The earth shook, locks and chains were opened, prisoners could escape.
But some did not, and thereby hangs this marvelous tale.
Author Archives: Jim Bowman
Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.
Traditional Latin Mass gets worshipers’ attention . . .
Supplies perspective:
“As the priest offers the Mass ad orientem (facing the altar or the liturgical east) we immediately recognize that the liturgy is not about us.”
From: Mass Appeal: How the Traditional Mass Engages All Five Senses | The Catholic Gentleman
US cardinal dismisses prayer power during pandemic: We can’t just pray and think things will change
We have to wonder why he beats this drum in this way at this time. It’s a harsh way to put down foolishness. Does he know of Catholics who dismiss self-help and ignore danger for the sake of magical prayer? Is this how he sees the day’s challenges?
It’s as if he sees his role as designated apologizer for the supernatural, front man for an organization eager for majority support. A little nuance might work better. It’s unseemly for him to appear so eager to cater to the suspicious or uninformed.
We have to wonder why he beats this drum in this way at this time. It’s a harsh way to put down foolishness. Does he know of Catholics who dismiss self-help and ignore danger for the sake of magical prayer? Is this how he sees the day’s challenges?
It’s as if he sees his role as designated apologizer for the supernatural, front man for an organization eager for majority support. A little nuance might work better. It’s unseemly for him to appear so eager to cater to the suspicious or uninformed.
The Last Mass of Paul VI: An Autumn Night’s Dream
The Last Mass of Paul VI: An Autumn Night’s Dream
By Tito Casini, severe critic of post-Vatican 2 changes.
In 1967, [Casini’s] “provocative tract” La tunica stracciata (“The Torn Tunic”), with a preface by a curial cardinal, virulently took to task the cardinal charged with implementing the reform, Giacomo Lercaro, for ‘a perverted application [of the council] detested alike by Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and unbelievers, in the name of piety, unity, concord, art, poetry and beauty.’
Lercaro’s adept secretary, Fr. Annibale Bugnini, would describe Casini’s work as ‘defamatory . . . a poisonous attack on . . . and on . . . renewal generally.”
more more more on this key aspect of post-council changes . . .
Pope Francis surveys bishops worldwide on Traditional Latin Mass
Would seem he has his eye on a practice for which he has neither taste nor respect.
Supporters of the Mass are suspicious.
Fr. Rutler’s parish in Manhattan
What’s going on, special attn. to final sentence:
HOLY WEEK
Due to the current pandemic, the Archdiocese has directed that there be no public Liturgies. The Masses of Holy Week will be offered in abbreviated form by Father Rutler.
On Palm Sunday, April 5, there will be no distribution of palms, but they will be blessed for possible future use. While Masses of the Triduum cannot be transferred, the Chrism Mass, normally celebrated in the Cathedral, will be translated to later in the year.
The last sentence/notation:
In these days, we pray especially for the soldiers, staff and patients in the emergency field hospital at the Javits Center, which is in our parish, and which Father Rutler is serving as chaplain.
Let us pray for him and his people.
On dishonest defence of post-Vatican 2 sweeping liturgical changes
By the learned and articulate Fr. Hunwicke.
The claim, explicit or implicit, that these things were ‘ordered by the Council’, is a wantonly and grossly mendacious retrojection. It bears the finger-prints of the Father of Lies himself. Most of the Council Fathers expected a very much more modest reform. That is why only four voted against the draft decree. The Fathers certainly did not anticipate the displacement, however optional, of the Roman Canon — a move which is not even hinted at in the Decree.
Sock-em bust-em.
Mass “ad orientem” in two cartoons
Pseudo-literary salute to liturgy for the sake of God continued . . .
The liturgy under discussion is spelled out, encapsulated, here, in passages from “The Priority of Religion and Adoration over Communion,” by Peter Kwasniewski:
Whenever the Mass is celebrated more like a meal, versus populum [facing the people], without silence, without serious elevations and double genuflections, with a memorial acclamation breaking in on our acts of adoring faith, and an overall informal ars celebrandi [mode of celebrating], such things undermine the aforementioned Tridentine [16th-century Council of Trent] dogmas and weaken the sensus fidelium [what people believe].
In such circumstances, it is not surprising that holy communion becomes the high point of the service, indeed the only point; and if one does not receive, one is “left out.” Why go to Mass otherwise?
On the other hand:
But if the focus is the priestly offering of the holy sacrifice as an act of the virtue of religion – giving to God, in justice, the right worship that is His due, which every human being owes to Him perpetually, regardless of his state or condition – then anyone and everyone has a profound, compelling, inescapable reason to go to Mass.
In fact, Mass is the only way we can fulfill our debt to God of paying Him a worship with which He is perfectly pleased, and this even apart from whether or not we receive spiritual food in Holy Communion.
He says this, having quoted the Council of Trent on what the mass is about, much more than a ceremony in which we can receive Communion, as privileged and valuable as that is.
Bad, bad pseudo-literary salute to liturgy for the sake of God — with mucho benefits for men, women, and children but not pandering to their momentary interests . . .
Should we fit worship to the worshipers? (Bunch of worshipers coming, what do we have for them? Something special, please.)
Or worshipers to the worship? (Solid stuff here, take it or leave it, trust us, you will not regret it, even in this life.)
Consider the first. It’s the Protestant way and successful to a degree, here and there, now and then. And it’s better than flip-floppy nothing.
But for the really serious, you’ve gotta have more. You gotta have substance, not tailored to these and those, who in the grand scheme of things are here today, gone tomorrow. (Even the cleanest-living leave sooner or later.)
Give me men to match those mountains, said Sam Walter Foss, “Poet, Librarian and Friend to Man,” in 1894.
Give us worshipers to match this worship. Ask them, Are you up to the challenge? Can you stand the truth of the matter?
— to be continued . . .
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground 