Vatican offers Lenten music

Check it out here.

A priest writes about the 'old mass' (of the 1970's, that is)

Here's a letter from a priest to Fr. Z. about the 'old liturgy'. Pretty astute.

Greetings from _. I just thought I’d drop a note about my Mass experience on Sunday. I frequently get loaned out when there is a need. Such was the case this past Sunday….

To give some personal context, I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, am nearing my 3rd anniversary of ordination, and am learning to celebrate the Mass according to the 62 Missal. [W]here I am stationed is by no means high church, but pretty "by the book" (we’re working on it). In addition, my confreres have charge of a parish where things are done along fairly traditional lines ….

All of this serves as a setup for the following: I realized this weekend that while I have been rediscovering the tradition, I have lost touch with the old Mass. Do not confuse this "old Mass" with the Traditional Latin Mass which for me is an ageless timeless discovery. The "old Mass" to which I refer is the Mass of my youth. It is the Mass of pianos and guitars, the Mass of loquacious commentators and "greet the people around you." It is the Mass of audience participation and interior dullness. It is the Mass of primping cantresses and now-dated pop styled music about us. [nice phrase] It is the Mass of candy jar ciboria and pewter chalices handled by an excessive number of extraneous ministers (who must process in and out of course). [Of course! that’s "participation", you know, "empowering the laity"!]

It hit me after the first Mass Sunday morning that, as a child born in the 70’s, all of this has become terribly old and tired and compared to the timeless tradition of the Church and is just worn out.

Mark me down in favor of the Mass of the ages and please let’s hang up the "old Mass."

Fr Z. responds:

Nicely done.

Consider yourself "marked down", with a WDTPRS kudo by your name!

I think you see, Father, why some people have fought so hard to repress the older Mass. They knew that when a TLM and a messy Novus Ordo Mass were able to be experienced and then compared in concrete ways, then the jig would definitely be on the upswing.

They had theological, doctrinal and ecclesiological, reasons to repress the older Mass.

And priests like you, Father, are their worst nightmare.

As I have been writing tirelessly, Summorum Pontificum was mainly a gift for priests.

The Holy Father’s document did not only for the most part take the decisions about the older form of Mass out of the hands of local bishops. It also presented a new "hermeneutic" through which priests, especially younger priests, would begin to read Holy Mass and understand themselves at the Lord’s altar.

What Summorum Pontificum did was opening the possibility of hundreds of humble instances of the "gravitational pull" which the older form of Mass, through these priests, would have both on the way they celebrate the newer form and, subsequently, on the participation of people in Holy Mass.

BXVI on "ad orientem" worship (the quotes)

Benedict on 1-11-09 worshiping 'ad orientem' in the Sistine Chapel, on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord.

Hat-tip to The New Liturgical Movement.

Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millenium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying toward the east is a tradition that goes back to the beginning.
-- The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000), pg. 75.

As I have written in my books, I think that celebration turned towards the east, towards the Christ who is coming, is an apostolic tradition.
-- Looking Again at the Question of Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, ed. Alcuin Reid (St. Michael's Abbey, 2003), pg. 151.

The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself. The common turning toward the east was not a "celebration toward the wall"; it did not mean that the priest "had his back to the people": the priest himself was not regarded as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked together toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian liturgy the congregation looked together "toward the Lord".... They did not close themselves into a circle; they did not gaze at one another; but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens, for the Christ who comes to meet us.... [A]common turning to the east during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord.
-- The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 80-81.

Moving the altar cross to the side to give an uninterrupted view of the priest is something I regard as one of the truly absurd phenomena of recent decades. Is the cross disruptive during the Mass? Is the priest more important than the Lord? This mistake should be corrected as quickly as possible; it can be done without further rebuilding.
-- The Spirit of the Liturgy, pg. 84

[I]n St. Peter's [Basilica], during the pontificate of St. Gregory the Great (590-604), the altar was moved nearer to the bishop's chair, probably for the simple reason that he was supposed to stand as much as possible above the tomb of St. Peter.... Because of topographical circumstances, it turned out that St. Peter's faced west. Thus, if the celebrating priest wanted--as the Christian tradition of prayer demands--to face east, he had to stand behind the people and look--this is the logical conclusion--toward the people.... The liturgical renewal in our own century took up this alleged model and developed from it a new idea for the form of the liturgy. The Eucharist--so it was said--had to be celebrated versus populum (toward the people). The altar--as can be seen in the normative model of St. Peter's--had to be positioned in such a way that priest and people looked at each other and formed together the circle of a celebrating community. This alone--so it was said--was compatible with the meaning of the Christian liturgy, with the requirement of active participation. This alone conformed to the primordial model of the Last Supper. These arguments seemed in the end so persuasive that after the Council (which says nothing about "turning toward the people") new altars were set up everywhere, and today celebration versus populum really does look like the characteristic fruit of Vatican II's liturgical renewal. In fact it is the most conspicuous consequence of a reordering that not only signifies a new external arrangement of the places dedicated to the liturgy, but also brings with it a new idea of the essence of the liturgy--the liturgy as a communal meal.
-- The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 76-77

[T]he positive content of the old eastward-facing direction lay not in its orientation to the tabernacle.... The original meaning of what nowadays is called "the priest turning his back on the people" is, in fact--as J.A. Jungmann has consistently shown--the priest and people together facing the same way in a common act of trinitarian worship.... Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also an interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ.
-- The Feast of Faith (Ignatius Press, 1986), pg. 140

[T]he cross on the altar is not obstructing the view; it is a common point of reference. It is an open "iconostasis" which, far from hindering unity, actually facilitates it: it is the image which draws and unites the attention of everyone. I would even be so bold as to suggest that the cross on the altar is actually a necessary precondition for celebrating toward the people.
-- The Feast of Faith, pg. 145

[A]mong the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come.
-- Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning towards the Lord (Ignatius Press, 2004), pg. 11

Parish fashion: "the original human nature was not like the present..."

This redefines the meaning of the term "girlie-men". It's amazing what people will say when they believe any and every thing they think.

My emphasis and [my comments].

The notion of wardrobe androgyny was the fitting theme of Yves Saint-Laurent's men's collection, the house that kicked off the just-ended Paris men's shows where men's fashion won a feminine touch.

At YSL, designer Stefano Pilati used quotations from Plato to explain why he combined female detailing with a masculine silhouette.

"The original human nature was not like the present ... the sexes were not two as they are now." [What does that mean? Is he really serious? If he is, I hope he doesn't really think that, but rather he has lied to himself so much that he believes everything he thinks.]

Pilati underscored the union of genders with a line for men made in fabrics normally worn by women -- crepe de chine, organza, shantung and silk voile, all fabrics which float rather than fall.

In an era obsessed with global warming and sustainable development, the 44 spring/summer 2009 collections displayed at the four-day men's fashion shows ending Sunday featured light airy see-through linens, silks and soft feathery cottons. [Will somebody explain the connection between global warming fanaticism and gay fanaticism???? Or is it just fanaticism that's in common here?]

Bright colours, more often the domain of women's wear, also figured strong.

As Gay Pride marches took place across Europe, pink was popular in Paris.

Louis Vuitton, a house with a predominantly masculine view of the world, chose pink for shorts, pants and waistcoat, and even shoes.

A huge pink sail served as the backdrop for an otherwise frankly male take on fashion from Emmanuel Ungaro designer Franck Boclet, who said fuschia was simply one of the house's signature colours.

"I wanted a gay fresh style," Boclet said of what he told AFP was "a Paris 60s look" [yes, nothing fresher than re-hashing the 60's style...] of hip-hugging tight-thighed pants, chequered suits, and the odd item in day-glo orange, bright blue or purple.

Read the rest of this crap here.

"Let's celebrate diversity! (the 'hermeneutic of continuity' way)" Pope says old-rite Latin Mass should be on offer in every Catholic parish

You gotta admit, the Trid mass (pictured below) looks way cooler and more mysterious (it's all about the Sacred Mysteries!), and far more reverent to actually be the Holy Sacrifice of the mass. However, we need to remember, that the Novus Ordo should look the same if actually done faithfully to the Council's wishes.

The Vatican is writing to seminaries to request all student priests are trained in how to say the Tridentine Mass, a liturgy abandoned for Mass in the vernacular in the 1960s.

by Bess Twiston Davies

Pope Benedict XVI wants every parish in the West to offer believers the Mass in the Tridentine or Gregorian Rite, the Latin-language liturgy used until the 1960s by every Catholic church in the world.

The Vatican is now writing to seminaries to ask that student priests be required to learn the rite, which, in widescale liturgical changes following the modernising church council Vatican II (1962-5), was largely replaced by Mass in the vernacular.

The Pope wishes every parish to offer both rites for Sunday Mass, an eminent Vatican Cardinal announced in London on Saturday. Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, said: “The Holy Father is willing to offer to all the people this possibility, not only for the few groups who demand it but so that everybody knows this way of celebrating the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.”

It was a “gift” and a “treasure,” Castrillon Hoyos said, hours before celebrating a Tridentine liturgy attended by some 1,500 worshippers at Westminster Cathedral on June 14. “This kind of worship is so noble, so beautiful – the deepest theologians’ way to express our faith. The worship, the music, the architecture, the painting, makes a whole that is a treasure.”

[snip]

Used worldwide in Catholic parishes from 1570 until the 1960s, the Tridentine Rite also differs in key aspects from the modern Catholic liturgy. In the modern Mass, a priest will face the congregants, in the Tridentine Rite, he will pray facing the altar, traditionally placed facing East, towards Jerusalem, and thus the direction of the place from which Christ is believed to have ascended to heaven.

In July 2007. Benedict XVI announced that every priest who wished to do so might celebrate Mass in the Tridentine Rite – without requiring, as had previously been the case, permission from their local bishop.

Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos added: “Today for many bishops it is difficult because they don’t have priests who don’t know Latin.Many seminaries give very few hours to Latin – not enough to give the necessary preparation to celebrate in a good way the Extraordinary Form.”

Read full article.

New Papal pallium...

From The New Liturgical Movement, a great liturgy site.

A new form of the papal pallium, seen to the right, will be introduced on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. I had seen rumours about this as early as the middle of May, but now it is confirmed in tomorrow's edition of the Osservatore Romano. Msgr. Guido Marini, the papal MC, explains the change in an interview with Gianluca Biccini. Here is the relevant part in an NLM translation:

"This is the development of the Latin form of the pallium used up to John Paul II," explains the Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, Monsignor Guido Marini, explaining historical and liturgical reasons for the new insignia in this interview to "L'Osservatore Romano."

What are the elements of continuity and innovation compared to the past?

In light of careful studies, regarding the development of the pallium over the centuries, it seems that we can say that the long pallium crossed over the left shoulder was not worn in the West as from the 9th century onwards. Indeed, the painting in the Sacred Cave of Subiaco, dating back to ca. 1219 and representing Pope Innocent III with this type of pallium, seems to be a deliberate archaism. In this sense the use of the new pallium intends to meet two requirements: first of all to emphasize more strongly the continuous [organic] development which in an arch of more than twelve centuries this liturgical vestment has continued to have; in second place the practical [requirement], because the pallium used by Benedict XVI since the beginning of his pontificate and has led to several annoying problems from this point of view.

There remain differences between the papal pallium and the one which the Pontiff imposes on the archbishops?

The difference remains even in the current pallium. What will be worn by Benedict XVI from the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul onwards takes the form of the pallium used up to John Paul II, albeit in a larger and longer cut, and with the color red for the crosses. The different form of the papal pallium vis-à-vis the one of the metropolitans highlights the diversity of jurisdiction which is signified by the pallium.

Perhaps you will remember a post on this same subject which I wrote in January, The Pallium - History and Present Use. It is both consoling and encouraging to know that my own critical thoughts concerning the form of Pallium introduced in 2005 by the former papal MC are in concert with those of the present papal MC and, it seems reasonable to assume, the Holy Father himself.

It is also very rewarding and important for the reform of the reform seeing the emphasis which is given to the principle of organic development, which I have highlighted in the interview above.

Papal Vestments: Then & Now

Let's just take a quick look back at papal masses when Archbishop Piero Marini was the papal mc...




Now let's take a look at the pope's vestments recently under Msgr. Marini (same name)...





Much, much better. You gotta love that tall miter! The hermeneutic of continuity is hard at work...

It is amazing to think how much things have changed since Benedict has become pope; of course, these are all very subtle and will take time to fully bear fruit, but the Church's identity has been emboldened by this wise pontiff. He is a wonderful teacher too... Benedicat pontificem maximum multis plus annis Dominus!

Pics of the Easter Vigil with Fr. Z.

My first ever '62 Missale Romanum... and at the Easter Vigil.

I arrived at St. Augustine's at 11pm; I returned home at 2:30 AM!!!

I was a little reluctant to take pictures, but it was too tempting. I will probably never go to another mass like this (& this late) for a long time as my wife and I have a baby on the way. I kept the flash off in order to avoid being obnoxious (or at least less obnoxious); hence the blurriness.

Pic 1: at the Communion rail
Pic 2: raising the chalice
Pic 3: blessing the Baptismal waters
Pic 4: die-hards for good liturgy!
Pic 5: I'm figuring it out (I should have looked at the missale
prior to mass!)
Pic 6: Fr. Zulsdorf's sermon
Pic 7: all the lights were out yet; I'm holding my candle, and
I believe the Genesis text was being chanted if I recall

In the end, I desire a Novus Ordo done well. Hermeneutic of continuity. Let's put the best of the usus antiquior into the ordinary form.









It was a challenge for me as this was the longest liturgy of the year, and I had never really even looked at my Baronius Press 1962 Missale Romanum prior to arriving at 11pm! Overall, I thought it was beautiful and every moment was full of the rich symbolism of our Catholic faith.

It struck me how challenging it was for everyone else in the sanctuary (with the exception of Fr. Z.) to follow along smoothly. From the assisting priests (acolytes?) to the altar boys to the schola cantorum- all were very focused and intense. Don’t get me wrong, it was a flawless liturgy as far as I could tell, but I bring it up simply to point out the fact that what I witnessed on Saturday night was once the norm. Liturgy was taken seriously by the men and young men/boys executing it. It was not something to watch, but something to join in and contemplate. The hard work, thought, and effort was once not so hard and not so uncommon. I myself was challenged by what was before me; I worked hard to follow along and to think about the rich meaning rather than it being spoon fed to me in the form of fluff. I really was participating. My wife asked if I fell asleep at all or if I was bored (as it was very late), but honestly this did not occur at all as I was too focused on everything happening; not a moment during the mass was wasted. These days it seems to take a lot of effort to do something beautifully; this made me a little bit sad, as I reflected upon how little effort we put into most of our liturgy today. That’s really too bad. What I saw at the Vigil on Saturday was hard work, and it was more beautiful and more meaningful because of it.

Another thing that struck me was how wonderfully rich the Latin text really is. I teach Latin, and as I translated the text on my own and also consulted the English, I was amazed (but I guess not that surprised as I regularly follow the Catholic blogosphere) at how much richer the mass was than a typical ‘dumbed-down’ Novus Ordo mass really is. I suspect a lot of this is because of poor translation, but the actions of the priest and those assisting were much more symbolic- ironically more in sync with the Scriptures than the ‘typical’ mass of today. Also helpful were the beautiful vestments, sacred vessels, ad orientem altar, artwork, iconography, and communion rail. St. Augustine’s is quite nice.

Having 3 readings as opposed to 2 in the old Missal (for a solemnity or feast day) does not seem to compensate for all that is lost in the rich translation found in the Missal. The extra reading also does not replace ad orientem worship and the symbolism found in so many other ways abandoned after the ‘reform’. Hence, the old mantra that “Catholics don’t read the Bible” is rather silly or even “we need more Scripture”; Catholics aren’t smarter or more faithful for having more readings on Sunday, and often it makes us dumber as ‘Fr. So&So’ will refuse to comment on that excerpt from Hosea or Tobit anyway!

I really do appreciate receiving the Eucharist at the rail, as it gives a little time to contemplate before receiving while kneeling and viewing the altar, as opposed to filing up and grabbing the Eucharist.

So, in general I had a good first experience, but it was rather challenging, even for someone who knows Latin fairly well. It honestly seemed laborious to have the readings in Latin; I kept going back and forth between wanting to check out the Latin and translate it myself, and actually following the story of the reading. I was also simultaneously holding a candle and trying to watch what was happening in the sanctuary. This was too much brain overload at 1 am for me!

On another note, I have been present at some lovely Novus Ordo masses celebrated ad orientem and entirely in Latin at St. Agnes, and they are wonderful.

To conclude, as I put the different (positive) liturgies I have been to all into one vision (including some study on the subject as I am pursuing a Master’s degree in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas), I would desire that mass be ‘celebrated’ this way:
I’d prefer all the smells, bells, statues, stained-glass, architecture,
vestments, manliness, rich meaning, and vestments of the usus antiquior combined
with the ‘format’ of the Novus Ordo. I really prefer the Scripture and the proper in English with the standard parts of the ordinary in Latin (Pater Noster, Gloria, Credo, Agnus Dei, Sanctus, “Hoc est Meum Corpus” etc.). I say the standard parts of the ordianry, because it is my impression that things are added on feast days etc. Again, I am no expert, this is simply one man’s opinion.

At the common parish, it would probably be a stretch to demand more than a good English translation of the Novus Ordo, ad orientem (or at least a cross on the altar facing the east/liturgical east), Agnus Dei, Sanctus, and licit/lovely vestments at this point.
Oh, and a priest who follows the rubrics as well as the ‘liturginator’ at St. Augustine’s; aka no outstretched arms as if Father ‘Bob’ is trying to hug the congregation with his emasculated love.

Laudetur Iesus Christus!

Some good pictures

Pope Benedict looking sharp in his new (old) digs. Now those are real vestments, baby!


That's speaking truth to power!

On modern art...

An interesting reflection on the banality of modern art and architecture.

In a 2003 interview with Steve Sailer to promote his book Human Accomplishment, Charles Murray said the following:

I think that the number of novels, songs, and paintings done since 1950 that anyone will still care about 200 years from now is somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Not exactly zero, but close. I find a good way to make this point is to ask anyone who disagrees with me to name a work that will survive -- and then ask, "Seriously?" Very few works indeed can defend themselves against the "Seriously?" question.

To which, Steve challenged his readers to come up with works that would meet that criteria. (Steve’s review of the book is here.) Well, I have belatedly taken up the challenge.

Hat tip to "The Man Who Was Thursday" blog; below is the entire post:
http://manwhoisthursday.blogspot.com/2007/12/charles-
murray-challenge-belated.html

A Rich Market for Russian Icons

An icon is restored at a Moscow gallery opened by tycoon Mikhail Abramov to display his extensive collection. (By Peter Finn -- The Washington Post)

As Tycoons Reclaim National Treasures, Counterfeiters Also Emerge
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 5, 2008; Page A15

MOSCOW -- Last May, Maria Paphiti, an icons specialist at Christie's auction house in London, was invited to inspect some religious paintings on wood that were among the contents of a building recently bought by an English family. The artworks had been found wrapped in plastic, and the building's new owners wondered what, if anything, they were worth.

The answer: a lot, particularly if they drew the attention of Russian buyers who have embarked on a massive spending spree to recover the country's exiled treasures.

Paphiti quickly singled out one piece as quite valuable. The 1894 icon "St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker of Myra" had a rare signature by the acclaimed Russian icon painter Mikhail Dikarev. It had also been framed in gilt and enamel by Jakov Mischukov, a well-known Moscow craftsman.

Adding to the icon's value was a dedication on the back saying it had been presented to the last czar, Nicholas II, by the Old Believers community, which broke with the established Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century over changes to the church's rites.

How the icon got to London, only to be discarded in an obscure building, remains a mystery, Paphiti said.

The icon was put on the block last June 11. Bidding started slowly at 20,000 pounds, or almost $40,000 -- Christie's pre-sale estimate. An impatient Russian bidder quickly stepped in with an offer of $200,000 and then two bidders, both unidentified Russians, faced off in bids made by intermediaries over the phone until the icon was sold to one of them for $854,000, a world record for an icon at auction.

For the happily bewildered English family, who told Christie's they wished to remain anonymous, it was an astonishing windfall. "They couldn't believe it," Paphiti said in a telephone interview from London.

Read the rest here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/02/04/AR2008020403089.html?referrer=emailarticle

Cool videos of Benedict & the Sistine Chapel!

From Catholic Online:

A portrait of the pope (this is an amazing painting by a Russian woman):
http://www.catholic.org/video/?v=508

Blessing of the pallium lambs (some cool tradition in action):
http://www.catholic.org/video/?v=609

Sistine Chapel: Iconography of a masterpiece:
http://www.catholic.org/video/?v=311

"Icons will save the world" (from First Things)

By Susan Cushman
Thursday, December 20, 2007, 6:36 AM

Standing before the icon of Christ in the front of St. John Orthodox Church, I prepare to offer my confession at the Sacrament of Forgiveness. The Holy image of the One Who Forgives comes forth to meet me, as the father comes forth to welcome home the prodigal son in the familiar gospel passage (Luke 15:11–32). The love of Jesus pours forth from his prototype (the icon), sees the offering of my broken heart, and raises it to the heavenly realm.

After receiving the priest’s counsel and absolution, I remain in the nave (the large part of the temple, called the sanctuary in Protestant churches) to give thanks and to let God’s grace and peace fill my heart. Surrounded by icons of Christ, his Mother, the angels, saints, biblical scenes and church feasts, I think about how Prince Vladimir’s envoys must have felt when they walked into Hagia Sophia Orthodox Cathedral in Constantinople near the end of the tenth century. Their mission was to find a religion that Prince Vladimir could embrace and offer to the people of Russia. In their report they said, “We didn’t know whether we were in Heaven or on earth.” Shortly thereafter, Orthodoxy became the official religion of Kievan Russia, infusing the lives of peasants and princes, artists and writers, with the Orthodox vision of beauty. Nine hundred years later, the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky penned the famous words, “Beauty will save the world.”

I don’t think Prince Vladimir or Dostoevsky had in mind the kind of worldly beauty that today’s fashion and entertainment industries worship, or even the beauty of secular art and architecture. I think they were both swept off their feet by true spiritual beauty—in Vladimir’s case, the beauty of the Orthodox temple (church), adorned with icons.

SPIRITUAL BEAUTY
In his book Icons: Theology in Color, Eugene Trubetskoi said that the beauty of the icon is spiritual. “Our icon painters,” Trubetskoi said, “had seen the beauty that would save the world and immortalized it in colors.”

Here's a link to the full story:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=928

'Tis outrage!

Limerick Church to become spa and leisure centre

(from the English Catholic blog "The Hermeneutic of Continuity")

It has often struck me that places such as Bluewater shopping centre and Gym-spa-health clubs are rather like modern pagan temples. Sad then, to see plans for a real Church to become a temple to the new religion.

The Irish Times reports on the sale of the Sacred Heart Church, Limerick, to developer John O'Dolan for 4 million euros. (Roman baths: new plan for former Jesuit church). An application for purchase was also lodged by a tradionalist group who wished to use the Church as a centre for the Traditional Latin Mass.

The article outlines Architect John Kennedy's plans for the Church. They will involve "very little alteration to the church" and "virtually all of the fabric of the existing structure" will be retained, including all five altars. The nave of the Church will become a swimming pool surrounded by a glass wall so that people can still see the High Altar. also at ground level will be a restaurant and juice bar. The gym itself will be on a new floor, five metres above ground level. Here is a photo of the interior of the Church so that you can picture it all in your mind's eye:

O'Dolan apparently thought that it would be a nice idea to ask the Latin Mass Society of Ireland (LMSI) to come and say Mass from time to time. Their press release in response to the plans for the Church is headed Limerick group condemns grotesque O'Dolan plan Vicky Nestor, Chair of the LMSI, said "It's grotesque to think that we could fit the most sacred ceremonies of our religion around a swimming pool."

Gillibrand has a brief parish history with a detailed description of the Church (Grotesque decision by Jesuits turns Church into swimming pool). It is heartbreaking to read it.

O'Dolan may be sincere in his desire to retain the altars but this is wrong because they contain relics of the saints and have been the resting place of the Sacred Body and Blood of the Lord. The altars, statues and other sacred artefacts from the Church should be removed and given to people who will be glad to take proper care of them.

The Irish Jesuit weekly newsletter, AMDG Express, has a two DVD set for sale. The first DVD has the "Closing Mass" and the second has memories of the Church from Jesuits and local people.

EURHYTHMIA - mystical music: "continuity with tradition"

The interior of a sweet Catholic church in New York.

Mysterious Encounters
Benedict XVI resurrects the aesthetics of the Mass.

By Michael Knox Beran

In a recent address to the bishops and priests of St. Peter’s, Pope Benedict called for a greater “continuity with tradition” in the music of the Church, and spoke of the value of the Church’s older musical traditions, among them the baroque sacred music of the 17th and 18th centuries and Gregorian Chant. The address followed the pope’s issuance, in July, of an Apostolic Letter (accompanying letter in English here) in which he permitted broader use of the Latin Mass, the “Tridentine” rite authorized by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century and promulgated most recently by John XXIII in 1962.

The pope’s pronouncements were received with skepticism by those who regard his views on sacred music, like his sympathy for the Latin Mass, as so much reactionary old-fogeyism. But neither the pope’s critics nor even many of his supporters appear to have grasped what His Holiness is up to.

The pope adheres to old Greek belief that words and sounds — and the rhythmic patterns in which they are bound together in music and poetry — have a unique power to awaken the mind. [Yes! This author understands.] He has spoken frequently of the power of rhythm to prepare the soul to receive truths that would otherwise remain unintelligible. In 2002 he described the experience of listening to music as an “encounter with the beautiful,” one that becomes “the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes.” He went on to say,


For me, an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death [in 1981] of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas faded away, we looked at each spontaneously and right then we said, ‘Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true.’ The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s inspiration.

For Benedict, the music and poetry of the liturgy are not merely ornamental; they are essential to the education to the soul. “How often,” the pope exclaimed, in October, to members of the Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music, “does the rich biblical and patristic tradition stress the effectiveness of song and sacred music in moving and uplifting hearts to penetrate, so to speak, the intimate depths of God’s life itself!”

It is this conception of the educational power of rhythm that underlies the pope’s defense of the Latin Mass and of the baroque and Gregorian traditions. It is a fair assumption that, in liberating these forms from liturgical purgatory, [What a great image!] His Holiness hopes that their rhythmic virtues will serve as a bulwark against the bad rhythm (kakometros) that today permeates the West.

Those who dismiss the pope’s efforts as an exercise in retrograde pomposity are oddly tone-deaf. They fail to grasp the power of the traditional Mass’s auditory as well as its visual music, its intricate interplay of harmonious sound and harmonious movement. Andrew Sullivan rejects the Tridentine Mass as “a relic.” Fr. James Martin, S.J., was quoted in Time as saying that the revival of the Latin Mass “would make it much more difficult for people to engage in full conscious and active participation” in the liturgy. Fr. Martin’s critique echoed that of Lord Macaulay, who argued that the “service, being in a dead language, is intelligible only to the learned; and the great majority of the congregation may be said to assist as spectators rather than as auditors.”

Introibo ad altare Dei . . . Sursum corda . . . Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, misere nobis . . . Critics of the Tridentine rite who contend that the Latin is a barrier to what the pope calls an “encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist” overlook the fact that the words of the liturgy, beautiful and mysterious as they are, are but approximations of the Word (et Deus erat Verbum) that, according to the Gospels, was born in Bethlehem, died on the cross, and ascended into heaven — the logos which, St. Paul says in first Corinthians, we perceive now only as an αινιγμα, a dark saying, a riddle, an enigma. The music of the Mass does as much to illuminate this mystery as the words.

In his essay on Dante, T. S. Eliot observed that the poetic intensity of a work of art or of the spirit often lies concealed in the music of its rhythm. “I was passionately fond,” Eliot wrote, “of certain French poetry long before I could have translated two verses of it correctly. With Dante the discrepancy between enjoyment and discrepancy was still wider. . . . The enjoyment of the Divine Comedy is a continuous process. If you get nothing out of it at first, you probably never will; [This is a very good point.] but if from your first deciphering of it there comes now and then some direct shock of poetic intensity, nothing but laziness can deaden the desire for fuller and fuller knowledge.”

So it is with the Latin Mass. Nor is it only in the rhythms of its language that the poetic intensity of the Mass is made manifest. Its rhythms of motion have their own peculiar power. Eliot described the Mass as “one of the highest forms of dancing” he knew. It was this interplay of sound and movement that led him to say that “the consummation of the drama, the perfect and ideal drama, is to be found in the ceremony of the Mass.”

Oscar Wilde, who also knew a thing or two about drama, was no less beguiled by the dramatic rhythms of the Latin Mass. It “is always a source of pleasure and awe to me,” he wrote in De Profundis, “to remember that the ultimate survival of the Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at Mass.”

In vindicating the music of the Latin Mass and the baroque and Gregorian traditions, Pope Benedict is attempting to restore a rhythmic balance that has been lost in art, in popular culture, and in the Church itself. “The writings of Plato and Aristotle on music,” he wrote in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy,

show that the Greek world in their time was faced with a choice between two kinds of worship, two different images of God and man. Now what this choice came down to concretely was a choice between two fundamental types of music. On the one hand, there is the music that Plato ascribes, in line with mythology, to Apollo, the god of light and reason. . . . But then there is the music that Plato ascribes to Marsyas, which we might describe, in terms of cultic history, as “Dionysian.” It drags man into the intoxication of the senses, crushes rationality, and subjects the spirit to the senses.

The Greeks cherished an Apollonian idea of order. Yet, such was their wisdom, they did not repudiate Apollo’s rival, Dionysus; they took his yelps and howls and made them into music. The dithyramb and the tragic chorus preserved the uncanny power of Dionysus while they at the same time restrained his savagery with the civilizing influences of rhythm. Thus the pope writes of “music that draws senses into spirit and so brings man to wholeness.” Such music “does not abolish the senses, but inserts them into the unity of this creature that is man. It elevates the spirit precisely by wedding it to the senses, and it elevates the senses by uniting them with the spirit.”

The pope’s critique of the “cultic character” of certain kinds of rock music — music which, he argues, converts the self into a “prison” and leaves the soul in thrall to the “elemental passions,” to “the ecstasy of having” its “defenses torn down” — is not old-fogeyism: it is a persuasive account of a civilization that is losing its sense of what Plato called eurhythmia, order, proportion, and gracefulness.

Of course the eurhythmia which the pope extols does not invariably lead people towards the good and the true. The music of Tristan und Isolde went deep into the soul of Adolf Hitler; he expressed the wish that, at the moment of his own annihilation, he should hear the Liebestod in the bunker. The beauty of Wagner’s music did not save Hitler from damnation, and may indeed have strengthened his longing for a murderous apocalypse. But if good music does not always save the soul, bad music never does. When the electric guitar sounds during the Sacrifice of the Mass, the cherubim weep. [This is one of the best things I have read in a very long time. I have contended for years, with others, that the true reform of Church music will come to fruition when the last guitar is busted over the head of the last uneeded lay minister of Holy Communion.]

The pope’s attempts to revive the musical glories of a Church that inspired Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis represent a cultural event of primary importance. If Benedict is successful, the Church, in becoming once again the patron and protector of eurhythmia, will be better able to carry out its historic mission as an educator of the spirit.

—Michael Knox Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal. His book, Forge of Empires 1861-1871: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made, has just been published by Free Press.


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Father Z's commentary:
The last point deserves an additional bump.

Holy Church has always been the great expert on humanity there has evern been. As a result, for various motives, she was always the greatest patroness of the arts. As expert and patroness, but with a divine mission and filled with the Holy Spirit, the Church has bequeathed two mighty treasure to all of humanity:

art and saints.

In art we see God’s beauty truth made manifest in matter, in images of beauty. In saints we see His beauty and truth manifest in living images.

Putin kisses an icon... of himself!

Russian sect prays to Putin icons, claims he is the chosen one
RIA Novosti, Russia
Dec. 11, 2007

MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - Vladimir Putin may be popular in Russia for saving the nation from the chaos of the 1990s, but a sect in the country has taken its devotion a step further by praying to ‘presidential icons.’

The Bolshaya Elnya village in the Nizhny Novgorod Region is home to the “Rus’ Resurrecting” sect, a group of local residents who believe that President Putin was both the Apostle Paul and King Solomon in previous lives.

Rus’ is the term used for the medieval East Slavic nation that gave its name to modern Russia.

“We didn’t choose Putin,” Mother Fontinya told the Moskovsky Komsomolets paper, expounding on the first time she laid eyes on the “holy one.”

“It was when Yeltsin was naming him as his successor [during a live New Year’s Eve TV broadcast in 1999]. My soul exploded with joy! ‘An ubermensch! God himself has chosen him!’” I cried.

“Yeltsin was the destroyer, and God replaced him with his creation,” claimed Fontinya.

The sect possesses a President Putin icon that Fontinya claims miraculously appeared one day.

“He has given us everything,” she said, pointing to the sky.

A special newspaper published by the sect - ‘The Temple of Light’ - features interviews with long-dead religious figures, including the Apostle Paul. The sect members are also convinced that President Putin knows about and supports the actions of their ‘Mother Superior.’

Russian Christian sects have long been known for their unusual choices of icons, some of them praying to portraits of such well-known ‘holy men’ as Stalin and Ivan the Terrible.

Another Russian sect is currently holed up in an underground shelter in the country’s central Penza Region and has threatened to commit mass suicide if any attempt is made to bring them to the surface.

Religion was tightly controlled in the U.S.S.R. and the collapse of the Soviet Union saw an explosion in sects and cults, as well as interest in New Age philosophies and beliefs. The back pages of many Russian tabloid newspapers are full of advertisements for ‘healers’ and ‘magicians’ who promise to bring happiness in love, success in business, as well as a range of other services.

One of the most well-known sects in Russia has its base near the southern Siberian town of Abakan, where thousands of people, both Russian and foreign, worship a former provincial traffic policeman, Sergei Torop, as the second coming of Christ.

There are currently believed to be around 500-700 such sects in Russia, containing some 600,000-800,000 people.

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