It's Not Like It's a CATHOLIC School, or Anything....

... oh, wait.
It is.
Don't know the parish in question or the school, don't know the priests, or the parents, no skin in the game.
So they might be right. (Who "might be right"? you ask. Exactly.)
Or they might be jerks. (See above.)

Anyway, admittedly, no skin in the game.

But here's my thinking, (or rather, my rhetorical questioning):
How is having non-Catholics perform liturgical functions at Mass NOT a practice to which a stop should have been put?
And since in a city such as San Francisco it's a safe bet that most kids can't or don't walk to Church by themselves, how is getting a handle on how many of your charges ARE NOT PRACTICING by finding out whether their families attend Mass NOT part of you mission?

And who thinks the zeitgeist of San Francisco is NOT "savagely distorted"?

Not US!!!

"Hmm.... what can we do for liturgy that's NEW, and EXCITING?"

The purveyors of Burlap Banners, finding themselves with time on their hands as demnad for their handiwork has, mercifully, declined, have a brand, spankin' new craft they want to foist on you. offer as an alternative to the Church's Spiritual-Industrial Complex's musty old traditions.

Yes, the Non Catholic Rundown is at it again.

In a moment of deep reflection, write on a ribbon what you love and hope to never lose to climate chaos. Share it with others. When you are moved by someone else’s ribbon, tie it to your wrist, committing to work to beat back climate chaos so that our worst fears never come true.
Together, our promises weave a giant tapestry of commitment among all of us for a healthy, sustainable planet.
For Palm Sunday, we plan to use the climate ribbon as a palm. We will join our forebears in marching around town -- probably Washington Square Park and the New York University Law School -- and ask people to join us in a combination of parade and lament.
We were able to use the ribbon with great liturgical success around the climate march. Through it people were able to express a kind of confession, a kind of lament and a kind of absolution.
For Palm Sunday, we want to connect the themes of love and loss to that last day of freedom for Jesus in the city. 

I think this would be swell, along with a bare tree branch covered with wads of masking tape such as that with which a DRE gifted us once.

Judging from the comments, even NCR's readers know how lame this is.

"Forget the 1960s – it is time the Church once again embraced new music in the liturgy"

When did She ever stop?
 From Matthew Schellhorn in the British "Catholic Herald":

To think of “contemporary music” in Catholic worship brings to mind the clearly hastily written and often very poor quality contributions of the 60s and 70s still in use in some places as a meagre alternative to anything of real artistic value. The waters are muddied here by an agenda that extols a particular kind of congregational “active participation”, meaning that in general musical offerings by modern composers – mostly written for the laity to have some part in – have to be supplied at the level of the lowest common denominator.
......As a means of breaking the deadlock I would say that the place of contemporary music in the Sacred Liturgy must be re-evaluated. New and imaginative music should certainly not be cast aside simply owing to bad experience....
This week, the winner of a new prize for sacred music composition I founded was announced. The brief was to write a Eucharistic motet for four parts, thereby precluding monophonic or simplistic entries rivalling Gregorian chant and furthermore requiring the use of capable musicians for performance. I was pleased to receive interest from composers all over the world, hungry to write for the Church and seeking opportunities for their God-given skills to be recognised and valued. I and the panel of judges can testify that the quality of entries was consistently high. The winner is a young composer from the Wirral, Marco Galvani, who has a bright future ahead of him; his piece, Ecce Quam Bonum, will be premiered at St Mary Moorfields in the City of London on Holy Saturday.

Looking forward to hearing it.
Meanwhile, I have what I have as I live where I live.

What Does True Repentance Require Of the Penitent?

I don't know, I'm asking.
Without reference to the details of the misdeed, the motivation, the perpetrator, or the victim in this case, the miscreant who visited an atrocity upon still surviving victims has been released from prison and says he is sorry.
He wishes his victims could “understand a bit better what motivated me and people like me”.

I think that is a heinous, self-serving thing to say, since it implicit invites a comparison between his putative sufferings and his victims actual ones.

An authentic apology would not.

However, my question is about something different - the victim says,

Well, he can say he’s ‘sorry’... but he hasn’t repented because he would know it meant going to the authorities and telling them all he knew of the identities of those who commissioned [his crime]. He was the monkey. Let him tell us about the organ-grinders. But he’s declined to do that.

Is that so?
Is offering up ones partners in crime sin, (who may or may not repent of the evil they have done and the grief they have caused,) a  requisite of true penitence?
Resolution to sin no more, yes, making of what amends one can, of course -- but informing on ones confederates?
And does the answer depend on whether the sinner still thinks his cause was just? or depend on whether the cause is/was just?

The Westminster Vestment, How Cool Is This?

According to the Catholic Herald,

Cardinal Vincent Nichols [wore] an ancient vestment believed to be from the royal wardrobe of King Richard III when he celebrates Mass for the repose of the soul of the monarch’s soul in Leicester on Monday.
Known as the Westminster Vestment, the chasuble is part of the heritage collection of Ushaw College, the former Catholic seminary at Ushaw Moor, Durham.
 There is a tradition that it was worn by the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey during the reign of King Richard, who died at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

Fox Just Keeps On Being the Responsible Media Outlet You Know and Love...

... NOT.

Prior to [a soccer] match between São Paulo and San Lorenzo on March 18, Fox Sports ran an advert in which Pope Francis – a life-long supporter and member of San Lorenzo – is held hostage to stop him from influencing the result....
The sequence ends with the kidnapper threatening Pope Francis with a cattle prod and calling the Pope’s influence on the game’s outcome “celestial doping” as he stands streaked with blood.
The aim of the advert was to encourage Brazilians to watch the game and come out in support of São Paulo. If they did not watch, the advert warned, then ‘the Pope’ would be released and allowed to use his “celestial influence” on the game’s outcome.

The Vocation Crisis

If only married couples were allowed to have sex, and the sacrament was open to both men and women, we wouldn't have this problem.
Ya know, 'cause we also don't have enough priests in the Church.
Because, um, celibacy.

Pope "tells it like it is"

Sorry, I beg to differ, your Eminence.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, emeritus arcbishop of DC says-

"This Holy Father has been and will be faithful to the doctrine and teaching of the church."

Fair enough. God bless him!
And -

"There are some people who don't like clarity"

Tru' dat.
Wish it were not so, but there you are.
Further, Cdl McCarrick believes -

"He wants people to hear it as it truly is."

Amen.
And he also says of Pope Francis -

"He says it clearly ...He's not an obfuscator."

Right- ,wait -
Say whaaaaaaaa?

Actual Catholic Bishop in Germany

What do I say, Glückwünsche? Danke?

 

In any case -

[Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes] has publicly opposed the words of two other German bishops who have suggested that the nation’s Church can form its own policies without direction from Rome.....
[and has] published a strenuous objection to the media statements of his fellow German bishops in the form of a March 7 letter to the editor of Die Tagespost, a prominent German language Catholic newspaper. The text of the original letter was translated to English by CNA's Jan Bentz.

“Since the words of the highest representative of Catholics in Germany have a guideline-like character, and create substantial waves in the media, it makes sense to object publicly to some of the utterances, in order to limit the confusion which they have caused,” Cardinal Cordes wrote.

The cardinal noted that the February press conference was focused on the Synod on the Family, and on particular of the proposal by Cardinal Walter Kasper – another German – to admit some among the divorced and civilly remarried to Communion.

“The problem was addressed with the beautiful words of 'new solutions' and 'opening doors',” Cardinal Cordes wrote.

He responded to Cardinal Marx' characterization of the Church in Germany as an exemplar by saying that “if he wanted to express that Germany is example in leading the faithful to a giving oneself up to Christ, then I think the bishop is fooled by wishful thinking. The existing German ecclesial apparatus is completely unfit to work against growing secularism.”

“It was not without reason,” Cardinal Cordes wrote, that Benedict XVI strongly urged the Church in Germany to become less worldly during his 2011 visit there.

An Anglican-style Rosary

This is NOT really what the post is about, but Fr Hunwicke's description of the Rosary As Weapon, (to quote a bumper sticker one sees hereabouts,) caught my eye:

Fr Wason began Solemn Rosary ... not one of those rapid Irish Rosaries with the laity racing into the Sancta Maria before the priest has even got to the fructus ventris tui, but a slow, meditative, Anglican Rosary in which, at the end of each Mystery, Father preached about it generously and extensively, allowing no typological crumb to fall unexamined to the ground.

Against all odds, the morning Rosary with a bunch of other weekday Mass-goers has become my thang.
And a mighty good thang it is, too.

Why Were Which [W]Ones Waived to When?

I had read that St Benedict's memorial was transferred to July since the anniversary of his death would always fall during Lent, cutting back on the festivities.

So how about the far loftier Saint Joseph and his solemnity?

Is it because he has another day that doesn't fall in Lent?

Or was consumption of zeppole getting out of hand? (There were none available around here.)

Attending an Italian-American wedding soon. (What is with the weddings in Lent?) Will there be a St Joseph's Table?

Unbearable Solitude

I like to be alone, (don't tell Himself.)
The idea of living alone has never been unattractive to me, even after I found My True Love.
Although I make a great deal of noise, silence bothers me not a whit.
I remember once leaving after a stay at my Mom's, my youngest brother had gone off to college, a sister who was moving cross country had been there at the beginning of the stay but was gone by the end, and I asked her to get in touch with a friend of mine on the other end of my several day dive home, to tell her that I had set out, (pre-cell phone days, except for very connected people.)
I later found out she had confided to the friend that that night would be the first time she had ever been alone in a house in her entire life, and she hated it.
But I've never been like that.
I look forward to solitude, generally. I have many times in my life gone days at a time without seeing or even speaking to another person.
As I said, I like to be alone.
But this morning at the nursing home for the usual prayer and communion service, I began to understand the terror that it can be.
Now, Himself's mother, and mine, both had real dread of nursing homes, and I know that's not uncommon. The care, at even the best of them that I have seen is, quite simply put, insufficient.
Toward the end of my Mother's life there were three different facilities and two hospitals, all highly rated, tops in the state, regularly laudatory inspections, lovely decor and food, seemingly plenty of staff - none of the stays were without incident.
Incorrect prescriptions, forgetful and callous doctors, revolving door staff that was never brought up to speed, alarms that were acknowledged but then forgotten without problem having been addressed, abrupt and frightening moves from one wing to another in the middle of the night...
And this was with one of us ALWAYS with her, sometimes over the objection of staff.
I cannot image how it would have been had there not been someone there to insist that oxygen be supplied now, to track down someone authorized to dispense controlled substances, to clean her, to make her food palatable and chewable...
Thank God, there had been an incident fairly early in her first hospital stay for which she had phoned us all at three in the morning - I think 4 of us had converged on her new hospital room and promised then that come hell or high water we would never leave her.
Now did we. For several months there was always at last one of her children with her, most nights two so that if she were to awake while one was answering a call of nature or desperately searching for coffee, there would be a face she knew.
I believe her fear was of dying without her family around her, but not from practical considerations like the need for someone insisting on care or running interference or giving protection.

Just to see a face she knew and loved.

This morning it was so painfully, cruelly obvious how alone many of the residents are.
Even those who have family whom I've occasionally met spend most of their days in the company of no one but nurses or aides.
And of course, many have no family who visit.

And finally, some are clearly alone even with family and friends beside them, so turned in upon themselves they are.
There is a tragic, hunted look in so many eyes. (Thank You, God, thank You, I never saw in Mom's.)
They think themselves alone.
Utterly alone.
And it rightly terrifies them.
We pray with them, talk, offer a shoulder or an arm around theirs, sing to them... but it is so not enough. 

O Blessed Joseph, you gave your last breath in the loving embrace of Jesus and Mary. When the seal of death shall close my life, come with Jesus and Mary to aid me. Obtain for me this solace for that hour - to die with their holy arms around me. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I commend my soul, living and dying, into your sacred arms. Amen.

To devalue ones own speech?

Fascinating thought in the Guardian anent Pope Francis's prolix proclivities, ruminating on whether the Holy Father is a "reckless blabbermouth or sophisticated strategist."

The writer seems to come down in support of the second option -

But what Francis is trying to do is wilfully devalue the coinage of papal utterances. He is doing something similar with the synod of bishops. Previously every synod was as carefully orchestrated as an old-style Soviet congress. But Francis has told bishops that debate is not dissent and unleashed a tsunami of heated argument over totemic issues like contraception, divorce and same-sex relationships. It is all part of dismantling the old imperial papacy and opening the church to a style of governance that is more participative and, though it is not a word Francis would use, democratic. He knows he will need a few more years to entrench that idea into the Catholic hierarchy.

I don't know if Paul Vallely is someone who has a handle on these things or not.
Francis is certainly high-handed enough, even dictatorial when he wants to be, (and there are times when this is appropriate,) so I am not buying into the trope of the Pope who wants everyone else to reach whatever consensus the will, "democratically" as Vallely puts it.
And his reiteration and reinforcement of Paul VI's prophetic encyclical on the sanctity and dignity of human life is a reminder that in some cases, majority opinion be damned, when the Pope speaks, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, causa finita.

We shall see.

Happy Feast Day, to at least someone, there certainly are a lot of Irish saints.

When I read anything about the Irish Prime Minister, I always think, for a moment, that his name is Edna.

I have learned that processional crosses can be veeeeeeeeeery heavy.

I would be a most unedifying martyr.

I have also learned that there are more variations on the stabat mater tune than are dreamt of in your McLaughlin and Reilly hymnals, Horatio.

Lie, Or Ignorance?

This claims, that in,

the language currently proposed by  [Archbishop Cordileone for the school teachers' handbook' for his archdiocese] active homosexuals, including those in marriages no matter how loving, are labeled “gravely evil”

Um, no.
In charity, I'll assume that you are simply repeating a lie told by someone else.
What the new wording actually says is,

the Church’s teaching [is] that all extra-marital sexual relationships are gravely evil.

Nothing about persons. NO person is labelled "evil."
Actions.
Not people.

It's pretty easy to attack someone, when the only evidence you require second- or third-hand claims, with selective quoting so that you can pretend that someone said or wrote something that he did not say or write.

But it makes you look foolish.

"Can we talk....?"

 That's the plea from, (no, not Sr. Mary Joan Rivers,)

(Ya know, if she had spoken Catholish, it would have been, "Can we break into small discussion groups with facilitators for each one?")

but from a few loose threads on the fringes of Catholicism -

clericalism pervades the Church at all levels. It's not just bishops who insulate themselves from the voices of lay people and, sometimes, their own priests. It's not just the priest or pastor who assumes license to overrule all other input and ignore parishioners' voices. It's also lay people with a "Father says" or "what will Father think" attitude. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, clericalism isn't even in the same league as the "demi-clericalism" running rampant in many American parishes, there is NO ONE as eager to "assume license", "overrule all other input" and "ignore parishioners' voices" as a Catholic lay minister with certification from some other Catholic lay minister who manages to gain for himself control of any facet of parish life.
(And by "himself" I almost always mean "herself.")
And if there are two such at odds? Bloodsport.
Of course, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church has fringes on both sides, the selvages are unravelling -

Richard Williamson, the bishop consecrated by Lefebvre and dismissed from the Fraternity of St. Pius X in 2012 [ordained] a new bishop... on the feast of St. Joseph in the monastery of Santa Cruz in Nova Friburgo, Brazil.... The consecration of a bishop without a papal mandate will make the ordaining party, ... the person being ordained, ... liable to a latae sententiae excommunication. 

Good Saint Joseph, Guardian of Our Lord, and Guardian of the Church Universal, pray for us!

I'm not the only one gettin' all judgy.....

Tut, tut, that reactionary Ross Douthat is waxing nostalgic for the deserving poor, and their monogamy, fidelity, sobriety and thrift.

Alfred Doolittle would not approve.

I mean, that sort of talk, by implication, criticizes the Differently Behaved.
Or do I mean those with Non-Conforming Values?
Or would the PC term be "those with Alternative Morals"?

Why should I go to the theater for sex and violence, when I can get that at home?

Odd article in the New York Times about the problem of sexual harassment in the theater.
It is slanted slightly in the direction of The Actor's Union Doesn't Do Enough About It And Needs New Rules.
And it rightly notes that stage managers, (besides one they referenced as hitting on a complainant himself,) are members of Equity yet also a part of management, and that the main objective is almost always going to be letting the Show Go On, so maybe not the best person address a problem reported by a young(er) less connected victim?
Well, yeah.

But how could a journalist tackle this subject and not even mention, perhaps, not even know about, the existence of The Deputy? AEA always has a deputy or two in every union production.
Confidential, usually experienced in and knowledgeable about, and often actually IN, the vulnerable performer's very condition, and required to represent the POV of no one but the performers and their union.

So for all the interviews he may have conducted, I don't think Patrick Healey really researched his subject with much care.

But I am more bothered that the story that opens the article is... well, it doesn't really illustrate the problem they're trying to present, at least to this reader.
A woman slaps her boyfriend.
The man later slaps her.
She goes to rehearsal with a black eye and finds out that he is more valuable to the production than she is.
As someone who's gotten my share of black eyes, and given and received unfortunate stage bruises, (including mistimed hits that really connected,) I have never known a slap to cause a black eye.
And in the article, indeed, it seems not to have been the slap per se that had visible results, but that his slap had sufficient force to knock her down.
At the end of the anecdote, what I take away is that the woman did not feel that what had happened rose to the level of meriting the attention of law enforcement.
She did seem to feel the incident was worth the man losing his job over, or something....
You see, she didn't want to leave the production, but she didn't want to be forced to be around him, and well... he was in the production, they were portraying lovers. So, absent a serious re-thinking of Shakespeare's intent, and a re-staging, I guess she wanted him fired.

But she also, apparently, in a Things That Make You Go Huh????? detail, didn't even think the blow and the injury was sufficient to cause a break-up, at least not for a while, since several months later, the production is changing venues, by which I mean GOING TO ANOTHER COUNTRY, and their relationship is "all but over."
"All but over?"

It is gravely wrong for a man to strike a woman, I'm not defending that. From the details given I think the shmuck should have at least spent the night in a cell. But it does not seem that he intended to do any more damage to her than she had intended to do to him. So I'm not certain the woman shouldn't have spent some time in the hoosegow a few nights earlier.
And I'm damned sure, unless she is emotionally or mentally damaged in some way that precludes her being let out without a keeper, she should have left his sorry carcass with a little more dispatch.

Like, that night.

Is she not capable of caring for herself? of making rational life decision?
It seems she is.
So why... Omiwerd, i can't believe I am about to stick up for a producer!!!!!.... why, in her mind, is it up to the producer to do for her in her professional life, what she did not even bother to do in her private life?
Man up, woman!

And I know I shouldn't extrapolate overarching sociological principles and predictions from one situation, ("the plural of anecdote is not 'data',") but I fear these sorts of problems are going to become more and more common and more and more unsolvable as the notions of license and privacy and consent and restraint become ever more tangled in our society's collective mind and psyche.

Look at the idiotic notion of teaching children in sex education about consent, that an elementary schoolchild should say "no" to "unwanted touch." (so if the kid's okay with it, full speed ahead?)
Or the main-streaming of violent, deviant practices masquerading as romance?
Or the granting of adult autonomy, (with concomitant money and opportunity,)  to people who are simultaneously encouraged to prolong their adolescence.
People, young people especially, are consistently told that all is acceptable, all is permitted, everything is morally neutral, and nothing is anyone elses concern - and they are shamed, (or even prosecuted,) if they disagree. And yet time after time, consequences seem to give evidence that all that old-fashioned conventional wisdom and morality was, uhm.... right?
A link on the front page of the Times tells us that a college is "trying to balance student safety with open-mindedness after 12 were hospitalized last month," from overdoses.
How's that working out for ya?