The Pope and the Fraternity

• New Catholic, "Rome-SSPX: Pope's decision 'before the end of May'" (Rorate Caeli, May 6, 2012):

  From the French-language religious news agency I.Media: "Benedict XVI's decision regarding the return of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX) to the full communion of the Church will take place from now up to the end of the month of May 2012, Vatican sources close to the dossier have indicated to I.MEDIA. For the moment, the response of the SSPX to the 'doctrinal preamble' prior to any agreement, delivered by Rome in September 2011, is still being studied by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Received on April 17, the response of the Superior General of the SSPX, Bp. Bernard Fellay, will be submitted to Benedict XVI afterwards. The latter has made multiple gestures, since 2005, with a view to obtain an agreement that would mark the end of a breach of nearly 24 years."

• New Catholic, "Rome-SSPX: Fr. Pfluger speaks on recent developments" (Rorate Caeli, May 5, 2012):

  Fr. Niklaus Pfluger, FSSPX, is the First Assistant of the Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). He was the main speaker at a conference promoted in Hattersheim, Hesse, Germany, this past Sunday, by the Actio Spes Unica association in which he talked about Rome, the Society, and the future ...

  Recent weeks have revealed that the Pope is so much interested in a canonical solution for the Society that he is ready to seal a deal, even if the Society does not recognize the disputed texts of Vatican II and the New Mass.... Under these circumstances the Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, does not consider it possible to reject the Pope’s proposal.... It is, of course, a pre-condition that an agreement will cover the assurance that the Society will be able to disagree from Rome’s positions in disputed matters and that it will have the freedom to continue her work in her entire apostolate. Part of an autonomous status would also be the right to criticize the Council and Modernism.... By way of support for Bishop Fellay’s decision Fr. Pfluger recalled the way of action of Archbishop Lefebvre in 1987 and 1988. At that time the Archbishop proposed a far-reaching proposal for an agreement .... The arrangement that the Archbishop was willing to sign at that time demanded far more concessions from the Society than what Pope Benedict demands at the moment.

The 2020 annual LCWR ....

... oh, never mind.

The Bible & homosexuality: responding to Dan Savage

Activist Dan Savage recently made news when, in front of an audience of high school students, he went on a vulgarity-laced rant about the Bible and homosexuality.

Here is my friend Jimmy Akin from Catholic Answers in San Diego illustrating how dispassionate and clear-headed a response to Mr. Savage can be. Notice, by way of contrast to Savage: no personal ad hominems. Just simple facts and inferences. Take 'em or leave 'em.


[Hat tip to Robin Beck]

In praise of knuckle-rapping nuns of old

Richard and Elizabeth Gerbracht, who have retired after operating their own research and consulting firm, have recently authored an article, "Requiem for the Tiger Nuns," New Oxford Review (April 2012), pp. 32-34, responding to the "tiresome complaint" on a TV program about knuckle-rapping nuns of decades past, and taking a nostalgic time trip back to the days when THEY sat in such nuns' classrooms:

When we were in eighth grade, one of us was laughing uncontrollably at the antics of a fellow student and was hit for it. The knuckle-rap was entirely deserved. Neither of us has ever felt any anger toward the nuns, then or now. At the time, it didn’t occur to us that the nuns were following the lead of Aristotle, who understood the value of a little discipline. Now, with some maturity, we recognize that this was an assertive teaching method that produced results.

We remember how the nuns prepared us for confirmation. Day after day leading up to the event, our entire eighth-grade class was directed to an assembly area, where we stood in formation in several rows, well spaced so the nun could walk between us, stand directly in front of us, or behind us. The nun would reach into her habit and pull out the Baltimore Catechism. We knew she would question each of us in order, but we didn’t know which question she would ask — we had to know the answer to every one!

It was the same for math and English: memorize the tables and the rules, diagram sentences, and be ready for a test. The slow learners were ordered to stay after school or to come to school an hour early the next day. The nun would line up these slackers along the side wall of the classroom and drill them one at a time. Those who didn’t catch on soon realized they’d never pass to the next grade; sometimes the nun threatened to take a poor performer back to a lower grade classroom that very moment! The kids quickly shaped up and applied themselves to learning in order to avoid the humiliation. It was an iron-fisted approach and it worked.

Their Catholic high schools, they write, were single-sex institutions -- all boys or all girls, but not mixed. One of the reasons for the separation, they point out, was the difficulty of disciplining boys. One headmaster, a priest, was heard to say that if they didn't have the nuns, they couldn't keep discipline!

How can one measure the loss of the tiger Nuns, their productivity and accomplishments? The authors state that about fourty years after graduating from a Catholic high school, they sent questionnaires to every classmate, now living in 22 states, asking their opinions about discipline. Their unscientific independent survey elicited a 60% response from the class with questions and answers as follows:

• Q: We faced a lot of discipline in high school; at the time did you feel the discipline was oppressive, overdone, or too tough? A: Yes 5%; No 95%.
• QIf you answered no, how did you feel about the discipline at the time? A (typical answers): "Necessary extension of discipline of parents." "It was appropriate, fair, required." "Adequate and good for my future." "Without discipline other values erode." "Helped me for tough decisions in the work arena." "Matured me for life, taught me respect."
• Q: Looking back, do you think the discipline was good for you and for your development? A: Yes 98%; No 0%; N/A 2%.
• A: Do you believe that more discipline in high schools today would help make for better lives in the future? A: Yes 96%; No 1%; N/A 3%.
• Q: In general do you think that today's young family is as strong in basic beliefs and discipline as your parents' family when you were in high school? A: Yes 9%; No 84%; N/A 7%.

The authors add: "None of the respondents mentioned fear of the ruler or any excessive disciplinary measures>" By contrast, they seemed to appreciate what the nuns did for them. On the whole, the class lamented the absence of strong discipline today: "No more nuns or priests" (in the schools); "Lack of values, loss of values"; "Parents' poor attitude"; "Not enough attention of parents." * * * * * * *
While we're at it, permit me to put in a plug for the schools run by the new order of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. I have the privilege of knowing some of those pictured in the photos on this site. Some of these are teachers and administrators in the school attended currently by my daughter. While I have yet to hear any horror-stories of ruler-weilding knuckle-rapping Dominican sisters, I know from first-hand experience that they know how to run well-ordered schools, with disciplined students, and an atmosphere pervaded by piety and joy. (See my review article, entitled "Great Catholic education" (Musings, February 11, 2011).

"This Eucharistic and sacrificial dimension is inseparable from the pastoral dimension"

New Catholic has posted excerpts from an English version of the sermon pronounced by the Holy Father on the occasion of the ordination of nine priests this past Sunday, in which the intimate relationship is underscored between the Sacramental and Sacrificial power of the ordained Priesthood and the power, reserved for ordained Priests of the New Testament, of preaching (teaching), of healing (counseling and absolving), and of governing. His comments:

For far too many decades since the Council, these functions of the ordained Priests, which the Pope recalls are "inseparable" from his Sacrificial duties, have been usurped by laymen - this is seen every single day also on this medium, as laymen, fattened by a sense of self-importance, see fit to teach and give counsel on specific matters, of declaring who is a saint or who is not, of giving authoritative answers on matters of Catholic teaching and counseling.

And the Holy Father writes:

It is very obvious that for the priest celebrating Holy Mass every day does not mean carrying out a ritual function but rather fulfilling a mission that involves his life entirely and profoundly in communion with the Risen Christ who continues to realize the redeeming sacrifice in his Church.

This Eucharistic and sacrificial dimension is inseparable from the pastoral dimension and constitutes the nucleus of truth and of the saving power on which the effectiveness of every activity depends. Of course, we are not speaking of effectiveness solely at the psychological or social level, but rather of the vital fruitfulness of God’s presence at the profound human level. Preaching itself, good works and the actions of various kinds that the Church carries out with her multiple initiatives would lose their salvific fruitfulness were the celebration of Christ’s Sacrifice to be lacking. And this is entrusted to ordained priests. Indeed, the priest is called to live in himself what Jesus experienced personally, that is, to give himself without reserve to preaching and to healing man of every evil of body and of spirit, and then, lastly, to sum up everything in the supreme gesture of “laying down his life”, for human beings, which finds its sacramental expression in the Eucharist, the perpetual memorial of Jesus’ Passover. It is only through this “door” of the Paschal Sacrifice that the men and women of all time can enter eternal life; it is through this “holy way” that they can undertake the exodus that leads them to the “promised land” of true freedom, to the “green pastures” of never ending peace and joy (cf. Jn 10:7,9; Ps 77[76]:14, 20-21; Ps 23[22]:2). [emphasis New Catholic's]

Read Pope Benedict XVI's entire homily here.

Offertory: EF & NO

• Traditional Offertory (Extraordinary Form):
  
  Accept, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this unspotted host, which I, Thy unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my innumerable sins, offenses, and negligences, and for all here present: as also for all faithful Christians, both living and dead, that it may avail both me and them for salvation unto life everlasting. Amen.
  
  
• New Offertory (Ordinary Form: now called "Prayer over the Gifts"):
  
  Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

According to Peter Coughlan's The New Mass: A Pastoral Guide (1969), the new prayer "is a combination of a prayer taken from the Jewish meal ritual and the concept of a man's work consecrated to the Lord, an idea which the Pope himself wanted to be expressed in some way at this point in the Mass."

What sort of hermeneutic might be at work here, we leave to you our readers.

Totalitarian democracy

"As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."

-- Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus

Fr. Z, "Pres. Obama’s problematic proclamation for National Day of Prayer (3 May)" (WDTPRS, May 3, 2012)

Replies to common YouTube Objections

Here Fr. Barron deals with what he calls two YouTube "heresies": (1) Scientism and (2) Ecclesial Angelism.



[Hat tip to Roger Lessa, whose following link led me to Barron's piece: Msgr. Charles Pope, "Pope’s Remarks to US Bishops: Powerful and required reading" (Archdiocese of Washington, May 3, 2012). Thanks!]

"It’s so harrrrd to kneel for Holy Communion ..."

"I would like all Catholic men to just think of this picture every time ..."



The great Roman Fabrizio sent Fr. John Zuhlsdorf a photo of Marines on Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi at Mass. His commentary follows:

It’s so harrrrd to kneel for Holy Communion, especially if the air-conditioning isn’t working at the “Eucharistic gathering” during the diocesan “event”.

My first thought looking at these brave Marines was for the Angels who saw this happening and how they must have celebrated around the Throne. Admittedly we’re just human beings and everything we do for the Lord looks pathetic if compared to His Glory. And yet, I can’t think of many other things that must appeal to the Heart of Jesus as much as a man like that, in the middle of a veritable hell, possibly a few minutes from death, kneeling on the scorched ground of Mount Suribachi because that’s how you receive your Savior! The Holy Angels must have thought “maybe that’s why He loves them so much, why he said to them:

si fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum...” [Though your sins be as scarlet ...]

I would like all Catholic men to just think of this picture every time they hear arguments against traditional reverence for the Sacred Species, every time when – looking to the presbyterium from the communion line – they notice one of those gorgeous, no longer used altar rails in some of those churches left to us by our forbears, in Rome or New York, Vienna or Montreal. And every time they happen to receive in a Church that has no altar rail at all because it was never there or was irresponsibly, impiously demolished, they should think of that Marine, and how we decided that in our “adult faith”, in our “meaningfulness” we could do without those “ritualistic trappings”. Well those guys couldn’t, in February ’45, atop Mount Suribachi.

Fr. Arnaud Rostand comment

U.S. District Superior of the FSSPX, Fr. Arnaud Rostand: "double your efforts in the Rosary Crusade." [Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Fr. Benoît Wailliez comment

Superior of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX) for the District of the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg): Abp. Lefebvre "would have accepted a canonical recognition" [Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]

Fr. Schmidberger comment

If Rome now calls us back from the exile to which it expelled us in 1975 with the abrogation of the [canonical] approval [of the Society], and even more in 1988 with the decree of excommunication, then that is an act of justice and without doubt also an act of authentic pastoral care of Pope Benedict XVI. And for that we are grateful. -- Franz Schmidberger, former Superior General of German District of the FSSPX

[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]

Funeral march for LCWR assembly in St. Louis

Well, sort of. You have to appreciate Fr. Z's sense of humor, which is ... well, at least as twisted as my own: "An idea for the upcoming LCWR assembly in St. Louis" (WDTPRS, May 2, 2012):

Double standards? ya think?

What makes a person FALL IN LOVE with the Mass?

I remember reading about how Dietrich von Hildebrand, after his conversion, could be seen running down the streets of New York City, coat flapping in the wind, rushing so as not to be late to weekday Mass. He LOVED the Mass and could not abide the thought of missing one or arriving late.

It has been a while since I've encountered anyone so passionately in love with liturgy as that. Until I read this post today by the young and spirited "Once-a-Detroit-Girl-Always-a-Detroit-Girl" Ms. Allie, "I am in love ..." (All Things Christ, April 28, 2012):

Laudetur Iesus Christus!

Friday of the Third Week of Easter/Saint Peter Canisius, Doctor of the Church (EF)

Here it is, 11:30 at night and I am lying in bed again but there is something different about me. Something wonderfully different. Something that cannot be amply described in words. Seriously.

I just got back from a wonderful evening at Saint Josaphat’s in Detroit, a beautiful Polish church in Detroit that I had never seen before in person but had seen many pictures. I was with a friend for a Mass put on [by] the Juventutem, which is a group of Catholic young adults (18-35) who have a particular love for the traditional Latin Mass (TLM). This was their inaugural Mass and social for the group that has been started in the metro-Detroit area and it was great.

I had not been to a TLM since 2009 so I had to get a quick refresher from a priest-friend who happened to be the celebrant of said Mass. I used to go when I was in college because there was a parish that had a TLM every Sunday at 12:30 so not only did we get to go to Latin Mass, but we also got to sleep in! Win-win situation much? Yea. I had gone a couple times after I graduated but it had been a while.

All of my memories of the TLM had been wonderful but I had never been to a Missa Cantata or a sung Mass aka High Mass. It was beautiful. It was ethereal. It was glorious.

If I could tell you, if I could describe to you how my spirit had been and has been lifted up by this experience, I would but I cannot put it into words.

As we walked into the quiet church (a pleasant change from the sometimes noisy state of my home parish before Mass), I put on my beloved mantilla and we found our seats. It was hard for me to *not* look around. I have studied the histories of many of the parishes in the city so for me to be physically present in one of those places connects me in a concrete way to the history of these places. There were so many things my eyes wanted to examine but luckily, one of the perks of wearing a veil is that you have blinders of sorts that remind you why you are wearing the veil, to honor and focus on the Lord.

I prayed Vespers on my iPod and made a silent pre-Mass meditation. In churches like Saint Josaphat’s, I have no problem making a meditation because one’s spirit is lifted up by one’s surroundings. This can be sadly lacking in some more modern churches that have this fixation on the horizontal plane (immanence) of existence as opposed to directing the human heart and soul to the vertical plane (transcendence) of eternity.

Then Mass began. The organ music made my heart smile. The Latin made my soul so happy. I knew the vast majority of the songs that the people could sing. And luckily, I have watched enough Masses from the Vatican to know the what the responses are chanted. Latin is sadly not used as often as it ought at my home parish so hearing Latin songs filled a void in my heart that can only be filled by hearing a beautifully sung Panis Angelicus or another song like that.

There is something about the TLM that affects me differently than the Novus Ordo (the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite). No, I am not going to go off on a trad rant of sorts where I decry the Ordinary Form and praise unceasingly the Extraordinary Form.

But I must say that with this experience, my preference has been reinforced. I have a preference for the Extraordinary Form. While I don’t really get to go as often as I would like, when I can, I do go. All I care about otherwise is that the Mass is valid, licit, and it’s reverent.

Sure it can be an “acquired” taste and sure it can be an adjustment but, you know, it’s a new experience and you never know, you may just like it. I love it. My experience today reminded me of how very much I love it.

It took a bit to follow the rhythm but once I got my bearings things went smoothly.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what the title of this post means.

Well, it has to do with the wonderful “feeling” that overcame me today during Mass, more specifically after receiving Communion.

My spirit had already been lifted so high by the beauty of the Mass but it was about to experience something all the more glorious.

As I knelt at the rail to receive Communion (and ignored that OCD tendency to fret about my veil) and waited for Him to come to me, my eyes wandered, I’ll admit it. But they fell on the crucifix over the tabernacle. Then, He was there. There is something about the prayer the priest says right before he gives you Communion that I love. It’s not just “The Body of Christ” which I find to be “lacking” (don’t you burn me at the stake, let me finish) in describing what it means. “Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.” = “May the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ keep your soul unto life everlasting. Amen.” Here, we do not just hear what we receive, namely the Body of Christ, but we also come to know what He does for us by His offering His Body and Blood for us. I think this is more “complete” than just saying “Body of Christ.”

Well, I received Communion and waited a moment afterward (you don’t just dine and dash like some persons are apt to do in the Ordinary Form) and then walked back to my seat. A mantilla really helps one keep custody of the eyes.

I knelt and began to pray. I usually pray the Post-Communion/Mass Prayer of Saint Thomas Aquinas and while I do not have it memorized yet, I have the outline committed to memory. I got about halfway through when suddenly, my gaze was lifted up and my eyes kept going in and out of focus which was strange. And then I felt this overwhelming feeling of peace wash over me. Suddenly, all the pains, worries, and fears that had been plaguing my heart went away and were replaced by an indescribable joy. I could feel this interior smile of sorts that was beyond anything I had felt. I don’t know if I was smiling but my soul was and it was quite a wonderful feeling.

Then I realized it.

He had stolen my heart again.

And He does it so beautifully.

Throughout my discernment, I have heard Christ referred to as one who pursues and woos.

Does He ever.

No wonder He’s God.

And He is so generous. More than I deserve. He loves me so. He loves me individually and uniquely.

When I came back home from the convent, people told me (and they still do), “Allie, go find yourself a boyfriend.” or “Allie, you should date some more.” I just roll my eyes and ask, “Why would I do that when I already have someone?” Their response tends to be that of one who is not sated by what I say. But that does not matter.

It was at that moment that I knew. I did not belong to anyone but Him whom I had just received. And it filled me with peace and joy. There is still hope for me yet! Yay!

I tell you, once I get a car, I am going to TLM more often. I will still belong to my home parish but I will go to TLM. The added bonus is that I would get to wear my veil. Why don’t I wear it at the parish? Long story. Just trust that there is a reason. Those who know know. It’s not really a big deal. Not big enough to share here, at least.

Well, I have to get to bed. Mass in the morning. I am going to wish it was a TLM, just watch. I will probably hear the music in my head during Mass and I’ll probably get that wistful look on my face.

It was so wonderful today. So wonderful. I wish I could experience that always!

Have a great evening, everyone! -Allie

[Hat tip to A.B.]