same insouciance as one speaks of "sexually active" people and so forth. Not only is the matter morally neutral: It is boorish in the extreme to permit the smallest tincture of valuation to seep into one's discourse.

But I mention that detail only by way of illustrating a more general innocence of tradition exhibited by all the commentators. The best they could do with the Flytes' Catholicism was either to hold it up to bemused scrutiny or, at least by implication, to decry it. It was the Flytes' Catholicism that obstructed things and made them all miserable. Only Diana Quick, who had played Julia, the somewhat errant oldest daughter, spoke of her own curiosity about what had made Julia renounce Charles (Julia had been married and divorced, for a start, and so had Charles). She wanted to get to the bottom of things. So, she tells us, she got hold of several little Catholic leaflets ("written for seven-year-olds") and read up on things. She concluded that it all had to do with the Catholic notion of sin. There's the problem. Not just Catholic thick-headedness, nor some prim resolve to forbid pleasure to us all. Sin. So -- that's what's at the bottom of Catholic reluctance to consult mere passion in making one's fundamental choices?

Waugh, of course, is unapologetic about what he requires of his characters. Lord Marchmain must repent on his deathbed. Julia must renounce Charles. Sebastian must pay the price for his dipsomania in the redeeming embrace of a community of religious. Lady Marchmain, something of a dragon, carries the burden of her family's transgressions with her to Mass, and to her grave. And Charles, the agnostic narrator, in perhaps the most elegantly handled conversion in all of fiction, is received into the Church (offstage), and, in the very last scene, visits the chapel in the great house, and says "a prayer, an ancient, newly learned form of words . . . ."

Tom Howard is retired from 40 years of teaching English in private schools, college, and seminary in England and America. This column originally appeared in the April 2007 issue of Crisis Magazine.

[Hat tip to D.O.]

Illinois voters yawn and stay home

A reader writes, of the recent bizarre Illinois primary, "If this is the case, people have no right to complain."

[HT to K.K.]

Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy by Msgr. Guido Marini, Part 1 of 6

Tridentine Community News (January 31, 2010):

On January 6, 2010 a landmark speech was given by Msgr. Guido Marini, the Pontifical Master of Liturgical Ceremonies, at the Year For Priests Clergy Conference in Rome. There is no need to speculate on what Rome believes is suitable liturgy when clear direction such as this is given. Msgr. Marini was selected by Pope Benedict XVI to reform papal liturgies according to our Holy Father’s thinking. We believe Msgr. Marini’s words speak for themselves, and so we present his speech in its entirety.

I propose to focus on some topics connected to the spirit of the liturgy and reflect on them with you; indeed, I intend to broach a subject which would require me to say much. Not only because it is a demanding and complex task to talk about the spirit of the liturgy, but also because many important works treating this subject have already been written by authors of unquestionably high caliber in theology and the liturgy. I’m thinking of two people in particular among the many: Romano Guardini and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

One the other hand, it is now all the more necessary to speak about the spirit of the liturgy, especially for us members of the sacred priesthood. Moreover, there is an urgent need to reaffirm the “authentic” spirit of the liturgy, such as it is present in the uninterrupted tradition of the Church, and attested, in continuity with the past, in the most recent Magisterial teachings: starting from the Second Vatican Council up to the present pontificate. I purposefully used the word continuity, a word very dear to our present Holy Father. He has made it the only authoritative criterion whereby one can correctly interpret the life of the Church, and more specifically, the conciliar documents, including all the proposed reforms contained in them. How could it be any different? Can one truly speak of a Church of the past and a Church of the future as if some historical break in the body of the Church had occurred? Could anyone say that the Bride of Christ had lived without the assistance of the Holy Spirit in a particular period of the past, so that its memory should be erased, purposefully forgotten?

Nevertheless at times it seems that some individuals are truly partisan to a way of thinking that is justly and properly defined as an ideology, or rather a preconceived notion applied to the history of the Church which has nothing to do with the true faith.

An example of the fruit produced by that misleading ideology is the recurrent distinction between the pre Conciliar and the post Conciliar Church. Such a manner of speaking can be legitimate, but only on condition that two Churches are not understood by it: one, the pre Conciliar Church, that has nothing more to say or to give because it has been surpassed, and a second, the post Conciliar Church, a new reality born from the Council and, by its presumed spirit, not in continuity with its past. This manner of speaking and more so of thinking must not be our own. Apart from being incorrect, it is already superseded and outdated, perhaps understandable from a historical point of view, but nonetheless connected to a season in the Church’s life by now concluded.

Does what we have discussed so far with respect to “continuity” have anything to do with the topic we have been asked to treat in this lecture? Yes, absolutely. The authentic spirit of the liturgy does not abide when it is not approached with serenity, leaving aside all polemics with respect to the recent or remote past. The liturgy cannot and must not be an opportunity for conflict between those who find good only in that which came before us, and those who, on the contrary, almost always find wrong in what came before. The only disposition which permits us to attain the authentic spirit of the liturgy, with joy and true spiritual relish, is to regard both the present and the past liturgy of the Church as one patrimony in continuous development. A spirit, accordingly, which we must receive from the Church and is not a fruit of our own making. A spirit, I add, which leads to what is essential in the liturgy, or, more precisely, to prayer inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, in whom Christ continues to become present for us today, to burst forth into our lives. Truly, the spirit of the liturgy is the liturgy of the Holy Spirit.

I will not pretend to plumb the depths of the proposed subject matter, nor to treat all the different aspects necessary for a panoramic and comprehensive understanding of the question. I will limit myself by discussing only a few elements essential to the liturgy, specifically with reference to the celebration of the Eucharist, such as the Church proposes them, and in the manner I have learned to deepen my knowledge of them these past two years in service to our Holy Father, Benedict XVI. He is an authentic master of the spirit of the liturgy, whether by his teaching, or by the example he gives in the celebration of the sacred rites.

If, during the course of these reflections on the essence of the liturgy, I will find myself taking note of some behaviours that I do not consider in complete harmony with the authentic spirit of the liturgy, I will do so only as a small contribution to making this spirit stand out all the more in all its beauty and truth.

1. The Sacred Liturgy, God’s great gift to the Church.

We are all well aware how the second Vatican Council dedicated the entirety of its first document to the liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium. It was labeled as the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

I wish to underline the term sacred in its application to the liturgy, because of its importance. As a matter of fact, the council Fathers intended in this way to reinforce the sacred character of the liturgy.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for January 31, 2010. Hat tip to A.B.]

Cardinal Biffi challenges new Ambrosian lectionary

Sandro Magister, "Ambrosian Rite. Cardinal Biffi's Ax Falls on New Lectionary" (www.chiesa): "It has come into use in Milan with the approval of the Vatican. But the archbishop emeritus of Bologna, Milanese and a leading expert on Saint Ambrose, has found it to be full of eccentricities and errors. He wants Rome to reexamine it from the top."