Extraordinary Community News & the 4-hour commute to the Windsor Tridentine Mass

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (May 19, 2013):

The Lassus Scholars

Do you have a long commute to attend the Tridentine Mass? There are some who travel to Assumption Church from as far as Toronto (4 hours each way) and Paw Paw, Michigan (2.5 hours each way). Occasionally our choir takes a road trip, as when they sing for the annual Anniversary Mass of the Flint Tridentine Community. But that’s practically next door, only a 1.5 hour drive each way.

When it comes to commuting and singing for the Extraordinary Form, the award for most dedication must go to Ireland’s Lassus Scholars choir. If there’s a major occasion Tridentine Mass somewhere in Ireland, chances are the Lassus Scholars will be singing. For example, they sing for the annual Fota Liturgical Conference each summer; and they have sung for special Masses at the breathtaking St. Colman’s Cathedral in the southern coast town of Cobh, at St. Malachy Church in Belfast, and at the historic Knock Shrine parish church.


Primarily based at Dublin’s St. Kevin Church, during certain months of the year the Lassus Scholars sing on alternate Sundays for the Sunday Tridentine Masses at St. Kevin’s and at Ss. Peter & Paul Church in Cork. Cork and Dublin are separated by a distance of 160 miles, approximately a 2.5 hour commute each way. Every other week.

Just as Britain’s Tallis Scholars choir is so named because they specialize in singing the choral works of Thomas Tallis, so the Lassus Scholars derive their name from Renaissance composer Orlando di Lassus. Their repertoire far exceeds just di Lassus’ works; they are accomplished in chant as well as polyphony.

In addition to the adult choir, there is also a junior choir for children age 8-15 named Piccolo Lasso. Both Piccolo Lasso and the Lassus Scholars sing at concerts, operas, and on Ireland’s RTE Television network. A third group, the Orlando Chamber Orchestra, accompanies the choirs at certain performances. These ambitious enterprises are all under the direction of Mrs. Ite O’Donovan.

You don’t have to travel to Ireland to experience the Lassus Scholars. One of the most adept choral groups at self-promotion, the Lassus Scholars maintains an impressive promotional presence on the internet, with a Twitter feed (www.twitter.com/LassusScholars), a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TheLassusScholars), and a web site (www.dublinchoralfoundation.ie). On the web site you will find recordings, albums that can be purchased, and even music instruction books.

Latin Language Resources

Are you interested in expanding your knowledge of the Latin language? Incarnation Church in Tampa, Florida has debuted www.ecclesialatina.com, a web site filled with resources to help you learn. Books, Latin courses, and relevant videos are listed in abundance.

This is but one of several web outreach projects of Incarnation. Among their other impressive efforts are www.sacrificiumsanctum.org, the web site for the Extraordinary Form Mass community at the parish, and the “What it Means to Be an Altar Server” video, which can be found via Google.

The New Orthodoxy

A new book makes the case that the future of the Church is one of a return to orthodoxy. Anne Hendershott and Christopher White’s Renewal: How a New Generation of Faithful Priests and Bishops Is Revitalizing the Catholic Church asserts that younger clergy are embracing Catholic tradition. Employing statistics and not just anecdotal evidence, the book demonstrates that there has been a turnaround in vocations numbers in recent years as the atmosphere in seminaries and many dioceses is gradually swinging back towards orthodoxy and orthopraxis. The authors analyze why some dioceses actually have a surplus of priests. Conversely, they argue that in parishes where there is not a strong identity of the priesthood – not just as the head of the parish, but in setting a standard of holiness – there tends not to be as many vocations.

This sociological study tends to mirror our observation that vocations to the priesthood and religious life are disproportionately represented by people from Tridentine Mass communities, where a clear Catholic and priestly identity is often fostered.

Final First Saturday Mass at St. Hyacinth

St. Hyacinth held its fifth and final First Saturday Tridentine Mass yesterday. Special thanks to Mike Smigielski for organizing this long-sought opportunity to make the five First Saturdays according to the Extraordinary Form.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Monday-Saturday 7:30AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto
• Tue. 01/07 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Benedict/Assumption-Windsor (Feria After Epiphany)
• Monday-Wednesday-Friday 7:00PM: High or Low Mass (varies) Assumption Grotto
• Holy Days and Sundays 9:30AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto

[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) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for January 5, 2014. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

De Lubac on Ratzinger and the "destruction" of the Holy Office

Cardinal Henri de Lubac, in Entretien autour du Vatican II (Paris: Cerf, 1985), p. 123, writes:

Allow me to recall something that happened. Joseph Ratzinger, an expert at the Council, was also the private secretary of Card. Frings, Archbishop of Cologne. Blind, the old Cardinal largely utilized his secretary to write his interventions. Now then, one of these interventions became memorable: it was a radical criticism of the methods of the Holy Office. Despite a reply by Card. Ottaviani, Frings sustained his critique.

It is not an exaggeration to say that on that day the old Holy Office, as it presented itself then, was destroyed by Ratzinger in union with his Archbishop.

Card. Seper, a man full of goodness, initiated the renovation. Ratzinger, who did not change, continues it.

It would be good to keep this episode in mind.

Translaton by: A. S. Guimaraes

[Hat tip to Sir Anthony S.]

Advice from Camus about integrity in dialogue

“I shall not try to change anything that I think or anything that you think (insofar as I can judge of it) in order to reach a reconciliation that would be agreeable to all. On the contrary, what I feel like telling you today is [if] the world needs real dialogue, the[n] falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialogue as is silence, and ... the only possible dialogue is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their minds. This is tantamount to saying that the world of today needs Christians who remain Christians. The other day at the Sorbonne, speaking to a Marxist lecturer, a Catholic priest said in public that he too was anticlerical. Well, I don’t like priests who are anticlerical any more than philosophies that are ashamed of themselves.” (emphasis added)

Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death (New York, 1961), page 70.

[Hat tip to JM]

Former Catholic debunker converts to RC Church

This is a few years old, but just called to my attention, significant for the connections involved: via Steve Ray, "Another Evangelical Convert to the Catholic Church" (Defenders of the Catholic Faith, January 12, 2010), from Francis Beckwith’s Blog Return to Rome, news that Joshua Betancourt, co-author of the book with Norman Geisler, Is Rome the True Church?, attempts to debunk Catholic claims and out just four years ago. Francis Beckwith writes:

One of my Baylor philosophy PhD students brought to my attention today that Norman Geisler’s co-author of Is Rome the True Church? (Crossway Books, 2008), Joshua Betancourt, has converted to Catholicism! This has been confirmed by Doug Beaumont, a friend of Mr. Betancourt’s. Here’s what Doug writes on his blog:

“One chapter in the book Is Rome the True Church? is dedicated to why this is happening. Interestingly, the book’s co-author, a friend of mine named Joshua Betancourt, converted to Roman Catholicism shortly after the book was published! Nor is he the only one. I know several people, whose minds I highly respect, who have made the same decision (Francis Beckwith, J. Budziszewski, to name some famous recent converts). Of course, the opposite is happening too – lots of RC’s are converting to some form of Protestant-Evangelicalism.”

[Hat tip to JM]

William L. Portier on the nouvelles and neo-scholasticism

A remarkable review from from a 2008 issue of Communio we missed seeing until a reader called it to our attention. It's a PDF file: William L. Portier, "Thomist Resurgence" ("Notes and Comments," Communio, 35, 2008): A Review Essay of Twentieth-Century Catholic Theolgians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism by Fergus Kerr. Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. 230pp.

[Hat tip to Sir Anthony S.]

What is "realism" and what is "wishful thinking" for Catholics today?

Corrado Gnerre, "Who are the real 'Christian Ideologues'?" (from Il Giudizio Cattolico, via Richard Cipolla at Rorate Caeli, January 2, 2014):

A typical error of the post-Conciliar Church is that of not wanting to pay attention to the reality of things. The life of Grace diminishes…it does not matter. The sense of sin diminishes…it does not matter. The family breaks apart….it does not matter. Civil marriage increases and in some regions of Italy are more numerous than religious marriages…it does not matter. Young people have completely lost the obligation and the value of pre-matrimonial chastity…it does not matter. The laws of the State reflect more and more the dominant ethical relativism…it does not matter. All is well, and it is useless to be concerned.

This typical error manifests itself in two attitudes. The first attitude, that of a minority, is to remain silent in the face of this ruinous situation, and in a certain sense gives a positive value to these developments, and hopes that the trend will continue along these lines. Those who think in this way—and let us speak frankly—are those Catholics who do not have a clean conscience, who have a lot of disorder in their private lives. In this way they hope to silence their consciences, while convincing themselves that what all this shows is that Catholic moral teaching cannot be completely respected and that the moral teaching of the Church must be radically changed.

The majority attitude, on the other hand, that manifests this error is more complex. It is the attitude of those who are aware that things are not going well, but at the same time force themselves to show that what is not going well must have to do with a sort of physiological crisis of the Church. It is inevitable that this should happen: to free herself from “historical encrustations” of contamination by issues of power and certain conservative attitudes, the Church must live through a crisis, a crisis that will bring her to a greater “spiritualization” and to being more faithful to her commission. The arguments they invoke are complex, but one understands well that underlying these arguments there lies another question that is psychological.

If for the first attitude the question is “baser”, in a certain sense a “matter of the stomach”, for the second attitude it is more a question “of the head”. And for this attitude it is ideology that prevents understanding. Ideology, one knows, is a hypertrophic condition of the intellect, that because it is an enlarging of the intellect in size without an increase in perception and understanding, results in a blind spot in the intellectual mind itself. When something grows too much it ends up by destroying itself. Cancer is nothing but a crazed growth of cells. A man who grows too tall would not be able to live well, he could not easily walk through a door, he could not easily get into his car, he would have trouble finding clothes or shoes that fit. Ideology is the intellect that is disproportionate and hypertrophied, that wills to not pay attention to observation--- to see how things are as they are--- so that it can put its faith in its own theoretical and intellectual constructions.

We hear often the present Pontiff speak against “ideological” Christians, and many read this as referring to Christians of a traditional mind-set, who are accustomed only to denounce the state of the Faith and of the Church in terms that are never positive. Now this definition is not very useful, because there is so much “ideological Catholicism” in our day. But let us ask ourselves: in whom is this attitude found? To whom should this verbal tag be attached? To those who read things as they are or to those who indulge in the illusion that things are going well when they are not going well at all?

Many know the famous phrase of a well-known Soviet theoretician: “If the facts do not agree with us, all the worse for the facts”. This maxim fits the attitude of all too many Catholics today. Faced with the obvious crisis in the life of Grace, faced with the corresponding crisis in the Church, they insist that there is no need to change pastoral directives, the direction in which things have been moving, the specific initiatives of the last ten years. They would say: the problem is not there, the problem cannot be there. Still, through the wisdom of the Gospels, Christians should be absolutely convinced that a tree is known by its fruit.

Monsignor Giacomo Biffi, Bishop-emeritus of Bologna, using his inimitable style, in his Fifth Gospel wrote in relation to this widespread attitude: “The Reign of Heaven is similar to a pastor who has one hundred sheep and having lost ninety-nine of them, scolds that last sheep for his lack of initiative, sends him away, closes the sheep-fold, and goes to the local osteria to discuss pastoral ministry.” It gives one pause when one remembers that Biffi wrote these words as long ago as 1969: a true prophecy.


Last Advent the Cardinal of Vienna, Monsignor Schonborn, preached in the diocese of Milan, and, speaking of the Church of today, he said: “(…)let us get rid of nostalgia for the ‘50s, those of my childhood, in my village, when the church was filled with people three times every Sunday. Everyone went to church. Let us leave behind nostalgia for the vitality of our places of prayer in the ‘50s and ‘60s.” This is an example of the real “Christian ideology”. It is one thing to say that, recognizing the difference between the past and the present, the Catholic should not lose heart. It is another thing to say that the longing for another time should be abandoned. When one loses something beautiful, this longing is more than appropriate, and it is the only response that is human and reasonable. Of course, one should not get depressed. On the contrary, it is necessary to do what has to be done, to roll up one’s sleeves, and to act, convinced that the fortunes of history are not in our hands but in the hands of God and of his most holy Mother. But an undertaking, a commitment like this, can be motivated only by an intelligent assessment of the situation: things are not going well, so it is necessary to act to change them. To speak of “letting go of nostalgia” is the most an ideologue can say in this type of situation…at least if he does not want to “apostasize”, something we do not consider as possible, able to imagine or be thought of in a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.

There is a fear of seeing reality as it is, but that is not a truly Christian way of looking at things, because the Christian is first of all a person who looks, who sees, who observes, and he uses this as a basis, with the virtue of prudence, to make his own judgments and to determine how to live his own life.

Translated by Father Richard G. Cipolla

Second photo from Huffington Post

Assured of their loyal subjects' security and comfort back home, with global warming and universal healthcare, Obamas live like royalty on lavish Hawaiian vacation

"REGAL R&R: Obamas live like royalty on lavish Hawaiian holiday" (Washington Times, January 2, 2014):

History will record that on the 12th day of his latest Hawaiian vacation, President Obama tweeted about Obamacare....

Otherwise, the trip has been an unbroken stretch of luxurious living for the president with his family at a beach house in trendy Kailua, an oceanfront neighborhood in Oahu where the homes rent for $3,500 per day — more than many families earn in a month. The Obamas are paying for the $56,000 cost of the rental home, although taxpayers foot the bill for the first family’s travel on Air Force One — which, at more than $180,000 per hour, makes for a couple of million-dollar flights. A cool treat: White House officials allow the press to watch as President Obama takes family and friends out for shaved ice on New Year's Eve.

What’s more, hundreds of federal workers — from White House staffers to the Secret Service security detail needed to protect the Obamas — join in for what turns out to be an all-expenses-paid vacation. According to watchdog.org, the government rented at least seven homes in the area, costing taxpayers more than $183,750 of what the organization says will likely be a $4 million bill.

And come on ... how many of you ever believed that idiocy about global warming for which Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize anyway? Today the Antarctic ice shelf melt is "lowest ever recorded"; Minnesota is enduring the "worst" deep freeze in 20 years; and your tax dollars have nonetheless paid for $7.45 billion to fight "global warming" in other countries.

Jesuit Islamologist examines "Evangelii Gaudium" and where inter-faith dialogue stumbles

Sandro Magister, "Islam and Christianity. Where Dialogue Stumbles" (www.chiesa, December 30, 2013), says that commentaries on "Evangelii Gaudium" have paid scarce attention so far to paragraphs 252 and 253 of the Pope's recent Apostolic Exhortation, "Evangelii Gaudium," says Magister.

Few, for example, have noted the unusual vigor with which Pope Francis demands in Muslim countries as well that freedom of worship which the faithful of Islam enjoy in Western countries.

Those who have highlighted this "courage" of the pope - like the Egyptian Jesuit and Islamologist Samir Khalil Samir - have also emphasized, however, that he has limited himself to asking only for freedom of worship, remaining silent about the denial of freedom of conversion from one religion to another that is the real sore spot of the Muslim world.

Fr. Samir, says Magister, teaches in Beirut, Rome, and Paris, and is author of numerous books and essays on Islam and on its relationship with Christianity and with the West. On December 19th, he published an extensive commentary on the passages of "Evangelii Gaudium" dedicated to Islam for the agency "Asia News" of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. The first half is devoted to the "many positive things" said by the pope on the issue; the second half, to various "limitations" that require further clarification.

The second part of Samir's commentary is published below Sandro Magister's article linked above, if you scroll down to "Points of 'Evangelii Gaudium' that Require Clarification." In our day, a clear grasp of the inter-faith issues and obstacles, as well as a frank discussion of them, are more imperative than ever. There is substantial food for thought here in Samir's extensive discussion.

[Hat tip to Prof. E. Echeverria]

Hey, look: our very own 'Guy Noir' is famous!

That at least, he tells me, is "the view from the mirror in my condo at the intersection of Uncontestably Unhirable and Curmudgeonally Contemporary Catholic."

In any case, his discussion of "The Best Books I Read in 2013" (Catholic World Report, January 1, 2014) has all the earmarks of his delightfully fast-paced and insightful prose:

Marshall McLuhan’s academic comet ride once lent his name celebrity cachet on college campuses, but he wrote with more prescience than he knew. Even as his fame evaporates, his uncannily spot-on predictions and maxims about technology’s warp-speed escalation more and more are taken for granted. Less known is the fact that McLuhan himself was ardent Catholic convert. Quirky Gen X author Douglas Coupland portrays the man as a latter-day prophet without honor in Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! Informing and entertaining, this little monograph is the best matching of biographer and beast I can recall, a virtual “Vulcan mind-meld” of two cultural mavericks.

In Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson provides reflexive counterpoint to McLuhan. He probably wouldn’t convince the Canadian professor, but he might make some of those Santas who just bought Xbox 360s feel a bit better. From a more theological perspective, Arthur Hunt’s The Vanishing Word is an overlooked coda for Christian logophiles.

Rome’s introduction of a revised ritual roused my own liturgical interests, so N.T. Wright’s The Case for the Psalms made for timely reading. But, even as a fan of some of Wright’s earlier stuff, I wasn’t ready for the semi-poetic quality of his prose achievement here. Older (much) but also affecting are William S. Plumer’s Studies on the Book of Psalms (incidentally, also fun to mention simply as the physically largest commentary on a single book of the Bible I have ever seen—so oversized that even describing it as a “thick doorstop of a book” doesn’t quite fit), and C.C. Martindale’s Towards Loving the Psalms. A last-century British Jesuit and compatriot of Maisie Ward’s, Martindale also wrote four consecutive books on the Mass for laymen. Of these, The Words of the Missal is best, with the bonus of an appendix that’s a sort of miniature “Latin for Dummies.”

Frustration with my Anchor Bible Dictionary’s insistent obfuscation sent me back to some clear-headed evangelical sources on Scripture. In The Drama of Doctrine, Kevin Vanhoozer—taking cues from Hans von Balthasar, no less—shreds linguistic deconstructionism and proves Hans Frei and George Lindbeck to be sporting the Emperor’s New Clothes. Elsewhere, J.I. Packer’s “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God reminded me how essentially “fundamentalist” Catholic teaching on the Bible arguably is; and Thy Word is Still Truth, an anthology materializing out of Philadelphia’s quite reformed Westminster Theological Seminary, reminded me how very sane it is as well.

My graphic designer’s hat probably explains why I may be the only conservatively-inclined person I know with kind words for Martin Erspamer’s faux-iconic engravings in The Liturgical Press’ typographically savvy if contemporarily-bent Ritual Roman Missal. Another writer who weighs in with convincingly friendly comments on the larger topic of Modern Art: The Men, the Movements, the Meaning is Thomas Craven.

I remain a fanboy of Lemony Snicket, who made me happy by cranking out a second installment of All The Wrong Questions. Questions aplenty are also part of the mix in the volatile-if-mournful post-conciliar Molotav cocktail poured by Anne Roche Muggeridge in The Gates of Hell—though I’m not at all sure her answers make me too happy. Much the same can be said of Alice von Hildebrand’s necessary The Dark Night of the Body. There’s more wisdom on sex in what she doesn’t say than most of what is said—and incessantly so—nowadays. The presence of more inflammatorily counter-cultural wisdom—and this on the uncomfortable gay question—also distinguishes Rosaria Butterfield’s Secrets of an Unlikely Convert.

Last loose ends…David Main’s terrific novel on the WWF champ of the O.T., The Book of Samson, is compulsively readable. Victor Davis Hansen’s The End of Sparta is another worthwhile candidate for those non-existent Men’s Reading Groups. In Coincidentally, Father George Rutler’s amusing mind whirs along so fast you’ll likely find yourself reeling at the thought of keeping up—so you’re better off just enjoying it with the assist of some heavily-spiked New Year’s punch. Three very different books, each hinging on the question of race, provide positive perspectives on a hot button issue: Robert Norrell’s Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington; Caroline Hemesath’s story of Augustine Tolton, From Slave to Priest; and John Piper’s autobiographical Bloodlines. And lastly, race, faith, and masculinity comprise three panels that make for a not-to-be-missed Mandarin conversion triptych in John C. Wu’s Beyond East and West.

Congratulations, Mr. Noir!! Of course, there are other lists suggested by the likes of Dana Gioia, Anthony Esolen, Thomas Howard, Michael Coren, Joseph Pearce, James V. Schall, Brandon Vogt, and many more. Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

"Best Blog Post Title of 2013 Thus Far!"

Thus saith the Noir Guy ... check it out: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/12/31/newman-family-values-3/

[Hat tip to JM]

War on the Ratzingerians? War on tradition?

Two recent posts:

• New Catholic, "... slaughter of the Ratzingerians" (RC, January 2, 2014).
• Adfero, "The Pope had hoped for a change ... but the diocesan curia, made up of ex-‘68ers, has allowed for nothing" - "Practically everything is allowed, everything except Tradition that is." (RC, December 31, 2013).

The soft rainbow-colored underbelly of Catholicism today

Our underground correspondent, who we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, sent us the link to the following article over the Christmas holidays while we were out of town for a few days.

The article is by Catherine Harmon, "Students, parents rally for gay VP ousted from Catholic high school" (Catholic World Report, December 23, 2013):

Last week students at a Seattle-area Catholic high school staged a sit-in to protest the removal of their school’s vice principal, who the school says violated his employment contract by marrying another man over the summer. Read more >>

Guy Noir observes:

An honest dissent asks a very good question I bet you the Pope will never answer.

"My question now is what if there's a teacher in our school or any Catholic school that's been divorced, should we fire them?" Colburn said. "Should we fire teachers that take the pill? We can go down the list of the rules of Catholic teaching."

A good question indeed.

[Hat tip to JM]

1969 was no small thing: Martin Sheen as protagonist for the new Mass

In case you haven't yet seen this, you just might find it interesting:

URGENT CLARIFICATION from J. Michael Joncas

In the current issue of Liturgical Tiger Beat, soulful theofablulator J Michael Joncas revealed that he would have preferred that his mega-hit, "On Eagles' Wings," had been titled "On Eagle's Wings."

Fr. Joncas explained that his preference would have made it plainer that the single eagle "is metaphorically related to God." However, Joncas hastened to add that he "could make an argument for "On Eagles' Wings," indicating that "the latter title has the advantage of being more consistent with the truths of modern physics, as opposed to the improbable conception of a single eagle with strength sufficient to 'lift up' multiple pews full of worshippers engorged with vibrance."

Then he added, ruefully, that "the plural also has the unfortunate symbolic connotation of polytheism . . . ."

When asked whether his ambivalence regarding the title indicated doctrinal confusions, Fr Joncas shot the questioner a long smoldering look, and began to whistle "Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton . . . ."

When asked about purgatory as interrupting the metaphorical eagle's deceptively somnolent metaphorical upward journey and thus providing a jarring note to the theo-ditty's "metaphorical relation" -- and about hell as torpedoing it altogether -- Joncas retorted that the questioner should "consider as a metaphorical relation the proximity of my fist to your big flapping mouth."

Later, in a separate statement, Joncas said that he was "engaging in a bit of fraternal hi-jinks," and that concepts of hell and purgatory were excluded from the congregation-pleaser because they were inappropriate to the "artistic vision" of the composer.

[Hat tip to R. R.-D., playing with Wiki article on Joncas]

Coming out: a confession

New Year's Day is as good a time as any, I suppose, to come clean with something like this, even though the repressiveness of contemporary traditions make it a rather daunting prospect. These days one can lose friends over something like this, just as I lost friends by becoming a Catholic some twenty years ago. I have to apologize in advance to so many of my friends and acquaintances who may have gotten the wrong idea about me. It's pretty easy to disguise one's disposition and intentions when it's necessary to get by and get along. I have always loved Puccini arias, ballroom dancing, and fine cuisine. What can I say? Still, it takes some courage, particularly when you can lose your job over something like this and see your entire career go down the drain in a moment. It's so hard to make people understand. There are such expectations to conform to the prevailing patterns of culture. The social pressures are sometimes overwhelming. So I apologize in advance to anyone who will be taken aback by my announcement today, and any people who may feel that they have been deceived and that I have been living a lie. It's important to me to come clean and come out. So let me be perfectly clear about my embrace of that love that "dare not speak its name." Yes, forgive me, but it's a fact. I freely confess it: I am not "gay"! I am a metro-hetero-sexual-papist male! Here I stand. I can do no other. I know I will inevitably face being persecuted and ostracized by making this announcement, but I am prepared to face the consequences of my confession. But I can no longer harbour this deep secret and live a lie just to be accepted by my society. I've got to be honest with myself, come out of the closet, and just be who I am ... and let the pieces fall where they will.