A Blessed Easter!

Wishing my 1.67 readers a wonderful and prayerful Octave of Easter.

Asked, spur of the moment, to chant the Litany of Saints for the baptisms at our Easter Vigil, (which I was both proud and humbled to do.)

We had more baptisms and full receptions into the Faith this year than in recent years. I wonder what national stats show.
Attendance was down for Thursday and Saturday, but Friday held, (I'm told, couldn't attend,) so I think disaffection with the Church through the efforts of various haters was not much of a factor -- the attitude of the PIP to the approach to the liturgy taken by TPTB because of demographic considerations, on the other hand? now that's disaffection.
Sung Morning Prayer for the Triduum was well attended, and I think reasonably fervently sung. (I'd like to destroy all the microphones in the world, however...)

And yesterday was simply a blessed, blessed day.

Because of Himself's schedule, if we were to be able to see each other at all, I could not sing at my parish, so feeling not a twinge of guilt I found myself a pew-sitter at an Ordinary Form Mass in Latin with sung Gregorian ordinary and propers, and utterly thrilling organ music, I mean thrilling.
I mean, every bone in your body thrilling to it, and thinking surely that will be the underscoring when Judgement Day arrives.

And then another Mass (orchestral,) and the Divine Mercy novena chanted, and sung pontifical Vespers, and...
(and then....? Well, by that time I didn't care that I was stranded in the rain for a few hours waiting for a ride.)

Himself sometimes, when he's at a Latin EF Mass, say, or some LotH he doesn't know, will say, when I worry that his lack of comprehension will lead to lack of interest, no, I just sit there and let the sacramenty goodness wash over me.

And you know, I discovered that that can be a wonderful thing.

This is the night...

On this, your night of grace, O heavenly Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering,
the work of bees and of your servants’ hands,
an evening sacrifice of praise,
the gift from your most holy Church.

Our Exultet started off well enough, (though not as well sung as I would have expected from the fine voiced deacon,) and then made some weird turn into performancey modulations and sequence and big -- buttoned -- ending.

""Who will roll away the stone for us?"

One worries about so many things as one travels through life -- how will.....? why can't...? what does....? who can....?
But when the moment comes, how often He has already taken care of it!

My liturgical life has been all but schizophrenic this week, hell, every aspect of my life has, I may blog about it later, but for now, I just want to stop keeping score, and rejoice in the fact that He is risen.

He is risen.

He is risen.

Answer Him

"My people, what have I done to you....?"

Well Done, Your Excellency

New York's + Abp Timothy Dolan has a few words to say in his Palm Sunday homily.

Anytime the horrible, vicious sin, and nauseating crime [of child sexual abuse] is reported, as it needs to be, victims and their families are wounded again, the vast majority of faithful priests bow their heads in shame anew, and sincere Catholics experience another dose of shock, sorrow, and even anger.

What deepens the sadness now are the unrelenting insinuations against the Holy Father himself as certain sources seem frenzied to implicate this man who, perhaps more than anyone else has been the leader in purification, reform, and renewal that the Church so needs.
Sunday Mass is hardly the place to document the inaccuracy, bias, and hyperbole of such aspersions.
But, Sunday Mass is indeed the time for Catholics to pray for Benedict our Pope.

And Palm Sunday Mass is sure a fitting place for us to express our love and solidarity for our earthly shepherd now suffering some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob, and scourging at the pillar, as did Jesus.

Oremus pro Pontifice

Who doesn't sing "All Glory Laud and Honor"?

Just a thought that occurred as the camera repeatedly picked up certain people during the entrance procession, (the second "entrance procession," as the first Gospel was sung from within the nave,) at the Mass from the national Basilica.

People who, I suspect, would not sing anything. ANYthing.
People whose active participation does not depend on their singing hymns.
People who would prefer, (and this is an understandable and IMO acceptable preference,) perhaps to be able to watch the procession?

Sad, Sad News

Apparently, the beautiful parish church of St Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood, (a favorite of Himself's and mine when we lived in LA and stumbled upon it, in the days before I knew you could find faithful liturgies and reverent music via the internet...,) is to be subject to a... renovation, and perhaps to the ministrations of Richard Vosko, or at least, someone who shares his liturgical and aesthetic sensibilities.

Born to Chant!

Charles in CenCa nails it.
A confession -- I always admired, liked, appreciated, wanted the chant -- but I thought it was just one among other approppriate and equally (by me,) admired, liked, appreciated, wanted forms of music;some of which, (Oh the HOWWOW!) are contemporary, and some of which are popular, (though none of which are contemporary and popular.)

Not so, not so.

Moaning

I never realized before that moaning actually help relieve pain.
Been laid low with what I thought was food poisoning, (now suspecting a virus or bacterial infection,) and trying to make light of it when Himself is home.
It actually feels better to just wail or sigh or whatever -- is it a little like that strange huffing that women in labor do, (at least in the movies)? Anyway, I only do it when he's out, so I actually feel the worst at the times when I am pretending to feel the best.

Missing Sunday Mass for the first time in 9 years, I think, (could be remembering wrong.)

Thank you, EWTN.
I will truly miss the network if we do move into my Mom's environs... yet another reason to "need" a highspeed internet connection.

Satan's "Sense of Liturgy"

Fr Hunwicke has a thoughtful and deeply felt reflection on the abuse and cover-up crisis, reprinted here in its entirety:

For nearly three decades I served in the Diocese of Chichester under Bishop Eric Kemp. One of the things that made him so admired among his clergy was the care and love that he showed towards a priest with a problem. The fact that he gave an errant priest - even one whose lapse had been sexual - a second chance, seemed to us, back in the 1980s, the mark of a fine pastor. In that far-off decade, forgiveness and mercy were thought very highly of. In those days, forgiveness and mercy were thought of as characteristics of our blessed Lord himself. In those days, secular critics of the Church very commonly attacked her for being "unforgiving" towards those who had fallen from her standards in sexual matters. In those days, fashionable 'libertarian' organisations defended the right of pedophile groups to campaign for the legalisation of consensual sexual activity between adults and children. In those days, as we worked our way through the progressive decriminalisation of sexual activities, there were those who believed that the process would eventually encompass all sexualities. Indeed, why, on secular principles, should this not be so? In my lifetime, we used to imprison for homosexuality and abortion. Now these activities have been elevated into secular sanctities which it is increasingly dangerous to blaspheme and which are to be inculcated even among the very young at public expense. I would have no difficulty explaining to a pedophile why his predilection contravened given Christian Dogma, and why its expression was therefore an absolute evil which no little game of situational ethics could for the tiniest moment justify. I do not know how I would even begin to persuade him of the rationality of current public morality.

We all know that those who are gunning for the Pope are hypocrites. We know that they are in many cases dirty hypocrites whose own lifestyle is unmarked by any evidence of sexual continence. We know that they are bigoted hypocrites who are only marginally, if at all, interested if a rabbi or a humanist gets 'done' for pedophilia or if an Anglican diocese is bankrupted by the compensation it has paid out to abused Inuit children. There is one organisation that they detest with a loathing curiously like Hitler's dislike of the Jews. There is one man for whose downfall they have an insatiable bloodlust.

Nil novi sub sole. Dante described (Purgatorio XX 86-88) how Christ was again made captive and mocked in the person of His Vicar.

How very, very, appropriate that this malevolent evil should be reaching its climax in Holy Week. Satan has a real sense of liturgy.

Happy Birthay, Magda!

Just listened to a birthday tribute on "The Recording Horn" to the legendary Magda Olivero, who will turn 100 this Thursday.

The most charming of women, and as thrilling a singing actress as anyone ever saw or heard.

Great, it's my OWN fault I've never accomplished much...

Review of an interesting-sounding book.

I have long accepted that my own sloth is responsible for most of what goes wrong in my life. (Heard some interesting discourse on the Seven Deadlies yesterday on the radio.)

Anyway, secular society seems to be in agreement with what my Faith tells me.

David Shenk with “The Genius in All of Us,” ... argues that we have before us not a “talent scarcity” but a “latent talent abundance.” Our problem “isn’t our inadequate genetic assets,” but “our inability, so far, to tap into what we already have.” The truth is “that few of us know our true limits, that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our ‘un­actualized potential.’ ”

... We’ve traditionally regarded superior talent as a rare and mysterious gift bequeathed to a lucky few. In fact, Shenk writes, science is revealing it to be the product of highly concentrated effort. He describes the work of the psychologist Anders Ericsson, who wondered if he could train an ordinary person to perform extraordinary feats of memory. When Eric­sson began working with a young man identified as S.F., his subject could, like most of us, hold only seven numbers in his short-term memory. By the end of the study, S.F. could correctly recall an astonishing 80-plus digits. With the right kind of mental discipline, Ericsson and his co-­investigator concluded, “there is seemingly no limit to memory performance.” Shenk weaves accounts of such laboratory experiments, conducted on average people, with the tales of singularly accomplished individuals — Ted Williams and Michael Jordan, Mozart and Beethoven— who all worked relentlessly to hone their skills.

Bring these two domains together, and a new vision of achievement begins to come into focus. Shenk’s “ambitious goal,” he tells us, is to take this widely dispersed research and “distill it all into a new lingua franca, adopting helpful new phrases and metaphors” to replace old and misleading ones. Forget about genes as unchanging “blueprints” and talent as a “gift,” all tied up in a bow. “We cannot allow ourselves to think that way anymore,” he declares with some fervor. Instead, Shenk proposes, imagine the genome as a giant control board, with thousands of switches and knobs that turn genes off and on or tune them up and down. And think of talent not as a thing, but as a process; not as something we have, but as something we do....

Shenk doesn’t neglect the take-home point we’re all waiting for, even titling a chapter “How to Be a Genius (or Merely Great).” The answer has less in common with the bromides of motivational speakers than with the old saw about how to get to Carnegie Hall practice, practice, practice. Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible. Behold our long rumored potential, unleashed at last! Shenk is vague about how, exactly, this happens, but to his credit he doesn’t make it sound easy. “You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.”

It’s in this self-help section that two weaknesses in Shenk’s argument become evident. The first is the matter of where the extreme drive and discipline that greatness requires are supposed to come from. Shenk tells us about Beethoven writing 60 to 70 drafts of a single phrase of music, and Ted Williams hitting practice pitches until his hands bled.

... He is careful to say that we are not born without limits — it’s just that none of us can know what those limits are “before we’ve applied enormous re­sources and invested vast amounts of time.” He ducks the implication that these limits will, eventually, reveal themselves, and that they will stop most of us well short of Mozart territory. There’s a tension here between Shenk’s extravagant talk of “greatness” and “genius” and the more modest message he delivers: practice can improve your performance, perhaps far more than you imagined.

I think all this ties in, somehow, with Me and Solfege, (a play in many, many acts,) -- I resist practice, but I know, and have it demonstrated regularly to me, that in this, as it so many areas of endeavor, it works.
Not only does it work, but it is the ONLY thing that works -- there is no substitute for practice, for just doing it.

"The World's Biggest Pep Rally"

"Perhaps ... people were distracted by the parade of Asian drummers ascending the stage in their colorful costumes of blue, red, green, yellow and gold. Or maybe they were still working out what the spiraled and curved figures hanging from the ceiling were intended to represent. Once it got going ..., as the drummers were drumming, and the dancers processed, lifting and swirling with flaming braziers in their hands, it was clear that something exciting was under way."

The opening of the LA Religious Ed hoo-ha, via PrayTell

St Joseph, Pray for Us!

I am fortunate enough today to be able to celebrate by attending a Solemn High Mass [Correction, 3/20 - it wasn't a "Solemn" High Mass, I believe -- no deacon or sub-deacon? I'm still not all that familiar with the ins and outs of the varieties of EF] in the great saint's honor.
Through the efforts of a 21-year-old (who hopes to enter the seminary when he graduates,) his fellow students at Holy Cross can do likewise, at the first Mass celebrated there in the older rite since 1995. (I is a shame reverence and solemnity doesn't speak to young people...:oP)
In this time of rampant unemployment, or underemployment, I have had recourse to asking St Joseph for his intercession in his capacity as the patron of workers, and today I learned that for at least one family member, my prayers have been answered.
There are other St. Josephs, besides our Lord's foster father, for whose intercession I ask.
Joseph was also my father's name, and I have no doubt whatever that he has the ear of our Father in heaven, and is in a position to add his prayers to mine.
Happy feast day, all you Josephs out there! (especially you, Papa, and you, my little brother!)

"Courageous?" Too funny...

Without weighing in on the merits of the health care bill, I would like to call attention to this absurdly funny bit in David Waters' in the Washington Post, about the four and a half dozen or so religious sisters claiming to represent 59,000 of their.. well, their sisters, in supporting the bill:

[Their letter to Congress said,] "Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments - $250 million - in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."

Can 59,000 Catholic sisters be wrong?

Surely they couldn't be more courageous. At a time when American sisters are under investigation by the Vatican, a direct challenge of the public position of the bishops is likely to raise a few eyebrows in the Church hierarchy.

Not sure his point in asking if 59000 can be wrong... of course they can. If it is right, it doesn't matter if it issues from a single voice crying in the wilderness, and if it is wrong, every soul on earth could agree and it wouldn't make it right.

Bu no, what makes me laugh (yes, literally... LOL. Not LMAO, however,) is the notion that there is some "courage' involved in their position --- ooooh, because the bishops won't like it?
(Scary, boys and girls!)

Because the bishops will do what, exactly? He tells us, actually.

Raise their eyebrows!

How very terrifying a prospect!

So how very valiant the sisters must be to risk such a thing!

The old guys in miters surely have no power over the sisters, after all. Right? Because the sisters aren't dependent on the bishops, or the rest of the Church for anything, right?

At least, that's what pretty much the same faction of sisters has been insisting, ever since the visitation was announced, that the Church hierarchy had no right to question them or investigate them? That they get nothing out of representing themselves as faithful Catholic, and derive no benefit from the association?

Because other than the threat of their powerful and terrifying eyebrows, the bishops have no leverage over the sisters, no call or claim on their loyalty or obedience, right?

Or have they?

And have the sisters been less than accurate in insisting that they owe the hierarchy nothing, that the Vatican had no right to investigate them?

(As for Glen Beck, I hope they make the silly man cry. His tears are highly entertaining, if not all that convincing. Is he a Catholic? I didn't know. I also don't know if the jackass who wrote the piece saying anyone can or does "assume Beck left the church long ago" isn't falling into the same error as the holier-than-thou conservatives who would try to tell those with whom they disagree that they aren't real Catholics.)

Putting Things in Perspective

Yes, we have "priest shortage" in this country, compared to the mid-20th century's vocation "boom" but look at how the "elder daughter is faring!
In today's Vatican press release, we learn that a Parisian priest, Fr. Jacques Benoit-Gonnin, has been appointed bishop of Beauvais where there are 153 priests to say Mass and confect the Eucharist for a Catholic population of 698,000.
I would be curious to find any stats about Traditionalists for that diocese.

Church Music in Ireland and the House of Brigid

Interesting blog post about 3 (American? presumably) Notre Dame grads whow have set themselves a missionary task:"to contribute to the renewal of the Church in Wexford through liturgical music and the celebration of the sacraments."
I don't think they should be surprised at the musical illiteracy they have found, (and the post is a little patronizing in that regard, though it is surely not intentional.)

After all, our nation is musically illiterate as well -- it's just that those of us involved in music forget, and start to think the circles in which we travel are somehow normal or normative. They are not. (How could Nixon have won? No one I know voted for him!)

The House of Brigid was established this summer by three fellow '09 Domers to contribute to the renewal of the Church in Wexford through liturgical music and the celebration of the sacraments. While the sacraments are readily available in Ireland, their celebration has lost its vitality and joy. The historical authoritarianism of the Irish clergy has sabotaged itself, so that in the wake of the horrific sexual abuse scandals here the Irish laity feel betrayed by the hierarchy but do not feel empowered themselves to take greater responsibility for the life of the Church. Mass is poorly attended, and young adults in particular do not see the relevance of structured religion to their lives. Some do still observe "the Sunday obligation," and young parents spend significant sums on First Communion suits, but all too often their is no sense of active participation on the part of the congregation, and a child's First Communion is also his Last.

The sad state of liturgical music in Ireland has long puzzled me. A country with such a lively folk tradition, renowned the world over for its lively trad music, ought to also have some of the most moving liturgies, I assumed. Voices that make the roof of the pub tremble on Saturday night should equally raise the rafters of the church on a Sunday morning. Yet quite the opposite is true: laypeople mumble the responses to the prayers and most Masses have no music at all, or music provided by a choir without programmes for the congregation to use to add their voices to the hymns.

Teach Bhride is trying to help the Church of the Annunciation in Clonard, Wexford to unlock its potential in Sunday liturgies and other parish celebrations, and through their music ministry they also contribute to the catachesis of the parish, since liturgical music is an expression, not an entertainment.

I was eager to visit Chris, Martha, and Carolyn in Clonard to see how the first year of the new endeavor is going. I was struck by the way they work alongside the parishioners of Annunciation, augmenting the efforts of long-laboring church musicians there. They say that they have learned a great deal from the parishioners, since they came to Clonard knowing very little about the existing choirs' repertoire and the traditions of the parish. They have moved through their first liturgical year in Ireland as keen observers and eager students, slowly introducing new music and new ways of approaching the liturgy to complement what Clonard already has. They approach their ministry with humility.

I know that coming from two years of singing in Notre Dame's Folk Choir, the trio feel their foreignness in working with Clonard's church choirs. Ireland is still enough of a folk culture that the notion of approaching music scientifically, with written scores and technical terms is strange- except for music students, most people learn music purely by ear here. If the churches have hymnals at all--which is uncommon--they usually contain only the text of the hymns. It reminds me of my summer in Ukraine in that respect, where my students would sing folk songs in four part harmony with 10 or 15 verses from memory. Ireland, as much as it likes to pretend, isn't wholly modern yet.

I believe many British hymnals are still printed that way, available text only, or with music an text separate, on facing pages.
And your average Catholic church choir in this country is not made up of readers.
I think it is probably hard to make music ministry truly catachetical, to convince people that liturgical music is "an expression not an entertainment" if you start from any place other than the actual texts of the Mass, sung in the manner that the Church has mandated is her own, with the music most especially suited to the rites.

Otherwise its just taste and personal piety.

The Dominican Habit

A very interesting post from Moniales OP about the habit worn by the nuns at the Rosary Shrine in Summit.

I know a little something about them, having worn one many times.
(And no, I don't mean as a costume in productions of Sound of Music, although I have done that, too...)

When I was little, there were Holy Hours with processions in May and October, (with a crowning in May,) and besides the Third Order, in the procession were a dozen or so small children robed as Dominicans, in tiny, authentic habits.

The habits and robes were very beautiful, and very complicated -- it took quite some time for mothers and nuns (externs?) to pin and tie each of us apple-cheeked squirmers into our garb.

My, but we were funny and cute!

(I believe as a worldly and mean-as-a-snake 5 year old, I tried to convince my four-year old brother that they were going to have to save a bald spot in the middle of his head for the occasion. Since the OP priests we knew had no such tonsure, I don't know why he was so easy to convince, but logic never was his strong suit.

I'm spending a lot of time in Purgatory, I fear...)

Lovely bit of (disputed) information about veiling from the combox there, Fr. Martin Farrell,op tells us that the Veil:

... does NOT come from medieval fashion (as did the wimple), but rather is the common element found in all monastic dress, for both men and women, perhaps even as far back as the desert fathers!

The veil is takes its origin from Scripture, actually. It points to the moment in the Sinai Desert when Moses came down from the camp after one of his meetings with God. Proximity to God had so transformed Moses that even his physical appearance changed, and his countenance was so bright that, in order for the people to be able to look at him, he had to veil his head (a factoid referred to in the Transfiguration account in the Gospels).

Religious have always veiled their heads to remind themselves that, like Moses, they dwell in God's presence and are, therefore, to be transformed. So in the East, the veil, for both men and women, has been maintained; in the West, while Relgious women still wear it, for men it has been "replaced" by the hood.

"Liturgical Music for Relaxation"

Huh?
Not that I haven't snoozed through a homily or two or three, and not that some worthy liturgical music (include the very pinnacle of liturgical musical expression, )can't be very soothing, but I think marketing "some of the most popular liturgical music of our time" as an easy-listenin' backdrop to whatever it is you do to relax, may betray a misapprehension of what the term "liturgical music" actually means.

Which explains a lot.

Somedays...

... the Office of Readings, well -- it might as well be in Sanskrit.

Today, not so bad, but it continued Leviticus, I CAN not get it, and several times recently both the scripture and the other reading, clear as mud.