Kneeling at Mass a mortal sin in Diocese of Orange, CA

The Diocese of Orange, CA comes up with one surprise after another, but to declare kneeling at Mass a mortal sin takes the cake:

Kneeling "is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin," Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran's anti-kneeling edict.

Though told by the pastor and the archdiocese to stand during certain parts of the liturgy, a third of the congregation still gets on its knees every Sunday.

"Kneeling is an act of adoration," said Judith M. Clark, 68, one of at least 55 parishioners who have received letters from church leaders urging them to get off their knees or quit St. Mary's and the Diocese of Orange. "You almost automatically kneel because you're so used to it. Now the priest says we should stand, but we all just ignore him."

The debate is being played out in at least a dozen parishes nationwide....

The controversy at St. Mary's by the Sea began to intensify late last year after Brown appointed Tran to lead the 1,500-family parish.

Tran took over following the retirement of the church's longtime pastor, who had offered a popular traditional Latin Mass.

Read the entire Los Angeles Times article, "A Ban on Kneeling? Some Catholics Won't Stand for It," by David Haldane, Times Staff Writer (May 28, 2006). Where would Dante place the souls of these California clerics, one wonders, were he to include them in his Divine Comedy?

Oh, those English popophobes!

"The 1582 reform of the calendar under Pope Gregory XIII produced--what else?--the Gregorian calendar, which replaced the Julian calendar (named after Julius Caesar, who instituted it). Catholic countries soon adopted Gregory's reform, but Protestant countries rejected it. They didn't want anything to do with a 'popish calendar.' Eventually they had to give in (astronomy eventually trumps prejudice), with Britain adopting the calendar only in 1752. There it was called the New Style calendar so no mention need be made of a pope. The Julian calendar was termed the Old Style."

[Tip of the hat to Karl Keating, E-Letter of 5/30/06]

The Pope at Auschwitz: "They wanted to kill God"

"By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith." A startling interpretation of the Holocaust in the words of the German pope. (Sandro Magister, www.chiesa, May 29, 2006)

"The most extensively analyzed and criticized portion of Benedict XVI's trip to the homeland of his predecessor, Poland, was when he visited Auschwitz and Birkenau, sites of the Holocaust.

"It is criticized because of what pope Joseph Ratinger did not say there.

"According to his critics' expectations, Benedict XVI should have asked for forgiveness for the faults of the German nation -- to which he belongs -- and denounced the anti-Semitism of yesterday and today, especially that of many Christians.

"But it didn't happen. Benedict XVI didn't talk speak of these two matters.

"Nor did he repeat the usual interpretations of the Holocaust.

"On the contrary, he made an interpretation of the slaughter of the Jewish people that no pope had ever made before him."

Read the whole article here.

Memorial Day

John McCrae lived from 1872 to 1918. A Canadian physician, he fought on the Western Front in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. Soon he was transferred to the medical corps and assigned to a hospital in France. He died of pneumonia while on active duty in 1918. He is perhaps most remembered for his poem about the famous poppies concurrent with the soldiers who had died. He wrote his famous poem In Flanders Fields the day after presiding at the funeral of a friend and former student. His poem is now a memorial to all Veterans. (courtesy, Sarah Lane)

In Flanders Fields - John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The torch, ours to hold it high? If we break faith with them who die, shall they not sleep? Do they sleep? Have we kept faith with they who gave their lives? Are we grateful? Do we laud their cause? Since Vietnam, do we share their cause? Are we sure of our own cause? Are we sure even of who we are as a people? Are we still "a people"? After transferring from Oxford to Cambridge, C.S. Lewis caricatured himself as a dinosaur, the last of the "Old Western Men." Surely an exaggeration. Surely?

Kudos to Amy Welborn

Today in Church I saw that flyers had been made available to parishioners to counter the misinformation of The Da Vinci Code. I saw that they were published by Our Sunday Visitor and that the author was Amy Welborn. They were very basic, as flyers must inevitably be, but attractively formatted and well-organized, with the essentials clearly thought-out. I'm sure this is the sort of thing a lot of rank-and-file folks probably need and will very likely even turn some minds toward the light on this contorted issue. Kudos to Amy Welborn for a good job!

I suppose some of us -- preeminently academic types such as myself -- need reminding from time to time that the world isn't going to be saved by a dissertation as such, whatever it may be worth. The faith of the people is where the hope of the harvest of grace lies. Keeping this fact in view, hopefully, has the power of bringing into proper focus even the work of dissertations.

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan (1923-2006), historian of Christianity

It has been nearly two weeks since Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University, died of lung cancer at the age of 82. Yet it is fitting and proper that we mark his passing. Pelikan, the author of more than 30 major books on church history, was by all accounts among his generation's preeminent authorities on Christian history and most accomplished scholars.

Born in 1923 in Akron, Ohio, to a Serbian mother and Slovak father, he joined the Yale University faculty in 1962, where he remained until his retirement in 1996. He served as dean of the Graduate School from 1973 to 1978. He is remembered as an outstanding speaker, for his compelling personality, and widely respected for his even-handed treatment of church history.

Yale History Department chair Paul Freedman said that Pelikan, an expert in church history from the 3rd to 16th century AD, raised the University's profile in the field of medieval history: "He was a world-recognized scholar in the large, important and venerable field of church history," Freedman said in the Yale Daily News. "He was one of a group of people who made Yale one of the prominent centers of medieval history in particular." Pelikan delivered the annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the highest honor conferred by the U.S. government for outstanding achievement in the humanities, in 1983.

A life-long Lutheran, Pelikan was increasingly troubled by trends in the ELCA. Unlike Richard John Neuhaus, Leonard Klein, Reinhard Huetter and other Lutherans who swam the Tiber to become Roman Catholics, Pelikan entered the Orthodox Church 1998. Funeral liturgies were held at the chapel of St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

Dr. Pelikan, requiescat in pace.

The hermeneutics of fittingness: traditional Requiem Mass vs. new 'Mass of Resurrection'

A writer recently wrote asking: "How about a thread on the hermeneutical fittingness of the traditional Requiem Mass, versus the new 'Mass of Resurrection'?" This is something I hadn't considered before, having never yet attended a Catholic funeral Mass. I have heard some accounts, however, of the differences between the pre- and post-Vatican II rites. The writer went on to add:

I attended a funeral yesterday of a Catholic man who committed suicide, leaving behind a young wife and four small children. I expected, but was still deeply disturbed by, the constant refrain throughout the Mass that we can pretty much have certainty that this man is in Heaven. The rite itself papers over the obvious problem--this man died in the very act of committing several extremely grave sins without any chance for sacramental confession. Is it really good that the Church bids her priests verbalize assurances for things of which they really have no way of being sure?

I would think that the acknowledgment in the traditional Rite of the sting of death, along with its emphasis on the divine mercy would have been more appropriate than blithe assurances of resurrection, especially under these circumstances.

I remember thinking to myself, "Whatever became of the Dies Irae within Catholic hymnody?" The Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath"), the famous 13th-century Latin trochaic hymn describing the day of judgment, with the last trumpet summoning souls before the tribunal of God, has been dismissed as too dark and judgmental by the Barney and Friends company of contemporary liturgical commissioners. But Christians of all stripes have traditionally written of this hymn such things as this: "Among gems it is the diamond," "solitary in its excellence," "the acknowledged masterpiece of Latin poetry and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns" (Catholic Encyclopedia). In the current Latin Breviary, it is suggested for use in the Liturgy of the Hours during the last week of Ordinary Time. I think I remember the editor of Adoremus Bulletin in a recent issue assuring a reader that there is nothing in the rubrics of the Novus Ordo that would proscribe the use of the Dies Irae. But this is hardly enough. There is nothing that would proscribe ad orientem Masses, Gregorian chant, or the restoration of Tabernacles to the center axis on or behind the Altar either -- and there actually is something (Redemptionis Sacramentum) that proscribes the ordinary use of unnecessary Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. But how has that kept anything from changing?

The question before us, however, concerns not the Dies Irae but the traditional Requiem Mass as such versus the new "Mass of Resurrection." The question pertains to these Masses as discrete wholes, as well as to all their parts. Does one express more fittingly than the other what is proper to Catholic theology and sentiment, and, if so, why?

"Danned if you do. Danned if you don't."

Those who try to explain the dangers posed by the claims made in Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, are bound to meet a very common and tired sequence of questions and comments, says Carl E. Olson. In his blog devoted to exposing the errors of Brown's TDVC, Olson takes up some of the responses given by those who are either "puzzled, amused, or annoyed that some Christians are (gasp!) responding to the historical and theological claims made in TDVC." A typical line of inquiry begins with the question, "Why are you so worried about a work of fiction?" But once an explanation has been given as to why TDVC is not "just fiction," says Olson, one is typically greeted, in turn, by the following sorts of questions:

• "But isn't it a good thing that people are talking about religious beliefs?"
• "What are Christians so afraid of? Obviously you are hiding something or else you wouldn't be defensive."
• "Well, you have to admit that the Catholic Church has brought all of this negative attention on itself by being so mean and secretive."
• "But isn't it true that we really can't know what happened in the first century? After all, we really don't have any reliable evidence about Jesus, do we?"

In a contribution to what has become a veritable industry since the Brown book's publication, Olson discusses these questions in detail more patient than I could begin to muster. ("Danned if you do. Danned if you don't" -- yes, that's spelled correctly!)

An Anglican archbishop shows spine

NEW ZEALAND: Sexuality -- a make or break issue, says Apb. Jensen.

Liz goes solo

One of my musically very talented nieces, Elizabeth, has been singing for years in various groups. Her father is an internationally touring choir director. Her mother is a piano teacher. Together with her parents and sister, they have performed magisterial settings of Latin sacred music. But her current interests run toward a more temporal genre. She recently left a group and decided to go solo as 'ghhrfy.' Take a tour of her website and listen to a sampling of her solo songs, if interested.

Anthony Esolen on the Communion Rail

Anthony Esolen needs little introduction here. Last autumn we posted an essay, "A requiem for male friendship?" (October 11, 2005), reviewing his feature article in Touchstone magazine, whose cover carried the headline: "Friendship -- the love that can no longer speak its name." Esolen has also appeared in one of our comment boxes in a discussion of a post, "On Turkey's Wings" (April 5, 2005).

But I wish to call your attention to a marvelous article Anthony Esolen has written in Crisis magazine, which has just become available in the online Crisis archives, entitled "Kneeling Before the Gates of Paradise," Crisis (April 2006). He addresses here the question of the Communion Rail in a rich tapestry of theological, cultural, and historical observations. As always, he writes with elegance and deep insight. See for yourself. Here are a few excerpts:

What wonders we American Catholics have seen. Schools, whose joists were sawn and spiked by the hands of men who would send their children there, now empty, crumbling; whole orders of nuns doffing their habits, then their faith and reason too; worthy societies dwindling into a few old men with beers and a shuffleboard table, or a few old ladies with flowers; pipe organs dismantled; hymns sent down the memory hole or, worse, sissified; statues torn from the walls by a New Model Army of ecclesiastical vandals; deep funds of knowledge about Christ and His Church allowed to trickle away into the banal and the secular, a feel-good paganism that would have made Cato turn in disgust.

After night comes the morning, and through the cracks in the deadest parking lot the crocuses will poke their way. So I believe the hidden stirrings of life are with us now. Yet I like to think there is one object at the heart of all those acts of destruction -- and at the heart of our hopes for a new life for the Catholic community. Its symbolism suggests a division that unites: the threshold of the deepest mystery our Church on earth professes. I mean the communion rail.

The rail I remember from my boyhood was installed in the 1950s ...

What was it like to kneel there? Let me say what it was not like. It was not like that web of cheats and frauds called "the real world." In the real world, you wait in the checkout line at the grocery store. You wait in line for a ticket to the movies. You wait in line at the ballpark. You wait for your number to be called at the delicatessen. You wait, per saecula saeculorum, at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It was not like that. People approached the altar from the three columns of pews as the Spirit and their legs moved them. Since there were usually two priests communicating the congregation, and since the people kneeling didn't have to worry about others stepping on their heels if they prayed for a moment after receiving our Lord, you just waited for places to open up and then knelt down....

That rail was removed, as so many were, in the assault of the new puritans of the 1970s. Nothing should separate the laymen from the altar; we were to focus on ourselves as a community of faith, rather than on the Eucharist as an object of cultic worship. So now most Catholics receive the wafer unleavened by faith that it is anything other than a quaint symbol, a modestly caloric cracker, a ticket at the deli. We receive in line, individually, watching the shoes of the person ahead of us. We cannot pause to pray afterwards. "Move on!" says Etiquette to the hungry beggar. "What do you think this place is?" ...

Don't miss the rest of this essay -- surely an essay not to be missed in the analytics of the fittingness of the Communion Rail in "Kneeling Before the Gates of Paradise." He offers a much more in-depth analysis subsequent to these opening paragraphs.

Dietrich von Hildebrand on Mozart

The Dietrich von Hildebrend Legacy Project, administered by John Henry Crosby, the son of Dr. John Crosby, Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan University, has as its major project the translation into English and publication of the complete works of the Catholic philosopher and cultural critic, Dietrich von Hildebrand. Transformation, a quarterly e-newsletter of the Project, is aptly named with its allusiveness to the title of one of von Hildebrand's major works, Transformation in Christ. The latest issue of Transformation includes a link to the following page of Excerpts from von Hildebrand's essay Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While Mozart was no saint, as von Hildebrand admits, a deep exploration of his music leads him to conclude that to actualize as a person the spirit embodied in his work, is to recognize something profoundly saintly about the vision Mozart sets forth in his music. "Mozart's art is permeated by a spirit of holy lavishness (heiliger Verschwendung) that we otherwise find only in nature," he writes.

First the ebullience of Pope Benedict XVI concerning Mozart; and now this! German sentimentality? Insight? Perhaps a little of both?

"Menstruation Is Fast Becoming Optional"

LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer, "Menstruation Is Fast Becoming Optional":

"Thanks to birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptives, a growing number of women are taking the path chosen by 22-year-old Stephanie Sardinha. She hasn't had a period since she was 17."

Fair enough. But what's to prevent, in ten or twenty years (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight), a mounting silent epidemic of women's cancers coercively 'outing' studies of 'irrepressible data' linking hormonal contraceptives with carcinogenesis?

(1) BBC News: "Pill increases breast cancer risk: Women who have taken the contraceptive Pill at any stage in their lives have a slightly increased chance of developing breast cancer, research shows."

(2) Chris Kahlenborn, M.D., Breast Cancer: Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill:

• "Overview: Breast Cancer and the Pill," by Chris Kahlenborn, M.D.
• Review of Kahlenborn's book on Human Life International
• Review of Kahlenborn's book on Amazon.com
• American Life League (Click on "COMMUNIQUE")

(3) Overview: Breast Cancer and the Pill, by Chris Kahlenborn, M.D.

(4) How do the Pill and Other Contraceptives Work? by Chris Kahlenborn, M.D.

(5) CancerBACUP: The UK's Leading Cancer Information Service: " . . . there is a risk that the hormones (oestrogen and progesterone) in the contraceptive pill may affect breast cancer cells . . ."

(6) Contraception Information Center, The Journal of the American Medical Association: "Women who are currently using combined oral contraceptives or have used them in the past 10 years are at a slightly increased risk of having breast cancer diagnosed . . ."
(7) Breast Cancer: Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill, by Chris Kahlenborn, M.D.

Holy See Halts Investigation of Legionary Founder

VATICAN CITY, MAY 19, 2006 (Zenit.org). -- "The Holy See won't continue with a canonical investigation into accusations against Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, and has invited him to renounce all public ministry." The Vatican communique concludes: "Irrespective of the person of the founder, the distinguished apostolate of the Legionaries of Christ and of Regnum Christi is acknowledged with gratitude."

Leave of absence ...

I will take my leave of Blogsville today and be gone until Monday (May 22). I will be assisting as a discussion faciliator in an annual Great Books program sponsored by the Hickory Humanities Forum of Lenoir-Rhyne College through its Lineberger Center for Cultural and Educational Renewal at the Blumenthal family's Wildacres retreat in Little Switzerland, North Carolina. We will be discussing Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat," a selection from the Bhagavad-Gita, Gregor von Rezzori's "Troth" (from his Memoirs of an Anti-Semite), Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and William B. Yeats' "Lapis Lazuli," Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning," Robert Frost's "Design," and Elizabeth Bishop's "The Armadillo." Other discussion leaders include George Anastaplo of Chicago, John Van Doren of New York, Eva Brann and Laurence Berns from Annapolis, Don Just from Austin, Texas, and several colleagues form North Carolina, including Ronda Chervin. The sessions include great dining, at least one concert (e.g., a string quintet, but we've occasionally had blue grass), hiking trails just minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Accommodations are commodious, with motel-style rooms, large common spaces, including a canteen, a spacious lodge with a fireplace, and refrectory, as well as meeting rooms. Participants come from many parts of the country, with a significant Jewish and Christian representation. The cost of $175 per participant includes tuition, text, room, and board. If any of you would like to be put on the mailing list for future meetings, please call Larry Yoder (next week) at Lenoir-Rhyne College (828) 328-7276.