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.

Glad-handing in the middle of Mass: Father John tries to put not-so-glad-handers at ease

A “Catholic New World” reader put it to Question Corner priest Rev. John Dietzen, in December of ought-five:

I’ve had my arthritic fingers crushed. I’ve had parishioners blow their nose and then offer their hand to me. . . . I’m tempted to isolate myself in back [of church]. . . . [T]his . . . scenario is unnecessary and superfluous.

Neither is it required, but more about that later.

Father John, calling up an an old liturgical reformer’s argument, says this scenario is not new. They did it this way in the middle ages and, yes, in New Testament times. Late middle ages, the “kiss of peace” was for priests only, but now (for, say, 40 years?) it’s “prescribed.” (Not clear about that, but more later.)

A “sign of peace” is currently called for. There are “deep roots” here, Fr. J. continued. Handshake, embrace, or kiss may not be “the perfect” sign of peace, but it can still carry a message we need to understand if we are to celebrate the Eucharist together as Christ intended.”

Which implies, of course, one worries, that before 40 years ago we were not celebrating the Eucharist as Christ intended? For 20 centuries? Say it isn’t so, Father.

“Arthritis got you down?” he asks. Just look at the mass-goer next to you and without extending your hand say, ‘Peace be with you.’ “No one will be offended,” he adds. But it’s not that easy.

Handshake declined, in the manner of the germ-phobic TV detective Adrian Monk — who often has some quick explaining to do, as to the black man who did take offense — “you will be sharing a moment of the Mass that can be most prayerful and precious.”

Ah. When had been the last time Father John attended a mass in a pew?

As for “prayerful and precious,” how about the codger, arthritic or not, who has found the peace of Christ all by himself — or thinks he has — including a resolve to be nicer to people, and has to shatter it with a forced smile and nod not just to those on either side of him but to many others, some of them reaching over several pews to get to him?

A problem to stump Question Corners throughout the land.

Glad-handing in the middle of Mass, first of a series

Reader: “I am most put off by glad-handing. The other day I shook hands with the same woman twice. The ushers even shake hands of those with aisle seats during the Agnus Dei.”

Sometimes feverishly. People wave all over the church, seeking waves back, like a Facebooker looking for likes.

Great for ball games and other sports, but possibly eliminating or weakening any spirit of devotion that one has even momentarily been blessed with.

Shake rattle and roll? Hardly.

Shake hands with all your neighbors, and kiss the colleens all, as in the Donegal song? No.

Shake with fear for the judgment to come, you unrepentant sinner? No.

SHAKE AND SAY, “THE PEACE OF CHRIST BE WITH YOU”? YES!

It happens at mass after the Our Father, during which you may have held hands in a show of solidarity against Satan or watched others do so.

It’s SHAKE TIME, a solidarity-gesturing to beat all — or maybe a violating of sacred silence by turning to another, hand out, extorting response or being extorted.

My friend Jake (not his real name) intends to bring his cell phone with him and threaten to call 9-1-1 the next time he is approached while trying in his clumsy, antedated way to commune with the Almighty.

I am working to dissuade him.

That priest at the altar’s a nobody.

Priest as deputy . . .

Jim Bowman's avatarBlithe Spirit

You go high enough on the academic ladder, you are properly “robed” at commencement ceremonies, observes Fr. Hunwicke, explaining:

Doctoral garb distinguishes the achievement of, er, achievers.

He contrasts it with what the priest wears at mass:

‘VESTMENTS’, on the other hand, negate the individuality and achievements of the wearer. He wears them to indicate that he is nothing; that he is acting solely in the name of Another.

He did not walk proudly up to a stage to the tune of pomp and circumstance, Rather:

He is a man who was not honoured but humiliated, when, at his Ordination, he lay prostrate on the ground. He now acts clothed in the Priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Far from gaining or achieving anything, he has lost individuality. ‘Initiative’ is, quite simply, not his job. Nor is ‘personality’.

He is a man whose hands and voice are not his…

View original post 68 more words

Reasons for denial of entry to canonization lobby to G K Chesterton

Would you pray to G.K. Chesterton? (Heck, I’d pray to my father, who is closer to God than I am.)

Jim Bowman's avatarBlithe Spirit

No “local cult,” said the bishop. But it used to be the opposite argument that held sway, says the learned Fr. Hunwicke — if there were a local cult, the cause would be suspect. He finds this objection puzzling.

“Nor do I find it easy to take seriously his second reason,” he continues, citing same:

“I have not been able to tease out a pattern of personal spirituality”.

GKC no paragon, worthy of imitation? Fr. H.:

The liturgical Calendar is already, arguably, overloaded with Bishops and Founders.

Each of whom had prominent, powerful lobbies to boost them.

To the nub of it:

The addition of a simple and married layperson who sought sanctity simply through the plain everyday means of grace offered by the Redeemer in His Church would seem to me a valuable affirmation of plain ‘mere’ Christian ‘spirituality’.

How true.

via Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment.

View original post

Why do so few Catholics believe in the real presence? A call to action.

Bishop Robert Barron explained, and Fr. Z. followed up with extended commentary, agreeing with a need for action, but issuing his own call.

[The] Bishop doesn’t seem to mean action to change the way we celebrate the Eucharist, the way we see the Eucharist, the way we sing to and about the Eucharist, the way we literally handle the Eucharist.  That is: liturgical worship, how we celebrate Holy Mass. [Emphasis added]

He wants a “call to action”? Here’s a call to action!

  • STOP COMMUNION IN THE HAND!
  • Foster kneeling for Communion put in Communion rails.
  • Get serious about music.
  • Phase out unnecessary lay ministers of Communion.
  • Clear the sanctuary of everything that distracts.
  • Celebrate ad orientem.
  • And the scariest of all … implement generously Summorum Pontificum!

Every one of those will require, yes, catechesis.  Lots of sound catechesis and patience.

Patience and more patience.

But “it’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”

A concrete call that involves particulars, without which one blows smoke.

From Fr. Z’s blog.

Why do so few US Catholics believe in the Real Presence? Look at the liturgy

Not an accident

Jim Bowman's avatarBlithe Spirit

Casual does, belief follows, as sure as night the day.

A generation of pastors stripped the altars and passed out the Eucharist like a leaflet.

The latest Pew study shockingly states that only 31 per cent of Catholics in the United States believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

Out of the 69 per cent of Catholics surveyed who believe that the bread and wine are mere “symbols,” only 22 per cent of those understand that they are dissenting from the Church’s actual teaching. The rest are accidental Zwinglians.

More here: Catholic Herald

View original post

The Godless Confusion and the God of Justice — sermon material here

I’d take a sermon like this any day. Has punch, gets to the heart of a major, burning issue: how react to a society that rarely hears such talk. Society? How about parish mass-attenders?

First few ‘graphs:

According to atheist Richard Dawkins in his best-selling book The God Delusion, the God of the Old Testament is “arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

That remark indicates far more familiarity with the dictionary than with the Bible. I wonder, how much fiction has Dawkins read? More seriously, how carefully has he actually read the Bible?

Sadly, Dawkins merely appeals to the tired notion that the “God of the Old Testament” is a cruel tyrant with little love for His creation. I suspect that even many Christians have the vague sense that such is the case. And today’s reading from the Old Testament is the sort of passage that can, rather easily, be misinterpreted to provide evidence for that view.

Etc.

Like this, I say. Would need editing, sprucing up for average Sunday attendance, explaining this and that, cutting a bit, etc. Priest would have to get it in the first place, of course.

via Catholic World Report

Inside baseball: Pope St. Paul VI’s cathedral in his home town has no altar!

Something there is that makes a fellow love it.

The newer of the two [Brescia] Cathedrals intrigues. Within it, a ‘shrine’ to S Paul VI ‘Brixiensis’ [the Brescia native]. It contains, apparently, neither relics of the Saint nor an altar.

Speculation arose in our group [of insiders, attending a convention] about whether this latter fact was a piece of subtle symbolism indicating his desire to abolish the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. [Paul had approved the new, post-Vatican 2 mass, which traditionalists abhor.]

I [Fr. Hunwicke, as insider] strongly disagreed, arguing that his condemnation of ‘Transignification‘ [denial of the orthodox-traditional transubstantiation] showed that at least his heart, or part of it, was in the right place.

And the evidence ([Louis] Bouyer [who had told his friend Paul VI of Annibal Bugnini’s duplicity] inter alios [among others]) indicates that the the worst excesses of ‘his’ [Paul’s] rite can be blamed on Hannibal’s deceptions.

I like it for various reasons. One is how it contains so much in so few references — if you know what he’s talking about. And if you didn’t before I explained it, now you do. Maybe.

How Fr. Weinandy decided to write his letter of complaint to Pope Francis

Prayer matters . . .

Jim Bowman's avatarBlithe Spirit

In Rome in late May of 2017, arriving early for a meeting of Vatican theologians, Fr. Thomas Weinandy took himself to prayer “about the . . . state of the Church and the anxieties [he] had about the present Pontificate.”

He spent most of an afternoon in St. Peter’s,

beseeching Jesus and Mary, St. Peter and all of the saintly popes who are buried there to do something to rectify the confusion and turmoil within the Church today, a chaos and an uncertainty that I felt Pope Francis had himself caused . . . and pondering whether [to] write and publish something expressing my concerns and anxiety.

A few days later, the meeting completed, he “went again to St. Peter’s and prayed in the same manner.”

That night, he couldn’t sleep. Unable to get Francis off his mind, at 1:15 he left his room and went outside “for a short…

View original post 558 more words